Immigration bills make headway in Montgomery

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Immigration is one of the major issues of the moment at the national level. Alabama lawmakers are not far behind by taking up several bills intended to fight illegal immigration. We hear about some of those measures plus other action this week in Montgomery from Todd Stacy, host of Capitol Journal on Alabama Public Television.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

I want to start by highlighting two bills that passed out of a House committee this week. One would enhance penalties for certain crimes committed by someone in the country without legal status. The other deals with driver’s licenses. What can you tell me about them?

House Bill 3, sponsored by Representative Chip Brown down in Mobile, it basically enhances criminal penalties for those undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes involving minors. So under that bill, a Class B felony would automatically elevate to a Class A felony if the victim is a minor. If the accused is an undocumented immigrant and the victim is a minor, automatically elevated to a Class A felony. It not only got through committee this week, but it actually just passed the House also.

And the driver’s licenses?

Senator Chris Elliott has this bill. His argument is that there are states in the country that will offer somebody in the country illegally, not a driver’s license necessarily, but just kind of a document allowing them to have some kind of identification. Alabama is not one of those states. But his argument is the state of Alabama will not recognize that as either a driver’s license or any kind of form of identification. That means that all the other laws having to do with driving without a license and things like that would absolutely apply. So again, it’s another one of these things to try to crack down on illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, a bill was delayed that would place new fees on international wire transfers. Why the delay on this?

This is an interesting bill, because at first blush, I thought it was a bill that was meant to deter illegal immigration, but it’s really not. We all know that immigrants come to this country sometimes and send money back. Well, this bill would put a four percent fee on any international wire transfer and send that money, that fee, to law enforcement and to schools and other assimilation efforts in parts of Alabama that are seeing a larger influx of immigrants. The argument is that influx costs money, especially locally when it comes to law enforcement, when it comes to schools, educating English language learners. But it got stalled because Americans for Tax Reforms, the national group basically against any kind of tax increases, came out against the bill and said that these kind of wire transfers may be targeted at immigrants, but it would apply to everybody. And they argued that raising this kind of fee or tax would really hurt at this time of inflation. So it got carried over in committee. That generally means it’s not gonna move, but there’s another bill in the Senate. So it technically still has a chance.

Also this week, a Senate committee held a public hearing on a bill that would require public schools, including colleges, to they display the Ten Commandments in a common area. Now, I gather this got quite a bit of debate during the hearing.

That’s right. You had supporters of it saying, look, the Ten Commandments, it’s not necessarily about religion. It’s a basis of the laws in this country and a lot of other countries. But opponents saying, no, it absolutely is religious. And we have no place imposing that religious document. And what was interesting in the committee also was that opponents of the bill pointed out that there are actually two different versions of the Ten Commandments in the Bible. And so which one are you going to choose from? There was no vote taken. It was just a public hearing. So I expect the committee to take it up when they return from spring break.

Finally, the Senate passed a bill Wednesday which would grant paid parental leave to state employees, including educators. Remind us the details on this bill.

A lot of people are surprised to learn that teachers in the state, state employees, they generally have to take vacation time or even sick leave or a combination of both or just unpaid time if they have a child. There have been efforts over the years to try to remedy that here in the last couple of years. So this bill would grant paid parental leave. In the case of mothers, up to eight weeks. In the case of fathers two weeks. And all that’s paid. It would also apply to adoptions. There will also be limited pay time off for miscarriages or stillborn birth.

It’s a popular bill. It actually passed the Senate this week, but there are starting to be concerns raised about the costs. When you pay for time off for an employee, somebody else has to do that job and think about substitute teachers or somebody else. So it does cost the state money. And they’re a little gunshy after recent pieces of legislation have cost more revenue than we actually anticipated. So there’s starting to be questions raised about, okay, how much is this actually going to cost? Should there be fiscal guard rails on it? So look for that to be an issue in the second half of the legislative session.