Part of Alabama’s immigration law that ordered public schools to check the citizenship status of new students was ruled unconstitutional by a federal appeals court. It was also ruled that police in the state and Georgia can demand papers from criminal suspects they have detained.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Alabama schools provision wrongly singles out children who are in the country illegally. Judges said fear of the law “significantly deters undocumented children from enrolling in and attending school.”
Both private groups and the Obama administration filed lawsuits to block the law. However, the court upheld parts of immigration law in Alabama and Georgia allowing law enforcement documents for people they stop.
The panel left in place an injunction that blocks a section of the Georgia law that allows for the prosecution of people who knowingly harbor or transport an illegal immigrant during the commission of a crime.
In Alabama, the judges sided with opponents of the law on other key points, including challenges to sections that made it illegal to harbor illegal immigrants; made it a crime for illegal immigrants to seek work; and made it a state crime for people in the country illegally not to have registration documents.
School officials said many Hispanic parents quit sending their children to class immediately after Bentley signed the law, and some families left the state in fear. Local education systems have said many children returned to class, and some immigrant families moved back to Alabama after courts blocked many provisions in the law.
U.S. immigration lawyers in Thailand note that most Thai children in the U.S. are either on an immigrant visa based on a family relationship or use a student visa (F1). Since Thailand does not share a contiguous border with the U.S. there are few illegal Thai immigrants in the country.
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