North Carolina is on track to join a series of states like Texas, Florida, Tennessee, Iowa, Oklahoma, or Louisiana, which are implementing anti-immigrant laws, basically for electoral purposes, but at a high economic, labor, and social cost. These laws are counterproductive and unconstitutional. Let's take a look at an example in Florida's law, one year after its implementation.
The SB-1718 bill provides $12 million to relocate undocumented individuals away from Florida, requires companies with more than 25 employees to verify the immigration status of their workers, prohibits local governments from giving money to organizations issuing identification cards to immigrants, requires hospitals to inquire about the immigration status of patients, and invalidates driver's licenses from other states where immigrants can obtain this document.
After a year of the law's implementation, fewer than 10 people have been prosecuted for violating it, but it has led to an exodus of immigrants and thus a lack of labor in key industries such as tourism, construction, and agriculture. The Florida Policy Institute estimates that this immigration law cost the state economy $12.6 billion in its first year.
Sadly, it's not the first time that such opportunistic, unfounded, and prejudice-laden legislation has profited from the fear of millions of hardworking families; history shows us that these laws are merely a grotesque spectacle and, in practice, cannot be enforced.
California's Attempt
In 1994, Proposition 187 (dramatically named "Save Our State" SOS) sought to establish a citizenship evaluation system administered by California, prohibited undocumented individuals from using non-emergency medical care, public education, and other services in the state.
Its proponents argued that it was too expensive to pay for the social services that immigrants received, but the California Legislative Analyst's Office estimated that it would actually be more costly to implement a separate immigration status verification system.
Voters approved this bill in the November 8, 1994 elections. However, it was challenged in a lawsuit the following day, and a federal district court declared it unconstitutional on November 11 of that year.
Racial Profiling in Arizona
In 2010, then-Arizona Governor Jan Brewer made it a crime for an immigrant to be without carrying their documents, further requiring local police to determine a person's immigration status if they had "reasonable suspicion" they were not in the country legally, and imposing sanctions on those transporting "unregistered aliens," even if they were family.
Just 24 hours before SB-1070 went into effect, a judge ordered the suspension of the law's most controversial clauses.
State Anti-Immigrant Laws are Unconstitutional
Today, the North Carolina General Assembly wants to ignore history and continues to push a bill that seeks to compel local law enforcement agencies to collaborate with Immigration.
Immigration is a federal matter. States do not have the authority to create their own immigration policies. These anti-immigrant laws laws are harmful to the economy, prone to racial discrimination, and detrimental to relations between law enforcement and the community. It is reprehensible that politicians, knowing this, continue to sow fear to garner a few votes.