Gary Palmer and Cameron Smith: Immigration: Feds fail and Alabama acts

  Recently Alabama enacted an immigration law characterized as "Arizona-style," "tough," and even "troubling" by political pundits and interested stakeholders. Unfortunately the most radical aspect of many of the recently passed state immigration laws, including Alabama's, is not their content but rather that they seek to enforce immigration laws in the first place.

  Enforcement of our federal immigration law has been so weak for so long that most people do not realize that many of the "novel" provisions of Alabama's law have been on the federal books for years. Lost in the many inflammatory critiques of the state's new immigration law is that it mostly mirrors existing provisions in Title 8 of the United States Code.