It’s time to fix immigration

Opinion: August 2, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

By Glenn Hutchinson

McClatchy-Tribune

Immigration is dividing America.

Some states want to be the next Arizona, while others want to go in a very different direction.

In the South, the outlook is bleak for undocumented immigrants.

Alabama recently passed a law similar to Arizona’s SB 1070. Come Sept. 1, if you get stopped by the Alabama police and look “illegal,” you better have papers on you.

In Georgia, give a ride to an undocumented immigrant and you could get a $1,000 fine and jail time.

South Carolina has banned all undocumented students from its universities, while North Carolina is considering passing a law like Alabama’s that requires all children to show birth certificates before they can go to elementary school.

Other states are taking quite another path.

New York and Illinois have stopped their participation in the controversial deportation program, Secure Communities.

In-state tuition

Maryland has joined California and Washington and eight others to become the 11th state to give undocumented students in-state tuition.

So an undocumented immigrant can get in-state tuition in Baltimore, but can’t even get through the classroom door in Charleston, S.C.

These differences show how complex the issue really is.

The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear a case that challenged in-state tuition for undocumented students in California. But the court ruled in favor of an Arizona law requiring employers to use the E-verify system to check the citizenship status of employees.

Congress needs to unify our country and pass meaningful immigration reform. We need to stop such inconsistencies in our laws.

Our same federal government that puts an undocumented college student, Jessica Colotl, in a detention center for 37 days also issues tax ID numbers so undocumented immigrants can pay taxes.

It’s up to us as a nation to unify and reform a broken system.

Glenn Hutchinson teaches writing at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., and volunteers with Center for New Community. He wrote this for Progressive Media Project, a source of liberal commentary on domestic and international issues; it is affiliated with The Progressive magazine. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.