Under Alabama’s harmful immigration law, applicants for professional licenses have to prove that they are either a citizen or living in the U.S. legally. In order to verify a person’s status, non-U.S. residents have to be cleared through the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database. State officials have asked the federal government to let the state use SAVE more widely, but federal officials have not responded and only a few of the professional licensing boards are even close to being able to use the system.

As a result, nurses and other professionals who must be licensed have to prove that they are legal residents are stuck in limbo:

Nursing board director Genell Lee said she applied for SAVE approval in October 2011, and got a letter earlier this month saying the board had been approved to use the system.

She said there’s still some paperwork to be done before the state can use the system. While she waits, Lee said, she’s been holding on to foreign nurses’ license applications.

“I’ve got a couple of applications from nurses who aren’t citizens,” she said. “I’m not permitted by law to determine whether they’re legal, so I’m waiting for SAVE.”

She said those nurses are working in other states now.

“But they want to work here,” she said.

In Georgia, applicants for professional licenses are trapped in a paperwork nightmare as well. The state’s immigration law has a similar provision to Alabama’s anti-immigrant measure that requires that anyone in Georgia who is applying for or renewing a professional license to prove they are in the U.S. legally. As a result, applications are delayed for weeks or months instead of days.

When Judge Sharon Blackburn ruled last year that a controversial provision in Alabama’s immigration law requiring schools to check the immigration status of newly enrolled students could go into effect, schools immediately saw some Latino students staying home from school or withdrawing out of fear that their families could be deported if they were questioned about their immigration status at school.

About two weeks later, the 11th Circuit temporarily overruled Blackburn’s original decision and stopped schools from asking about the immigration status of new students. And when the appeals court gave its final ruling on Alabama’s HB 56, it struck down most of the harmful immigration law, including the schools provision. Even though the state’s attack on school children was only in effect for two weeks, Justice Department officials reported that over 13 percent of Hispanic children left school in the school year during which the law was briefly in effect.

But a year later and into a new school year, some Alabama school districts are seeing more Latino students. Although the Alabama Department of Education’s full numbers on Latino enrollment across the state will not be available until late October, early signs suggest the court orders blocking the law succeeded in reversing some of its impact on Latino students:

“When the law was first passed, we didn’t know what to expect,” said Jeff Goodwin, superintendent of the Oxford school system. “We lost 10 or 12 after the first week, but then they came back.”

According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the Oxford school district has more Hispanic students than any other local school system, and has seen the largest increase in Hispanic residents in the last 10 years. Oxford’s numbers show the school system currently has 336 Hispanic students, an increase from the 324 enrolled in 2011. . . . . The Anniston school system had a slight increase to 40 Hispanic students this year from 32 in the previous year. According to the Census, Anniston’s Hispanic population dropped to 216 from 409 in the last 10 years.

The Calhoun County school system has also seen an increase in Hispanic student enrollment – with 230 Hispanic students this year compared to 215 the previous year.

The fact that schools in Calhoun County are seeing an increasing number of Latino students suggests that the court orders worked. The courts appear to have stopped a discriminatory law from further damaging the state of Alabama, and as a result, immigrant children do not have to be scared of going to school.

It has been one year since Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley signed HB 56, the nation’s most harmful immigration measure, into law. He praised the bill after signing it on June 9, 2011, calling it the “toughest bill in the country.”

Shortly after some of immigration provisions went into effect in September, the widespread damage from the law was obvious. By December, even Bentley admitted that HB 56 “need[s] revision,” although it would be months before lawmakers took action. Courts temporarily blocked parts of HB 56, but not before students were too scared to go to school and families were denied utilities:

• Attack On School Children: Politicians readily admitted that the goal of HB 56 was to make Alabama a hostile place for undocumented immigrants, but as a result, families have fled the state out of fear, leaving schools with high absenteeism rates among Hispanic students. HB 56 required schools only to check the immigration status of all newly enrolled students, and 13 percent of Latino students dropped out by February, likely out of fear.
• Families Denied Water, Food Stamps: Because of a provision of the immigration law preventing contracts between the state and undocumented immigrants, public utility companies have denied service to anyone who cannot prove they are a citizen or legally in the United States, effectively making it a felony for undocumented immigrants to take a bath in their own homes. No other state or developed nation has a ban this extreme on contracting with undocumented immigrants. Beyond public utilities, this “business transaction” ban led some U.S.-born children to be denied food stamps simply because their parents were undocumented immigrants.
• Economic Damage: After families fled the state out of fear, farmers watched their crops rot without enough workers to help harvest, and some said they were at risk of losing their farms. And owners of poultry processing plants and catfish farms said they have lost workers and are having trouble replacing the workers who left. It’s estimated that HB 56 could cost Alabama as many as 100,000 jobs and billions in GDP losses, but the law’s author still said it has no “negative impact.”
• Embarrassing Arrests: HB 56 turned into a PR nightmare for the state when police arrested a German Mercedes Benz employee for not having the right documents when he was pulled over in November. The charges were later dropped, but almost two weeks later, police also arrested a Japanese Honda employee for being in violation of HB 56 while driving even though he reportedly had his passport and international driver’s license. Charges were later dropped as well.

During the 2012 legislative session, Alabama legislators finally had the opportunity to address these glaring issues. But instead of repealing HB 56 or even taking out the worst provisions, like asking school children about their immigration status, lawmakers doubled down and made the immigration law even worse. Undocumented immigrants are still barred from renting property, and law enforcement officials can still check immigration status based on a “reasonable suspicion.”

Briefly, Alabama’s governor stood up to the anti-immigrant supporters of HB 56 and threatened to veto the proposed changes if they did not take out the requirement that schools check immigration status. But he eventually caved and signed the changes, which have one bright spot: legislators clarified what is a “business transaction” so that people are not blocked from having water in their homes.

Alabama did not learn the lessons of Arizona about the problems that result from these extreme immigration laws that do nothing but hurt the state. Now it’s serving as a lesson for other states who do not want to make the same mistake as Alabama’s lawmakers.

ThinkProgress has noted the hardly unsurprising fact that HB 56, Alabama’s draconian anti-immigrant law, has caused Hispanic children to be subjected to increased bullying in the state’s public schools, so it’s not a stretch to imagine that drop-out rates within Alabama’s Hispanic community have risen as students no longer feel welcome. It’s easy to see that the harsh enforcement of the HB 56 legislation is inappropriate in an educational setting; in fact, members of the Birmingham Board of Education passed a resolution last year to oppose HB 56 for this very reason.

Last week, a U.S. Justice Department official added to the mounting criticism of HB 56, saying the harsh legislation has already had “lasting” negative effects on the state’s Hispanic students. Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez, head of the federal department’s Civil Rights Division, addressed a strongly-worded letter to Alabama’s education department on HB 56′s consequences for school children:

Hispanic students absence rates tripled while absence rates for other groups of students remained virtually flat. [...] The rate of total withdrawals of Hispanic children substantially increased, with 13.4% of such children having dropped out between the beginning of the current school year and this February.

As Perez goes on to point out, the Constitution guarantees immigrant students’ right to an education — and even on top of that, nearly 99% of all of Alabama’s K-12 public school students are, in fact, U.S. citizens. After conducting interviews with students, parents, and teachers in the state’s public school districts, the DOJ official has determined that many school children of Hispanic origin feel “unwelcome in schools they had attended for years” regardless of their immigration status.

Just as Perez makes clear, the harmful HB 56 legislation has already begun to do its damage. In order to prevent even more negative effects on Alabama’s children — both immigrants and U.S. citizens — it has to go immediately.

The harm from Alabama’s extreme anti-immigrant law has been obvious for months: children denied benefits and scared away from school, families denied water in their homes, crops left to rot without enough workers. The clear damage from HB 56 should have spurred officials in Alabama to work to change the far-reaching immigration enforcement provisions soon after the law went into effect last fall. Lawmakers in the Alabama House and Senate opened the legislative session in February by proposing changes to HB 56, to no avail.

Now, months after they should have acted, Alabama legislators finally introduced a rewrite of HB 56 to address the immigration bill’s severe flaws — only to add another provision that makes the bill even worse:

Long-promised revisions to the state’s controversial immigration law were filed Thursday afternoon, with one significantly expanding provisions allowing officers to detain those they have “reasonable suspicion” of being in the country unlawfully.

Under the current law, police could apply “reasonable suspicion” to the individual arrested or cited during a traffic stop. The new bill would allow law enforcement to detain anyone else in the vehicle.

Police would only be able to ask about a person’s immigration status during traffic citations or arrests instead of at any stop, but this is still an invasive addition to the law to allow police to question anyone in a car, not just the driver. Todd Stacy, spokesman for House Speaker Mike Hubbard (R), said law enforcement officials requested the expanded interpretation of “reasonable suspicion.”

To be fair, the rewrite of HB 56 also revises two of the most troublesome provisions of the original law. The rewrite changes a “business transactions” provision that had been used to prevent people who could not prove their legal status from receiving utilities like water and gas. Under the revised bill, people will only be asked to prove their citizenship when applying for a car tag, business license, or driver’s license. The changes also eliminate a provision that required schools to collect enrolling students’ immigration status, which had scared children into not going to school when the law first went into effect.

But taking out the worst of the enforcement measures in HB 56 — provisions that courts have already suspended — does not change the damage the state has already seen because of HB 56. One study estimates that Alabama could lose more than 100,000 jobs and billions in GDP because of the immigration law.

Despite the problems, Republican officials yesterday emphasized that the tweaks would not change the purpose of HB 56. “The essence of the law will not change: Anyone living and working in Alabama must be here legally,” Gov. Robert Bentley (R) said. And Hubbard scoffed at the idea of removing such a harmful law from the books entirely. “Some activist groups don’t have a problem with illegal immigration and will only be happy if the law is repealed,” he said. “That’s not going to happen.”

HB 56 is hurting the state’s residents as well as its image to the rest of the world. Fully repealing the bill would be the best option — several lawmakers introduced a bill to do just that — and taking out some of the most harmful provisions helps. But adding another layer to HB 56 that puts more people at risk of being profiled is a big step backwards.

The Mississippi House passed an anti-immigrant bill on Thursday, putting the state one step closer to having a controversial, Alabama-style immigration policy. Gov. Phil Bryant (R) has endorsed this measure to deal with what he calls the nation’s “massive, uncontrolled” immigration policy,” and will likely sign it if the Senate passes it as well.

Lawmakers took out several controversial provisions before approving the bill 70-47, including one that required schools collect data on a new student’s immigration status and another that allowed officers to ask a person’s immigration status during a traffic stop. After HB 488 had failed at first, a Republican took out a provision that could have let public utilities refuse service to undocumented immigrants — a federal judge recently blocked the same policy in Alabama — so that legislators would approve it. And before debate had started, they stripped a clause that would have allowed police to arrest people for not carrying identification. But the changes were not enough for opponents of the bill, no matter how many times supporters insisted it was a good measure:

House Judiciary B Committee Chairman Andy Gipson, a Braxton Republican, denied opponents’ claims that the measure was racist or immoral, saying it was about enforcing the law. Gipson said he tried to craft a bill that would survive court challenges and allow charity toward migrants.

“It’s about the rule of law,” he told House members. “We want to say you’re welcome here, we just want you to follow the proper procedures, the proper protocols.”

Opponents warned families would be shattered by deportations and that the bill would reinforce outsiders’ stereotypes of Mississippi.

“If we pass this bill, it will set Mississippi back 60 years,” said Rep. Sonya Williams-Barnes, D-Gulfport. “Let us show America we are not the narrow-minded people they say we are.”

Williams-Barnes is right. No matter how many tweaks legislators make, this is still a bad, discriminatory policy that unfairly targets immigrants. Taking out the absolute worst provisions does not change the fact that this bill is designed to make the lives of undocumented immigrants unbearable in Mississippi so that they’ll leave. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Becky Currie (R), has said the goal of the immigration policy is to ensure that all workers are legal, but she clearly has not learned from Alabama’s mistake.

By making the state hostile to immigrants, Alabama is facing billions in economic losses and thousands of jobs gone. Farmers lost their crops without enough workers, and families have suffered greatly.

If the Mississippi Senate does not pass this immigration bill, then the state has a chance to avoid Alabama’s fate. Because as one immigration advocate asked, “Can Mississippi afford such a law?” The state should not have to learn the answer.

Previously, the Eleventh Circuit court of appeals blocked several parts of Alabama’s immigration law, including a provision requiring teachers or principals to determine the immigration status of their students. Today, a Federal appeals court blocked two more sections of the law, known as H.B. 56:

A federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily blocked two sections of Alabama’s tough new law targeting illegal immigration pending the outcome of legal challenges.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order blocking a section that says courts can’t enforce contracts involving illegal immigrants and another that makes it a felony for an illegal immigrant to do business with the state.

Alabama’s law was challenged last year by both the federal government and a coalition of activist groups, and the cases have been appealed to the 11th Circuit. A three-judge panel in that court heard arguments in the case last week but said it won’t rule on the challenges to Alabama’s law and another in Georgia until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a federal challenge to a similar law in Arizona.

As defined in Alabama’s law, denial of business transactions with undocumented immigrants meant that families could not get water in their homes, and they were not even allowed to do something as simple as get a library card. Even children who were U.S. citizens were unable to get food stamps,

The same provisions could have made it so that it would have been illegal to rent to an undocumented immigrant. No other state or nation has a ban like Alabama’s against contracts.

In an interview with the AP, Sam Brooke from the Southern Poverty Law Center, who argued before the court last week, said “We are very pleased that the Eleventh Circuit understood the harms these provisions were causing in Alabama, and saw fit to enjoin them… This is a great day for the residents of our state.”

The order handed down today, which can be read in full here, is more wide-reaching than any previous court decision. And while Alabama has considered new legislation that would change H.B. 56, none has made it very far.

The Governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, has already acknowledged that the law “need[ed] revision.” But ThinkProgress has argued that the law should be repealed. This ruling proves even more how important repeal is.