Alabama Goes To The UN

Alabama’s toughest-in-the-nation immigration law faces the combined forces of union and civil rights groups which have now taken the issue to the UN.

A complaint filed with the with the United Nation’s International Labor Organization alleges that Alabama law violates international norms stating that workers and trade unions are being harmed by the law and the U.S. government’s inability to come up with a national immigration policy.

The complaint alleges that those provisions jeopardize the ability of workers to form and join trade unions and prevents people from knowingly transporting illegal immigrants and prohibits courts from upholding contracts made with them.

Labor and Latino rights groups are also traveling overseas to shareholder meetings of auto makers with Alabama plants.  Planning to meet Daimler’s on Wednesday in Germany, they have already met with Hyundai’s shareholders in February.

A group of activists and labor representatives also took their protest of Alabama’s strict new immigration law to South Korea, visiting the shareholder meeting of Hyundai Motors Co.  Several major international automakers have established plants in Alabama.

A point of interest is that there are several celebrity and previously undocumented immigrants, including Salma Hayek.  “I was an illegal immigrant in the United States,” the now-leading lady told V Magazine Spain during an interview. “It was for a small period of time, but I still did it.”

In a presentation before Hyundai’s shareholders, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights president Wade Henderson, asked them and top management to pressure the state of Alabama to cease enforcement of and repeal the immigration law.