By Janice S. Ellis, Ph.D., Kansas City, MO –

The new immigration law in Alabama begs for a national solution.While some elements of the brand-new Immigration Law passed by the State of Alabama, if enacted, have effects that are troubling, could it be the pattern for the national laws that the President and Congress should pass?

No matter which side of the immigration matter you find yourself, the alternative may have benefits and losses for all involved. This is not an instance of the good guys vs. the bad guys. Companies, the government, and the illegal immigrants share the blame in where we find ourselves today.

More than eleven million undocumented immigrants live and work in America, with more coming across our boundaries daily; many companies, knowingly, use them at lower wages to improve their profit margins; and the government is lax on applying laws already on the books to stem the tide.

Turning a blind eye and doing business as usual with eyes wide shut is eventually coming home to roost. The dilemma is not going to always be dismissed. The Alabama law all but guarantees it.

The Alabama law, if applied, will eventually get this dilemma out from the eternal holding pattern it has been in for decades. The law covers most of the major problems that federal legislation must address.

The law, as well as detaining immigrants who cannot provide proof of citizenship, penalizes any person, company, or association that intentionally transports, hires, houses, or instructs undocumented immigrants.

You can find concerns about how this law will be performed. Among them, law enforcement agencies can stop and detain someone they suspect of being in the country illegally until documentation that is appropriate is produced by them. Along with the very real problem of racial profiling, what will occur with those detainees who are here illegally? Imported? Deterred in some kind of camp or makeshift prison?

Another important concern is the kids; they have zero say in the decision to come here or to be born here to parents that are illegal. While they are currently getting a secondary education they cannot go to college or apply for work because they cannot get a social security card. Some of these kids may not be able to get an education at all..

Alabama really isn’t the first state to take the issue into its own hands. There was Arizona, now Alabama, and followed by Georgia, Utah, Indiana. (The Supreme Court recently upheld the element which penalizes companies for hiring illegal immigrants.) What is to stop other states from accelerating passage of similar legislation?

But the Alabama law, the nation’s toughest to date, yells that it’s time for Congress and the President to pass federal legislation to manage the long-standing immigration problem of Mexicans entering the country illegally. With each state taking the issue into its own hands, there’s the great potential of creating human rights breaches, strife, divisiveness, and atrocities, throwbacks to chapters in our history that we would do well to keep closed.

What’s the national policy for addressing the eleven million undocumented immigrants? And, what will be done to stop the inflow of new ones?

As harsh as it may appear, this is a wake-up call to the country and to the federal government that the problem can no longer be evaded .

A state has determined how it’s going to deal with illegal immigration. Will the Alabama law become the model?

Edited and Reprinted with Permission of USAonRace.com