Alabama’s Imperiled Immigration Law Clogs Government Machinery
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Mobile County spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to comply with a law designed to drive illegal immigrants from Alabama. Kim Hastie, the first-term Republican license commissioner, had an up-close look at the crackdown’s political cost.
Customers clogged her office in the Gulf Coast city founded by French colonists in 1702. Locals demanded to know why they were treated like foreigners after having to prove their citizenship to register a car or license a dog. A World War II veteran shouted at a clerk. A widow wept.