Friday, June 09, 2017

Texas just lost a major convention because of the racist 'show me your papers' law

Rss@dailykos.com (gabe Ortiz) · Wednesday, June 07, 2017, 5:58 pm

Immigrant and civil rights advocates warned Texas Republicans to expect not just legal repercussions to the state’s racist “show me your papers” legislation, but economic blowback as well. Earlier today, a 15,000-strong legal organization became the first group to pull its convention from the state:

The American Immigration Lawyers Association was scheduled to hold its 3-day event in Grapevine next year, but said the bill’s “dangerous, destructive and counter productive proposals” go against the group’s mission. About 3,000 people were expected to attend the convention.

According to the Texas Tribune, because AILA’s Grapevine conference “was booked years ago,” the group “could face financial penalties for relocating … but the group chose to cancel the event anyway due to the new law,” an anti-sanctuary cities piece of legislation that, if unsuccessfully blocked by the courts, will force local law enforcement officers to become federal immigration agents.

“One of the issues that drove the board’s decision was concern on behalf of quite a number of our members that they might not be willing to bring themselves or their families to Texas,” AILA president Bill Stock told reporters during a conference call. “Our members are US citizens and green card holders but many of them come from ethnic communities where they felt that they [would] being unfairly targeted.”

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