Blog of Rights

Jonathan
Blazer
As Advocacy and Policy Counsel, Jonathan Blazer tracks developments in state and local measures concerning immigrants and supports the legislative advocacy efforts of ACLU staff across the country. For seven years prior to joining ACLU Jon worked with the National Immigration Law Center as a Policy Attorney and Project Manager. He was the national coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s immigrant rights initiative. He also worked for six years as a legal services attorney in Philadelphia, where he specialized in public benefits law and founded the Language Access Project of Community Legal Services. Jon graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in Politics and holds a M.A. in Political Science from the University of Toronto and a J.D. from Stanford Law School. He is based in San Francisco and works for ACLU’s national Affiliate Support and Advocacy Department.

Bentley’s Buckling on Immigration Bill Sinks Alabama into Deeper Morass

By Jonathan Blazer, ACLU at 2:37pm

How long does it take a governor to flip flop and buckle under pressure from Tea Partiers? About a day, if you’re Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.

On Friday, he signed a bill making flawed revisions to HB 56, the nation’s most extreme anti-immigrant state law. Just a day earlier, Bentley had declined to sign the new measure, which was rammed through the Legislature on the last day of its 2012 regular session. Instead, he summoned lawmakers to reconsider the bill in a special session in order to “prevent children from being interrogated” by school officials about their immigration status and the status of their parents. He also cautioned against the “public relations problem” that would ensue from a startling new requirement that the state Department of Homeland Security post online the names of every undocumented immigrant who appears in a state court.

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