Tennessee immigrants sue for their rights
A host of Tennessee Latinos have bee filing civil rights lawsuits against state and local governments claiming policies and actions are discriminating against legal immigrants, reports the Tennessean.
Three major lawsuits have been filed this year alone: one against the Tennessee Department of Safety over confiscating IDs, one against Metro government over a proposed English-only amendment, and one against the governor and Davidson County Clerk's Office over marriage licenses.
The Tennessean reports that observers and the plaintiffs say the suits are the strongest evidence so far of a social turning point for many immigrants -- a refusal to keep living anonymously and in fear. The article goes on to mention that measures such as Tennessee's new Illegal Alien Employment Act and Davidson County's 287(g) program -- which gives local deputies limited authority to enforce federal immigration law -- may drive immigrants to call the government on its promise of equal rights.
"This is our civil rights movement," lawyer Vanessa Saenz told the Tennessean. "I guess it's our turn now. What the blacks did in the '60s, I guess we are going to do in the 2000s." Saenz hired one of Nashville's best-known civil rights lawyers, George Barrett, and filed suit against the Davidson County Clerk's Office for denying marriage licenses to those who could not provide Social Security cards. Saenz and her lawyers argued that the policy was affecting the ability of Tennessee residents to exercise a constitutionally protected right.
Observers are wondering if these lawsuits are a sign a changing political consciousness among Latinos in Tennessee much as the 1990s-era California proposal that limited illegal immigrants' access to a number of public services -- later found unconstitutional -- galvanized Latino political participation and enhanced the sense of group concern.
