How not to make state immigration law

With a sad echo of Georgia, an Alabama lawmaker says he did not even think about the immigration law he voted for, and now has buyer's remorse.

"My bill is to correct those unintended consequences that is putting undue hardship on Alabama citizens." 

Senator Gerald Dial is leading the charge to change parts of the illegal immigration law.  

He says he didn't consider the long-term consequences of the law when he voted in favor of it and has introduced a bill to amend parts of it.

I wrote about this sort of thing last year, when the governor of Georgia said he needed to study the law after he had already signed it.

This is a trend that would be risible if it weren't so galling. These laws affect millions of people in a very direct way and received intense media scrutiny, and these lawmakers could not even bother to read them, much less ask questions about their probable impact?

To say these are "unintended consequences" is misleading. Perhaps they were unintended, but they were foreseen.

The lesson here is that if an immigration law comes up in your state, you should assume that the loudest proponents are likely the most ignorant of it.