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Rules could infringe on basic civil rights in Tennessee

January 11th, 2009
by VJ News

Immigrants, whether they are in the United States legally or illegally, cannot rest easily in Tennessee.

For that matter, people who are natives of the U.S. and whose skin happens to be brown also have reason to be nervous.

That is because the trend of resentment over the steadily growing immigrant population here has gone beyond the intolerance of individuals and threatens to become ingrained in our state and local legal codes.

Government-sponsored racism is an ugly thing.

The signs of this alarming trend, of course, include the well-publicized effort to limit all Metro Nashville communications and publications to English. But other instances have emerged, as well. As reported in The Tennessean earlier this month, a legal permanent U.S. resident who lives in Franklin saw his state ID and green card confiscated at a driver’s license office on unfounded suspicion that the documents were fake. The state Safety Department’s explanation that it is agency policy to investigate “suspicious” documents was sorely lacking.

In Davidson County, a U.S. citizen from Puerto Rico and her immigrant fiance were denied a marriage license simply because the fiance could not produce a Social Security card. Even though state policy was for county clerks to accept a valid passport or visa in the absence of a Social Security card, and the fiance had a valid passport, the couple was denied.

The Franklin man eventually got back his documents, but in the interim had to fear leaving his house without documents and was unable to visit family in Mexico. The couple had to sue the state of Tennessee, and eventually the state attorney general agreed that the marriage-license policy was unfair.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, January 11th, 2009 at 5:30 am and is filed under Family Immigration, General Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.