On April 21^st, 2011, Mississippi officials saw their bill on immigration fall to the wayside, but the debate that it sparked is far from over. Mississippi government officials proposed an immigration reform measure similar to the one that is currently in action in Alabama. Alabama is considered the state with the toughest immigration policy. They have declared that police are permitted to check for a person's immigration papers whenever they are confronted for any offense, and can be sent on the road to deportation if they are undocumented.

Mississippi's copy of the bill passed the State House of Representatives with a 70-47 vote, but did not make it through the Senate. If it had passed, the bill would have required police report all illegal aliens to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Any person arrested for a crime could be prosecuted for illegal immigration under this measure. The bill also stated that all undocumented immigrants could not apply for a driver's license or a business license. While some politicians were heartily behind the strict laws, others believed that the agricultural economy in the state would be gravely wounded by the bill.

One member of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association complains that a lot of fruit wouldn't get picked if all the illegal immigrants were incriminated and deported to their home countries. Immigration activists used a study by the University of Alabama to fight the new law. According to this university research project, Alabama has lost $2.3 billion since invoking its immigration law. The Mississippi farmers don't want to experience the same sort of loss when their workers flee the state to avoid prosecution. The state blueberry harvest is underway, and the farmers expect that they will harvest 5 million pounds of blueberries during this time. Farmers claim that they need the aid from illegal immigrants.

The Director of the Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Allegiance says that he doesn't want to the same mass exodus happen in Mississippi that has occurred in Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Employees in Alabama recently moved out of the state in frenzy when they discovered that employers were reporting them, and that police were watching them closely. The many immigrants in these states did not feel welcome at their jobs any more, and took off without any notice, leaving farmers severely short-handed.

According to Fox News, the immigration situation in Mississippi was the tea party's number one issue and priority for this year's session. Many Tea Party members had high hopes for the new immigration bill, and believed that it would help people to get the enforcement going and remove illegal workers from the state. One Tea Party spokesman told Fox news that the state would not even be enforcing new laws. Instead they would be simple enforcing the established federal laws. The Tea Party is already working on plans to create new illegal immigration bills the next year's legislative session. They also want to watch how Supreme Court handles Arizona's new immigration laws.

Recently, the United States Supreme Court heard a case against Arizona, when they looked to see if their law concerning illegal immigrants was Constitutional. While illegal immigrants are indeed, illegal, some states seem to think that it is unconstitutional to prosecute them. The Mississippi Immigrants' Rights Alliance says that they are happy that the legislators killed this Mississippi bill, but they know that next year's session will bring about similar bills. This activist group, along with others, is fighting to prevent a future retaliation against immigrants, and is trying to make sure that aliens in America receive hospitality. If you are a part of a current immigration case, then contact a local immigration attorney to help fight for you in court.