Frank Curiel (R), an organizer for the Laborers Union and the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, talks with Samuel Holguin, owner of the La Veracruzana market in Laurel, MS. Photo credit: David Bacon.

Courtesy The Nation magazine

by David Bacon
April 20, 2012

In early April, an anti-immigrant bill like those that swept through legislatures in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina was stopped cold in Mississippi. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Tea Party Republicans were confident they’d roll over any opposition. They’d brought Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State who co-authored Arizona’s …