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Mitt Romney’s line on “self-deportation” got a laugh from the audience at a Florida debate last week, but as thousands in Alabama, Arizona and elsewhere know — there’s nothing funny about it. Self-deportation is Romney’s euphemism of choice for an enforcement strategy that attempts to make daily life intolerable for undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., turning the routine aspects of each day — attending school, driving a car, paying utility bills — into sites of monitoring, fear and profound suffering. And that’s the story NPR’s This American Life set out to tell last weekend with their feature on the attrition through enforcement strategy’s poster policy: Alabama’s HB 56. Reporter Jack Hitt speaks with families, community members, small business owners and local politicians as they struggle with the far-reaching consequences of the new law. Some of what you hear — such as Republican State Senator Gerald Dial’s remorse over signing the bill — might surprise you. The media blitz and non-stop punditry about immigration can often obscure the basic facts about laws like Alabama’s HB 56: they hurt people. Real people. Every day. That’s why it’s critical that we continue to tell the stories that we do — because self-deportation can’t be a punch line when there are real lives at stake. via twitter →

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