Voters will have chance to toss out Florida's obsolete 'alien land law'
Discriminatory ban was never put into practice
By Josh Hafenbrack | South Florida Sun-Sentinel
September 15, 2008
TALLAHASSEE - Florida is the last state in the nation still to have a constitution marked with one remnant of the Jim Crow era: a rule allowing legislators to ban Asian immigrants from owning land.
This November, voters have a chance to remove the so-called "alien land law" of 1926 from Florida's Constitution. That would complete a nationwide purging of the rules once in force in more than a dozen states.
"What it does is eliminate the unfortunate vestiges of racial discrimination," said Sen. Steve Geller, D-Cooper City, who persuaded legislators to put it on the fall ballot after years of lobbying his colleagues.
The timing is symbolic: Voters will consider Amendment 1 in the shadow of the first Olympic Games held in China. Sixty percent must vote "yes" on Nov. 4 for Florida's alien land law to be removed.
Passage is not certain. In New Mexico, a similar law had to be placed on the ballot twice before voters threw it out in 2006. That left Florida as the last state with the measure on its books.
Holding the vote so close to the conclusion of the successful Beijing Olympics is a "double-edged sword," said Jack Chin, a professor at the University of Arizona who ran the Alien Land Law Project to draw attention to the issue.
"The Olympics does raise the same kind of issues, of competition and fear," Chin said, citing the reasons alien land laws were first established.
The laws cropped up amid fear that Asian immigrants, primarily those from Japan, would work for less than Americans on farms in the West and buy up vast stores of land. California was the first to adopt the policy, in 1913.
The wave spread east, and in Florida the state constitution was amended to allow the Legislature to regulate or ban property ownership by foreigners ineligible for citizenship — a standard aimed at Asians. At the time, a former Florida Senate president, James E. Calkins, cited the California law and said it was wise to plan for "future contingencies."
But Florida legislators never invoked the authority; the ban was never put into practice.
Today, analysts agree, Florida's alien land law is obsolete in light of federal court rulings and equal-protection laws.
"It doesn't look right for Florida in the 21st century to still have this kind of language," said Winnie Tang, who leads the South Florida chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
Overshadowing the issue, though, are the presidential election, several key state and local races and a hot-button gay marriage amendment. Geller said his main fear is that at the ballot box, voters would know little about Amendment 1 and be wary of it in light of controversies over illegal immigration and terrorism.
"I am concerned it will fail, just because I'm afraid it's so arcane that a lot of people may not realize what it actually does," he said.
