Facts on illegal immigration for Georgia’s political campaign season

Facts on illegal immigration for Georgia’s political campaign season

macon.com
By D.A. KING — Special to The Telegraph
Posted: 12:00am on May 4, 2012

Some illegal immigration facts for Georgia’s political campaign season. In the Republican-controlled state Capitol, the Georgia General Assembly that ended March 29 was the first legislative session since 2004 in which no illegal immigration legislation was passed.

This less than a week after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security released an annual report on illegal aliens living in the U.S. and which states contain the most illegals. Georgia officially ranks number six nationwide and suffers more illegal alien fugitives than Arizona.

Georgia unemployment hovers around 9 percent. The conservative estimate is that 7 percent of Georgia’s work force consists of black-market labor. English is an optional language.

At least one dual language Communist Party banner (“We don’t have an immigration problem, we have a capitalism problem”) was openly displayed at the recent May Day organized by the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights rally on the Capitol steps demanding an end to any enforcement of American immigration laws. That fact went unreported by any media outlet. But several Democrat state legislators attended.

In 2010, candidate Nathan Deal repeatedly promised to “do everything possible” to keep illegal aliens out of publicly funded Georgia universities and tech schools. In 2012, Gov. Deal did nothing to fulfill that promise while two such bills expired in the session.

With the business lobby howling about state illegal immigration enforcement that is successfully driving black-market labor out of Georgia, voters should be asking why Deal didn’t mention his signing of the famous House Bill 87 in his January State of the State list of proud first-year accomplishments.

An extremely important piece of legislation, Senate Bill 458, incorporated a ban on illegals in the university system with some badly needed corrections to existing state law regarding the way numerous official agencies administer public benefits and collect officially recognized identification.

The corrections would have made life much easier for literally every legally present Georgia resident and for numerous official agencies, including virtually all of Georgia’s municipalities and counties, the Department of Driver Services and the Secretary of State’s office.

The bill had the votes to easily pass -- but because of the silence from the governor’s office and the refusal of House leadership to allow a floor vote on SB 458, it is as dead as Pancho Villa. When asked “why” SB 458 was not called for a floor vote, House legislators continually expressed their amazement and make it clear no one seems to know.

It is even more of a mystery considering Speaker David Ralston was integral in passage of last year’s HB 87 by standing up to the lieutenant governor, who was adamantly opposed to the job saving E-Verify mandate now in state law.

SB 458 also brought forward an urgent public safety, no-brainer issue the now campaigning legislators would do well to remember: The official acceptance of what can only be described as “undocumented foreign passports” as verification of lawful presence in the United States.

Currently, illegal aliens who escape capture at our borders and make it to Georgia simply go to their home nation’s Atlanta consulate and obtain a passport. These issued after-you-arrive-passports do not contain the federally issued documents and stamps proving lawful, inspected entrance through an official border port of entry or the date the alien is supposed to go home.

Lacking these U.S. documents is proof that the bearer is here illegally -- the opposite of the intent of the law.

Expect undocumented passports to be an unavoidable issue on which candidates for election -- and re-election -- would do well to have an educated position.

An amusing note: Considering the ongoing, inflammatory and shameless race-baiting struggle by the illegal alien lobby to stop the use of the legally correct and far-too-accurate term “illegal alien” to describe illegal aliens.

Pro-enforcement Americans are finding it quite difficult to disguise their knowing smiles of vindication at the fact that in April, at the one-hour-twenty-minute Supreme Court hearing on the Obama/Mexico/ACLU suit against Arizona’s 2010 illegal immigration/public safety law, the term “illegal alien” was used 11 times.

Each time by a justice. Seven times from the self-described “wise Latina” Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

D.A. King of Marietta is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society and a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration.

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