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In Georgia, Immigration Is No Peach

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This week, Enrique Lopez watched his own city become ground zero in the battle over immigration in the United States. The 39-year-old owns a small grocery store in Atlanta, called Carniceria Durango. As debates over immigration policy raged in his state and in Washington, he saw students protesting in the streets of Atlanta and Hispanics staying home from work to demonstrate their importance to the local economy. Lopez, who grew up in Mexico and was once an illegal immigrant himself, closed his store and gave his employees a paid day off. "It was hard, you lose revenue," he says.

While immigration has proven to be a volatile issue nationally, there may be no place where it's as polarizing as Georgia. On one side is a large and relatively well-off community of immigrants like Lopez. Their success and rising demand for more workers has made Georgia one of the top new destinations for immigrants, particularly Hispanics.

On the other side are state politicians, who are just beginning to wrestle with the challenges that California and Texas have been dealing with for years. They, and many of their constituents, worry that the influx of new people will drain the state's resources, for everything from education to unemployment benefits.

"COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH." The debate is coming to a head now because of a disconnect between Washington and state capitols like Atlanta. As the U.S. Senate is poised to consider a new immigration bill that would allow the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants the opportunity to win citizenship and create a broad temporary-worker program, many state politicians are moving the opposite direction.

Fearful of the potential problems from growing illegal-immigrant populations, they're taking immigration issues into their own hands. Among the 368 immigration-related bills that are pending in 42 states, Georgia's proposed Security & Immigration Compliance Act is perhaps the toughest and most prohibitive.

"We wanted to take a comprehensive approach," says Republican Senator and former talk-show host Chip Rogers, who initially proposed the legislation. "We were concerned about social benefits, safety issues, and employment issues," he said during a short break in the legislative session in Atlanta on Tuesday evening, after the state House of Representatives passed the version of the bill adopted by the state Senate on Monday. "I think we accomplished that by passing the most comprehensive immigration bill of any state."

SCARE TACTIC? The bill won't become law until it's signed by Governor Sonny Perdue, a step that he is expected to take. Yet it has already divided the state. There were demonstrations on Mar. 24, and the organizers plan more for April. Some state lawmakers are appalled at how punitive the proposed legislation is, for both employers and the illegal immigrants themselves.

"Any time a state tries to compensate for a failure of the federal government, you get into trouble," says Sam Zamarripa, a Democratic Senator from Atlanta, who voted against the bill. "The most dramatic impact of this law is that it's scaring people in the Hispanic community," he adds.

The proposed law would require employers to maintain valid employment authorization documents for employees in order to claim a tax deduction for wages. It also demands that they verify the legal status of employees through a federal work authorization program if the business holds contracts with state or local agencies.

TAX SOURCE. Similarly, state agencies would be required to verify the immigration status of applicants before doling out benefits such as unemployment or Medicaid, although there are exceptions for emergency medical treatment and disaster relief, among others. A proposed 5% surcharge on out-of-country wire transfers for those who couldn't prove valid citizenship status got eliminated from the legislation, but in its place, lawmakers substituted a 6% withholding of wages for contract workers without a valid taxpayer identification or social security number.

Lopez argues that the law may simply be counterproductive. He understands the struggles of illegal immigrants intimately. He grew up in Durango, Mexico, and entered the U. S. in 1981. He became an American citizen in 1986, when Congress passed the Reagan Administration's Immigration Reform & Control Act. He points out that many illegals don't pay taxes out of fear of drawing attention to their immigration status. "The way to get rid of that is to legalize people," he says. Eventually, others would be able to start businesses and help the local economy by paying taxes and offering jobs.

In his grocery store, which caters to Hispanics, Lopez often hears customers complain about how they're perceived as outcasts by their non-Hispanic neighbors. But he also acknowledges some of the problems undocumented workers bring with them. "We got our good apples and our bad apples," Lopez says, pointing out that just like other cultures and communities, there are those that commit crimes or dodge taxes.

HISPANIC ATTRACTION. Even before the Georgia law was proposed, Governor Perdue felt that illegal immigration had become a problem for his state. According to his press secretary, Heather Hedrick, although Perdue continues to believe that immigration control should remain a federal responsibility, states still must closely guard eligibility for state-sponsored benefits. "People who are ineligible should not receive state benefits," she says.

Perdue will have 40 days from the end of the legislative session, which finished on Mar. 30, to veto the bill or sign it into law. Senator Zamarripa has lobbied Perdue to delay signing the bill in hopes that the federal government will take action superceding the proposed reforms in Georgia.

Such measures would certainly have an impact on Georgia's economy. An estimated 200,000 to 250,000 illegal immigrants live in the state, according to a June, 2005, Pew Hispanic Center study. Although that isn't as high a percentage as in Texas or California, Georgia is considered one of the new destination states for Hispanics.

"UGLY MESSAGE"? According to a 2005 study at the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia's Terry College of Business, Georgia ranked tenth nationally in terms of Hispanic market size [$10.6 billion], and third by rate of growth [696%] of Hispanic buying power between 1990 and 2005, making the state perhaps the most attractive Hispanic market in the nation, due to the immigrants' exploding ranks and increasing wealth. Only North Carolina and Arkansas have higher growth rates in Hispanic buying power, and neither of those states is considering immigration bills related to state benefits, education, or employment, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Indeed, Hispanic advocacy groups say state laws such as the one pending in Georgia fail to solve the problems with the immigration system and only serve to polarize the issue. "It sends the wrong message and unleashes an environment of division and hate," says Clarissa Martinez, Director of State Policy for the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.

Sara Gonzalez, president & CEO of the Georgia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce echoes those thoughts: "This sends an ugly message. It targets Latinos, telling them they aren't welcome."

Still, the bill won't become law until signed by the Governor, and may be preempted by federal legislation. "This has been a wake-up call for the Hispanic community," says Gonzalez. And some good could come from the uproar: After detailing the problems she sees with Georgia's efforts at immigration reform, Martinez says, with some element of hope, "We might now see an opening for a civilized debate."