http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13079280.htm

Posted on Fri, Nov. 04, 2005

Mayor says Mexico trip opened eyes on immigration


Associated Press

ATHENS, Ga. - Athens Mayor Heidi Davison says a University of Georgia-sponsored trip to Mexico has given her new empathy for Hispanic immigrants and a desire to lobby state and federal official to relax some immigration policies.

Davison, along with about 15 other Georgia local officials from areas with large or growing Hispanic populations, spent two weeks in and around Monterrey and Veracruz.

After seeing impoverished villages where nearly all the men are gone working in the United States, Davison said she came to the conclusion that "they are seeking a better life for their families, and specifically for their children. That's a natural human desire."

Elected officials and UGA professors met with Mexican government officials and toured small towns and rural villages last month to better understand why thousands of Mexicans come to Georgia each year.

"We came away with some pretty good ideas," said Gordon Maner, a public service assistant at UGA's Carl Vinson Institute of Government, who helped organized the trip.

Davison said she will work to ease restrictions on employing immigrants, and fight proposed state laws taking benefits away from undocumented aliens.

The Athens economy appears too dependent on the 6,000 to 12,000 Hispanic immigrants in Clarke County to bear such restrictions, she said.

Employment rules are complicated, but federal law generally requires that employers pay alien workers a wage on par with U.S. citizens, and the employer must often pay fees to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office, which Davison said can encourage employment of undocumented aliens who can be paid less under the table while avoiding the fees.

She said she will lobby Congress to expand the guest worker program, and wants to study in greater detail the impact of immigrants on the local economy.

Many Hispanic immigrants in Athens work in the poultry and landscaping industries, but reliable statistics are few and far between on state and national levels, let alone for local economies.

While the federal government controls who gets into the country, the state decides who gets what benefits, like driver's licenses, education, welfare and subsidized health insurance.

Several bills in the state legislature would take many of those benefits away from undocumented aliens, an idea Davison said she opposes.

"I don't think we should shut those services off," she said. "We need to continue to provide those services."