County addresses issues involving illegal aliens
By Vicki Simons | Special Columnist
Sunday, August 26, 2007

As a taxpayer advocate, I am intensely interested in the excessive burden and higher taxes on legal citizens resulting from the presence of illegal aliens in our nation, state and county, especially on the sectors of education, health care and law enforcement.

South Carolina has a crisis on its hands. Between 1990 and 2000, South Carolina experienced a 211 percent increase in Hispanic population, and between 2000 and 2004, South Carolina had the third-fastest Hispanic growth.

Georgia's strong state-level immigration law is working, as documented in the YouTube video titled Illegal Aliens Are Self-deporting from Georgia. Some illegal aliens leaving Georgia might be going back to Mexico, but chances are good that others are relocating to neighboring states such as South Carolina.

Because our federal and state lawmakers have not risen to the task of protecting South Carolinians with regard to immigration, the task has fallen to the counties to protect us. As you might know, Beaufort and Dorchester counties already have policies in place on this issue.

The laws of our nation allow nationals of other countries to become citizens of the United States. This process involves assimilation with our language and a willingness to abide by our laws.

For some weeks, a link to a brochure, written in Spanish, has been on the home page of the Aiken County Web site. I find this outrageous, because South Carolina state law specifies that English is the official state language, and it is utterly hypocritical for Aiken County Council to consider passing an ordinance that reads "English shall be the official language of Aiken County and all business shall be conducted in English," when the county's Web site features a document worded in another language.

Let us remove any and all magnets for illegal aliens from the Aiken County Web site immediately, especially when the "general requirements for administrative naturalization" include "an ability to read, write and speak English."

Aiken County needs in place a strong ordinance that will make English the official language of Aiken County, bar Aiken County from doing business with those who employ illegal aliens, and prevent taxpayer dollars from providing services to illegal aliens in any situation beyond that clearly shown to be life-threatening.

Vicki Simons is a founding member of the Aiken Taxpayers Association. This is a portion of a speech she made to Aiken County Council on Aug. 21 before it passed the second reading of an ordinance that would ban businesses which work with Aiken County from employing illegal immigrants and agencies receiving county funding from providing assistance to unauthorized aliens. The measure must come up for a third vote before it becomes an ordinance.

From the Sunday, August 26, 2007 edition of the Augusta Chronicle

http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/08 ... 0897.shtml