Holding GOP Lawmakers Accountable for Supporting Licenses for Illegals

Holding GOP Lawmakers Accountable for Supporting Licenses for Illegals

by William Gheen
Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC)
www.alipac.us

In response to Representatives Charles Jeter's and Bill Brawley's efforts to distance themselves from our release of their names on a list of 12 lawmakers supporting licenses for illegals in North Carolina, it was our national organization Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC) that released a list of 12 known GOP lawmakers helping HB 328 to move forward in our legislature that contained both of their names. We stand by that list.

Our national organization opposes licenses or "restricted permits" for illegals because it sends the wrong message to illegal immigrants. Each state or town that has offered such privileges has attracted more illegals to that state or city!

Representatives Jeter and Brawley will remain on our list of GOP state lawmakers that we want to see strong primary challengers run against in 2016 because any Republican caught supporting licenses for illegals in any way can be removed from office quite handily.

After the NC House Finance Committee met to debate Representative Harry Warren's driving permits/licenses for illegal aliens bill HB 328 on June 2, 2015, our volunteer team at ALIPAC.us went to work dissecting the video capture we had commissioned to determine which lawmakers opposed or supported licenses for illegals.

Representative John Blust tried to speak out for the 77-83% of Americans who, according to Rasmussen polling, oppose taxpayer benefits and licenses for those unlawfully in our states by submitting an amendment to remove section VI of HB 328 which contains the licenses for illegals provision!

The Blust amendment failed to strike out that section when 11 GOP lawmakers voted with all of the Democrats on the committee to kill the Blust amendment! We were able to determine which lawmakers voted to preserve the licenses for illegals in HB 328 from the video, which we have combined with interviews of lawmakers who oppose the bill.

These are the eleven GOP lawmakers who voted in support of licenses for illegal aliens in the June 2 meeting: Representatives Charles Jeter, Paul Stam, Jay Adams, Bob Steinberg, Susan Martin, and Nelson Dollar voted with all the Democrats to further the licenses for illegals legislation. Then we added the bill sponsors Harry Warren, Brian Brown, Jeff Collins, Jonathan Jordan, and Larry Yarborough to complete our list of 11 GOP lawmakers supporting HB 328 in the NC House!

We were very thankful when we saw part of our list of Republicans backing licenses for illegals appear in the Daily Haymaker just before the NC GOP Convention in Raleigh. This partial list of 8 names was released by our allied organizations NC Listen and NCFIRE before the research was completed.

We decided to launch the resolution to censure these GOP lawmakers after one of our researchers discovered that GOP lawmakers supporting permits for illegal aliens are directly violating the 2014 NC GOP Platform that states in Article V, Section 7, “We support the issuance of a driver’s license or state identification card only to those who are lawfully present.” In the 2015 Platform, this is found in Article V, Section 6.

Several volunteers worked with me at the NC GOP convention in Raleigh to hand out 2,000 copies of our Resolution to Censure 11 Republican Representatives for Voting in Opposition to the NC GOP Platform (click to view).

We added Representative Bill Brawley to the list we have dubbed the "Dirty Dozen," currently on display on the alipac.us homepage, because he is the chairman of the Finance Committee who supports this bill, and who scheduled the bill for a final hearing when the bill should have stayed buried in legislative limbo.

The other co-chair of the House Finance committee Representative Jason Saine opposes this bill and probably would have let it die without coming back to committee, but Brawley brought it back knowing a narrow band of Republicans would help the Democrats pass it! At this moment, our only hope to stop HB 328 from passing the NC House is to generate enough public pressure that lawmakers fear the backlash enough to keep HB 328 buried in limbo instead of reaching the House floor where they have to go solidly on the record showing which of those Republicans will vote with all the Democrats to pass it!

After sharing an elevator up to room 544 in the Legislative Office Building on the morning HB 328 passed the Finance committee, as I exited the lift, in front of me I saw Representative Bill Brawley enthusiastically shake the hand of a Hispanic man there to support the bill and tell him, "You are getting your vote today!" Then Brawley took to the podium and immediately announced it was the intention of the chair to vote on HB 328 that day. Later in the meeting, the bill's sponsor Rep. Harry Warren identified the man Rep. Brawley had congratulated as an illegal alien that owns a landscaping business that had been lobbying for passage of HB 328!

Both Representatives Brawley and Jeter are playing games with the public. They hope to help HB 328 progress towards the governor's desk on behalf of the NC Chamber of Commerce, NC Farm Bureau, and Mexican consulate that are supporting this bill, but then cast votes to provide them with cover.

Representative Jeter voted against the Blust amendment and thus voted for licenses for illegals but then voted against the bill upon final passage so he can honestly say he voted against the same bill he helped advance with the illegal alien license provision intact.

Representative Brawley raised his hand to vote for the Blust amendment to remove the illegal alien license provision but then when he had a chance to kill the bill by not scheduling it for a vote he rolled it out for a vote and congratulated the illegal immigrant faction on the way in the door!

We need qualified GOP primary challengers in 2016 for each lawmaker on the Dirty Dozen list of 12 GOP Representatives we have documented supporting licenses for illegals in our state as they are out of line with approximately 90% of their Republican constituents! We also need to send a clear message to Representatives like Brawley and Jeter that we are going to hold accountable in 2016 each and every lawmaker who helps HB 328 progress towards being signed into law in any way.

Representatives Brawley and Jeter both played a role in getting licenses for illegal immigrants legislation through the Finance committee and potentially heading to the NC House floor, so while they are free to try to explain that away, we are leaving them on our targeting list for removal from office in the next elections where we hope to elect Republicans that we won't have to worry about supporting illegal aliens and those who employ them.