Why hasn't Perdue signed immigration bill? Kinda makes you wonder
By D.A. King, Gwinnett Daily Post, April 7, 2006
Gov. Sonny Perdue has yet to sign the recently passed Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act.
Huh?
While we all ponder the few possible reasons for Perdue's delay in signing into law legislation that goes a long way toward making Georgia a less desirable place to employ - or be - an illegal alien, I am reminded of an old saying that I first heard from that old sausage maker, Jimmy Dean: "Most wounds are self-inflicted."
Considering that a recent Zogby/AJC poll showed that 82 percent of Georgia voters want state action on the illegal immigration crisis created by the president's refusal to secure American borders, one must wonder what the thinking is in the governor's office.
And how he will explain his hesitance to sign the bill while campaigning this summer?
Maybe he is still hoping that the feds will jump in and begin to do the job of securing our borders - and legalize the millions who it allowed to defiantly push the flag of Mexico in our face while demanding special "justice."
Maybe he wants us to believe that another amnesty like the one we tried in 1986 will somehow stop illegal immigration. It didn't then, and it won't now.
Until we find enough strong leaders in Washington, Georgia and the U.S. will always have an illegal immigration problem. The General Assembly-approved bill is only a foundation on which to build a state defense.
For those Georgians who may not have noticed, except for his public endorsement of a guest worker amnesty plan and perpetuating the nonsense that the illegal immigration crisis in Georgia is a "federal problem," Perdue has been decidedly silent on the issue that most will no longer ignore.
The bill is far and away the strongest state-level legislation of its kind in the nation. But that all of our elected officials in Washington demonstrated the courage of its author, state Sen. Chip Rogers.
Perdue can begin to heal his self-inflicted wound by signing the bill and listening to the voice of the voters who will remember in November.
Atlanta Latino, a local bilingual newspaper, quoted the governor's press secretary, Heather Hedrick, as saying that the governor's office received nearly 2,000 phone calls last Friday from people opposed to his signing the bill.
Maybe those phone calls are part of the reason for the delay.
Those of us who were in the Capitol during the legislative session watched the bill be debated and heard the concerns of the moneyed employers about the possibility of actually beginning to enforce - and obey - existing federal law must wonder how many of the calls were generated by that group of campaign donors.
The governors of other states are declaring states of emergency because of similar numbers of illegals as Georgia's migrating to their own states. They are also accomplishing some of the bill's goals through executive order.
It is more than a little alarming that Georgia's governor seems to be less than enthusiastic in protecting Georgians from the obvious consequences of the illegal bankers and employers. And the illegals themselves.
We have to ask: If the bill is not the beginning of doing exactly that, what is? If, after three months of contentious deliberation on the bill, now is not the time to demonstrate leadership on the issue, when will that time come?
Maybe some phone calls to the governor from citizens asking that question will number more than were received last Friday.
D.A. King is president of The Dustin Inman Society. For more information, visit (http://www.thedustininmansociety.org.)
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