The Wall Street Journal on the Dustin Inman Society and the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act

Grassroots groups boost clout in immigration fight
September 28, 2006
By Miriam Jordan, The Wall Street Journal

In Marietta, Ga., the local grass-roots group is the Dustin Inman Society, named for a teenage boy killed several years ago in a car accident that allegedly involved an illegal immigrant. The group is led by D. A. King, a 54-year-old former Marine who sports a close-cropped haircut and says he was snubbed by Mexicans who moved into a house in his neighborhood in the 1990s. He says he grew even more frustrated when local and immigration officials ignored his calls to take action against the house, which he believed was overcrowded with illegal immigrants.

Mr. King shuttered his insurance business of 20 years in 2003 to devote himself full-time to educating Georgians about the adverse impact of illegal immigration, organize rallies around the issue and work the halls of the Georgia state legislature.

The crowning of his efforts was the passage in April of the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, a state bill chockablock with provisions to stop illegal immigration that will begin to go into effect in July 2007. “We were sliding down a slippery slope on the way to ‘Georgiafornia,'” says Mr. King, referring to California, which is often used as the poster child of excessive Latino immigration.

A key proponent of the immigration bill, his single most effective weapon was organizing protests at the Capitol “for the media and state governments to see,” says Mr. King. He also praised the bill on radio and in newspaper columns. “I made it impossible for politicians to ignore the issue,” he says.

Republican State Senator Chip Rogers, who wrote the Georgia bill, says Mr. King was “instrumental in ensuring people interested in illegal immigration were aware of the bill. He sent lots of email, went on radio often and wrote in local papers about it. He touched just about every potential media outlet.”

Entire article here.