Complaint against Georgia Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia sent to Cobb Sheriff Neil Warren. I receieved a response from the GBI today telling me they cannot act on a complaint from a citizen.

Sheriff Neil Warren 27 May 2010
Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
185 Roswell Street
Marietta, Georgia 30060

By electronic mail – original hard copy to follow

Dear Sheriff Warren,

I respectfully forward to your office a copy of a complaint recently filed with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concerning the repeated and fearless public admission by official spokespersons for the Georgia University System Board of Regents that the BOR has intentionally put in place policy and procedures that violate Georgia law – OCGA 50-36-1.

While I have received no reply from the GBI, I read in the press that the GBI cannot respond to a complaint of violation of state law filed by a mere citizen and that I must first send the complaint to an elected official or a local law enforcement officer to be sent on to the GBI.

The only elected official who I am aware of who is taking note of the attached outlined violations of state law is Governor Sonny Perdue. Despite the fact that Governor Perdue signed the Georgia code in question into law, his public reflections on actual enforcement are the law should not be enforced.

I have personally heard nothing from any other elected official or seen reports in the media of even a note of the Board of Regents contempt for the rule of law, the Georgia citizens or the obvious violations of our laws.

Because of the silence and inaction from Georgia’s elected leaders, it is easy for any citizen to ask the question: To where do we turn when our government refuses to obey or enforce the law?

Because I know that your office is very busy with other matters, I reluctantly, but confidently turn to your sir, because you have proven to be as good as your word and as good as your oath in performance of your duties as sheriff.

I ask that you consider the attached letter originally sent to the GBI as an official complaint from me to your office for investigation and/or that you forward it to the GBI for further action. As an educational tool, I also include a copy of a similar complaint sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE office.

As innocent and trusting Georgia citizens and real, legal American immigrants are suffering the consequences of the BOR’s defiance of the law, I ask that action be taken as soon as is possible

I trust it is self-explanatory, but if your investigators have any questions I may be of any service, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Respectfully,

D.A. King

Marietta, Ga. 30066

Attached: copy of May 19, 2010 complaint letter sent to GBI

STATE OF GEORGIA

OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR

Sonny Perdue

GOVERNOR

For Immediate Release Contact: Office of Communications

Thursday, May 27, 2010 (404) 651-7774

Governor Signs Anti-Bullying Legislation

Also signs other House, Senate bills

ATLANTA – Governor Sonny Perdue announced today that he has signed Senate Bill 250, which strengthens Georgia’s anti-bullying laws. The law requires that parental notification for students involved in a bullying incident and directs the state Department of Education to develop a model anti-bullying policy that can be used by local school systems. SB 250 was originally sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Bill Hamrick and carried in the House by Rep. Mike Jacobs, Rep. Mike Glanton and Rep. Kevin Levitas.

“Bullying has no place in our schools,” said Governor Perdue. “This legislation will help local systems address incidents of student intimidation and ensure that parents know when their child is involved in a bullying incident.”

The Governor was joined at the bill signing by the family of Jaheem Herrara who committed suicide after being taunted by classmates.

Governor Perdue also announced today that he has signed additional House and Senate bills. The list of the legislation is below:

Bills Signed

House Bills

HB 122

HB 451

HB 866

HB 1085

HB 1345

HR 1686

Senate Bills

SB 384

SB 397

SB 447

Editor’s Note: Photos of today’s bill signings taken with the bill sponsors can be obtained by contacting the Governor’s Press Office.

###

sent to the AJC…with little hope of actual publication:

Dear AJC editor,

Thursday’s Pro/Con item should have been headlined “Should states be required to obey federal immigration law?”

The usual hand-wringing and newspeak fact-bending concerning any proposed enforcement of our immigration laws never seems to stop. While it appears to be of little importance to reporters, the fact is that federal laws (8USC 1611& 8USC 1621) clearly define post secondary education as a public benefit, exclude the millions of illegals here from those benefits and make it a federal crime to allow illegal aliens into our university system.

The Supreme Court decision cited by the ACLU salesperson puts in place the requirement that Americans foot the bill to educate illegal aliens K-12. The same system of law forbids the public post secondary education of the illegals. Guess which ones we enforce?

The Georgia Board of Regents has set up policy and procedures which are in clear violation of the federal law as well as the 2006 Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act which uses the same federal laws as state language and definition regulating our shrinking public benefits in Georgia.

As an African-American, I am outraged that any of our limited classroom seats are illegally being given to students who are here illegally while black Americans are among the thousands of young Georgians who are denied entry to our university system each year. Why are we educating illegal aliens when it is illegal to hire them upon graduation?

Our system of justice is supposed to be blind. Our laws are to be equally applied, even for “exemplary” students who happen to be Hispanic and in the USA illegally and for the defiant members of the Board of Regents and college presidents who run our university system.

I anxiously await the AJC opinion page column on whether or not states should enforce the laws that say we must provide taxpayer funded no-cost medical care and translation services to illegally present aliens and for the front page news story that says those laws are ignored.

After that, no one should be surprised if we see a pro-con on whether we should actually have borders and immigration laws at all.

Inger Eberhart

Acworth, GA 30101

Ms. Eberhart is a member of the board of the Georgia based Dustin Inman Society, which is opposed to illegal immigration.

Marietta Daily Journal

Activist blasts Board of Regents
by Kathryn Dobies
kdobies@mdjonline.co m
May 26, 2010

MARIETTA – Anti-illegal immigration activist D.A. King has asked federal and state law-enforcement agencies to investigate the Georgia Board of Regents, which King insists is violating the law by admitting illegal immigrants and charging them in-state tuition.

King cited state and federal statutes, OCGA 50-36-1 and 8 U.S.C. 1611, 1621 and 1623 that state that illegal immigrants are ineligible for state and local public benefits, which include post-secondary education. King, whose actions were prompted by the case of Kennesaw State University student Jessica Colotl, sent the requests to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on May 19.

King, the founder of the Dustin Inman Society, wants Regents schools to use the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement Program to verify the citizenship of students. Designed by the federal government, the SAVE Program checks the immigration status of noncitizens applying for federal, state and local public benefits and licenses. A spokesman for the GBI said Tuesday that under Georgia law, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation could not respond to requests from a citizen to open an investigation. The request, instead, has to come from a public official, like a district attorney, a sheriff, a superior court judge or a governing official. Representatives for ICE did not return phone calls in response to King’s letters on Tuesday. Regents spokesman John Millsaps denied that the Board is breaking the law, and could not confirm whether the board will take up the issue at its next meeting, June 8 and 9.

“Current federal and state law do not preclude an individual from applying to college. Anyone may apply – and if the applicant meets the admissions requirements and is accepted, he or she may enroll,” Millsaps said. “The Board provides in-state tuition only for Georgia residents. Undocumented students may still enroll but, like any other non-Georgian, must pay out-of-state tuition, which can be three times as much as in-state. The out-of-state tuition rate is set at the full cost of instruction.”

That prompted King to ask, “Is the Board of Regents smarter than a fifth grader?”

“I am very, very disappointed as a citizen that I am the one who has to know, understand and take action on this,” King said. “We need to be asking the question, how many real immigrants and American citizens have lost their classroom seats because of the violation in policy by our Board of Regents system?”

King also said he is prepared to file a civil lawsuit in state court against the Board of Regents, asking a judge to issue a temporary restraining order halting any admissions until the university system complies with the policy.

Gov. Sonny Perdue weighed in on the controversy Tuesday, supporting the Regents.

“The university’s primary obligation is to educate students,” Perdue said. “To expect them to be the immigration agents or the determinants of whether someone is here legally or illegally is really beyond their scope of work.”

The governor also said he agreed that Colotl should be allowed to finish her studies.

“The balance of a humane society has some compassion element to that,” Perdue said. Allowing Colotl to stay, he said “is not my decision to make, but I would not voice disagreement if that decision were made.”

Colotl, an illegal immigrant, was stopped for a traffic violation on KSU’s campus and arrested on March 30 for failure to provide a valid driver’s license, it was discovered that she had also been paying in-state tuition since she enrolled as a freshman in fall 2006.

HERE

NOTE: VIDEO from WSB TV on Perdue’s anti-enforcement position HERE. He signed the law into effect!

Perdue and Colotl: Your tax dollars at work
May 27, 2010

We’ve all seen the signs erected by highway construction sites that say, “Your tax dollars at work.” Well, Gov. Sonny Perdue might as well start putting up similar signs at the entrances to Georgia’s colleges and universities that say, “Your tax dollars at work: Educating illegals.”

Do those in this country illegally deserve admission to Georgia’s public colleges and universities? Yes, according to Gov. Sonny Perdue, at least in the highly publicized case of Jessica Colotl, the Kennesaw State University student revealed to be an illegal alien after she was stopped by campus police for a minor driving infraction. After her arrest Colotl gave false and/or misleading statements to police and the Cobb sheriff and wound up in an immigration detention facility in Alabama before the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency gave her a one-year waiver during which she can stay in the country legally to finish her schooling.

Perdue said Tuesday she should be allowed to stay and finish her final year at KSU, as long as she pays the out-of-state tuition rate.

“The balance of a humane society has some compassion element to that. So that’s not my decision to make but I would not voice disagreement if that decision were made,” said Perdue.

We applaud the governor’s sense of compassion and we admire Ms. Colotl’s desire to get the best education she possibly can. We also salute her successful assimilation into American culture, which should be the goal of every immigrant, legal or otherwise. But the fact remains that after her one-year grace period expires, she won’t be able to legally hold a job in this country, whether she obtains her degree or not. So while many conservatives think it is mistake to let her go back to school, an argument could be made from other side that she will now be paying much higher tuition to earn a degree that, in her case, will be next to worthless.

Colotl, who had been paying the much lower in-state tuition rate, now will be paying the out-of-state rate.

“We’ve warned our presidents in the past over using their waiver to give in-state tuition for those who are here illegally and I think they have to be very careful in that regard,” said Perdue.

Regents spokesman John Millsaps noted this week that current federal and state laws do not preclude illegals from applying to college. True enough. But public, tax-supported colleges should not be accepting such students.

Perdue said the state’s colleges should focus on educating students, not worrying about their legality.

“To expect them to be the immigration agents or the determinants of whether someone is here legally or illegally is really beyond their scope of work,” said Perdue.

Really? Colleges and universities routinely investigate an applicants’ other data, such as their high school transcripts.

The cost of verifying applicants’ citizenship status via the SAVE system would be but 50 cents per person and would only apply to those who list themselves as legal non-citizens on the application form. If that’s too much for the colleges to swallow, they could make it a tack-on to the application fee. Legal non-citizens could be asked to complete an affidavit swearing to their lawful status and eligibility for the public benefit in question (the college education), just as they are supposed to do now in order to obtain a business license, for example. False swearing on such affidavits is a felony punishable by deportation in the case of non-citizens.

Forced by events to pick a side, Perdue chose the side of those in this country illegally. And in so doing, he sided against those Georgians who have loyally paid taxes to support those colleges and universities in the hopes that their children might someday obtain one of those highly prized admission slots. In other words, Perdue got it exactly backward.

HERE

Gwinnett Daily Post

May 26, 2010

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK: Rep. Rice wants to rectify immigration tuition policy

A Gwinnett representative wants to change Georgia law after a controversy over an illegal immigrant at Kennesaw State University.

Reporter: Camie Young

A Gwinnett representative wants to change Georgia law after a controversy over an illegal immigrant at Kennesaw State University.

Rep. Tom Rice said that if he is re-elected this year, he will sponsor legislation eliminating an exception for verification of immigration status to be eligible for post-secondary education benefits.

A firestorm began recently when deportation proceedings were postponed on a woman who had come to the United States as a child and was a year away from finishing school at the Cobb County college.

The incident brought the light to an exception in a strict law forcing the verification of legal status for any state benefits, since the woman had been paying in-state tuition.

“The state law is clear, the Board of Regents and our universities are required to follow the existing federal law regulating public benefits, including post secondary education,” Rice said. “At any tuition rate, admitting anyone other than citizens or legal residents into our public university system is a violation of federal law and could be cheating lawful Georgia residents out of our higher education classroom seats. We had hoped that policies and procedures put in place in our university system would have been adapted to comply with the spirit, intent and letter of the law regardless of an exemption in the code. … That has not happened and recent events reported in the news demonstrate the need for legislative action.”

College students, he said, should have to go through the same verification process as others seeking state benefits before getting taxpayer-subsidized tuition.

“Taxpayer funded university benefits are intended for citizens and legal residents who have obeyed the rules,” he said. “I intend to keep my word to those who entrusted me with their representation in our state government and to follow my oath of office to see that we obey the law in Georgia.”

HERE

Sheriff Neil Warren 27 May 2010

Cobb County Sheriff’s Office
185 Roswell Street
Marietta, Georgia 30060

By electronic mail – original hard copy to follow

Dear Sheriff Warren,

I respectfully forward to your office a copy of a complaint recently filed with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concerning the repeated and fearless public admission by official spokespersons for the Georgia University System Board of Regents that the BOR has intentionally put in place policy and procedures that violate Georgia law – OCGA 50-36-1.

While I have received no reply from the GBI, I read in the press that the GBI cannot respond to a complaint of violation of state law filed by a mere citizen and that I must first send the complaint to an elected official or a local law enforcement officer to be sent on to the GBI.

The only elected official who I am aware of who is taking note of the attached outlined violations of state law is Governor Sonny Perdue. Despite the fact that Governor Perdue signed the Georgia code in question into law, his public reflections on actual enforcement are the law should not be enforced.

I have personally heard nothing from any other elected official or seen reports in the media of even a note of the Board of Regents contempt for the rule of law, the Georgia citizens or the obvious violations of our laws.

Because of the silence and inaction from Georgia’s elected leaders, it is easy for any citizen to ask the question: To where do we turn when our government refuses to obey or enforce the law?

Because I know that your office is very busy with other matters, I reluctantly, but confidently turn to your sir, because you have proven to be as good as your word and as good as your oath in performance of your duties as sheriff.

I ask that you consider the attached letter originally sent to the GBI as an official complaint from me to your office for investigation and/or that you forward it to the GBI for further action. As an educational tool, I also include a copy of a similar complaint sent to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ICE office.

As innocent and trusting Georgia citizens and real, legal American immigrants are suffering the consequences of the BOR’s defiance of the law, I ask that action be taken as soon as is possible

I trust it is self-explanatory, but if your investigators have any questions I may be of any service, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Respectfully,

D.A. King

Marietta, Ga. 30066
Attached: copy of May 19, 2010 complaint letter sent to GBI and ICE

PRESS RELEASE CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIESContact: Bryan Griffith, press@cis.or g

‘Homeland Security USA’ Producer Wins Immigration Award

(WASHINGTON, May 2010) – Arnold Shapiro, Executive Producer of the ABC television program ‘Homeland Security USA,’ is this year’s winner of the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration. The award, presented each year by the Center for Immigration Studies, is intended to recognize those who go beyond the usual clichés in examining immigration and whose work informs deliberations in this important policy area. Video and a transcript of the award ceremony are now available.

Shapiro is the Oscar- and Emmy-winning producer of ‘Scared Straight,’ ‘Rescue 911,’ ‘Big Brother,’ and dozens of other documentaries and TV series. ‘Homeland Security USA’ was a 2009 series of 13 one-hour, behind-the-scenes explorations of the work of the various agencies within the Department of Homeland Security.

While Shapiro himself is the first to admit the documentary series is not, as he told the Hollywood Reporter, ‘investigative journalism,’ it is, in a sense, explanatory journalism. His series helped familiarize viewers with the actual work of DHS employees – patrolling the Arizona border with unmanned Predator aircraft, interrogating suspected child-smugglers at JFK Airport, checking trucks at the Laredo border crossing, rescuing a boatload of illegal aliens in the Mona Passage, and so on. Seeing close up the daily challenges of protecting the nation’s frontiers is an essential prerequisite to informed policymaking.

Maria Luisa O’Connell, Assistant Commission for Public Affairs at DHS’s Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, commended Shapiro’s work at the award ceremony, calling him ‘a pioneer within the department’ for helping CBP answer the question ‘How can we communicate better?’ and present a more balanced view of the agency’s work. She said the experience of working with Shapiro ‘opened the door’ for other such efforts, such as National Geographic’s ‘Border Wars’ series.

This award is named in memory of Eugene Katz, who started his career as a reporter for the Daily Oklahoman. In 1928, he joined the family business, working as an advertising salesman for the Katz Agency, and in 1952 became president of Katz Communications, a half-billion-dollar firm which not only dealt in radio and television advertising but also owned and managed a number of radio stations. Mr. Katz was a member of the Center for Immigration Studies board until shortly after his 90th birthday in 1997. He passed away in 2000.

The Center for Immigration Studies is a non-profit, non-partisan research institute which examines and critiques the impact of immigration on the United States. It is animated by a pro-immigrant/low-immigration vision, but offers the Katz Award not to promote any point of view but rather to foster informed decision-making on an issue so central to America’s future.

MEDIA ADVISORY May 26, 2010

Georgia State Representative Tom Rice

220 Capitol

Atlanta, Georgia

Tom.Rice@house.ga.go v

Representative Tom Rice announces intent to introduce legislation to eliminate exception for verification of eligibility post secondary education benefits in Georgia law – OCGA 50-36-1

Today, Representative Tom Rice called for a return to the rule of law and the protection of citizens and legal immigrants in the admissions procedures in Georgia’s University System.

If reelected Rep. Rice intends to sponsor legislation in the 2011 Georgia Legislative session that would remove language from Georgia code exempting post secondary education from the verification process already in place for the administration of other public benefits in Georgia.

“The state law is clear, the Board of Regents and our universities are required to follow the existing federal law regulating public benefits, including post secondary education. At any tuition rate, admitting anyone other than citizens or legal residents into our public university system is a violation of federal law and could be cheating lawful Georgia residents out of our higher education classroom seats. We had hoped that policies and procedures put in place in our university system would have been adapted to comply with the spirit, intent and letter of the law regardless of an exemption in the code.” said Rep. Rice. “That has not happened and recent events reported in the news demonstrate the need for legislative action.”

Rice cites federal law (8USC 1611, 8USC 1621 and 8USC 1623) that is clearly part of the Georgia law regulating post secondary benefits in Georgia.

“Taxpayer funded university benefits are intended for citizens and legal residents who have obeyed the rules. I intend to keep my word to those who entrusted me with their representation in our state government and to follow my oath of office to see that we obey the law in Georgia” ended Rice.

Representative Tom Rice represents the citizens of District 51, which includes portions of Fulton and Gwinnett counties. He was elected into the House of Representatives in 1996, and currently serves as the Chairman for the House Motor Vehicles Committee and serves on the Rules, Ways & Means, Banks and Banking and Transportation Committees.

WSB TV

VIDEO HERE while it lasts