Marietta Daily Journal

Joe Kirby:
by Joe Kirby
Columnist
July 25, 2010 12:00 AM

What has been the biggest and most incendiary issue in Georgia politics this year? Here are some clues: It’s not the economy. And it’s not education, although all of those have been much discussed.

No, the dominant issue this spring and summer has been illegal immigration and what to do about it. And that probably does not bode well for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes of Marietta.

Barnes will face either former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel or former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal this fall.

Barnes matches up very well with them on economic and education issues, and arguably is even stronger on them than they are. But to have any hope of winning, he must be strong on all three of the dominant issues – especially on immigration, since it is the most incendiary of the three. And right now he is not the strongest – although he has shown signs in the last 10 days of trying to catch that political “wave.”

He said at a Democratic gubernatorial debate July 16 that he would be willing to sign an Arizona-type law against illegal immigration, provided he was satisfied that it did not encourage racial profiling.

Barnes is trying to walk a hair-thin high-wire on the issue. If he were to take a pro-amnesty position typical of many Democrats, you could write the obituary right now for his hopes of winning. He immediately loses any hopes of support from stray Republicans. And my guess these days is that most Georgia independent voters – without whom he has little hope of winning – have views on immigration virtually indistinguishable from those of Handel or Deal.

Yet if he signals support for any immigration reform proposal that seems discriminatory, he immediately starts hemorrhaging support from the largest voting bloc among Georgia Democrats, African-Americans.

His debate comments were an attempt to send different messages to different constituencies at the same time.

Barnes until recent days had kept a low profile on the immigration debate, even as one of the biggest political stories of the year – the Jessica Colotl case – exploded in his own backyard.

Ms. Colotl is a Kennesaw State University student who was stopped for a minor traffic infraction while driving on campus, gave false statements to the police about herself, was discovered to be in the country illegally and then sent to an immigration detention center in Alabama. After the intercession of KSU President Dr. Dan Papp, she was released and told by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement she could remain in the country for another year to finish her degree. It’s not clear what good that would do her, because as the state’s best-known illegal alien, a “celebrity illegal,” as it were, it would be impossible for her to work legally in this state.

Barnes has finally weighed in on the Colotl case, although what he has said thus far appears somewhat contradictory. He told the Atlanta newspapers that illegal aliens should be barred from enrollment at public colleges and universities. But he said at the July 16 debate that it is wrong to expel students like Colotl who had been brought to this country by their parents at a young age. It was a compassionate response, but one that runs counter to prevailing sentiment in this state, where most people are outraged by the state Board of Regents’ position that coveted slots at the state’s public institutions of higher learning can be awarded to illegal aliens.

Yet to be determined are Barnes’ positions on immigration-related issues such as the controversial 287(g) program, used effectively in Cobb and Gwinnett counties to check the legal status of those arrested on other crimes and taken to jail; and whether he thinks the state’s 2006 law Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, which requires public employers, their contractors – and their subcontractors – to use the federal E-Verify database, should be vigorously enforced at the state level.

And what is Barnes’ position on the proposed DREAM Act which is now before the U.S. Senate and is strongly supported by Obama? That proposal is aimed at young people like Colotl who are in the country illegally after being brought here by their parents as children and who now, having enjoyed a K-12 education, desire to go to college.

It would give amnesty to virtually anyone who entered the country before age 16 and would apply to “kids” up to the age of 35. It also would let aliens “claim” to be eligible for the amnesty without offering any proof, would require the feds to undertake costly, lengthy investigations to disprove any such claims, would provide for U.S. citizenship for parents of such students, and would remove the federal ban on in-state tuition for future illegal aliens. In short, it would be a mass amnesty.

Obama and his fellow advocates for illegal aliens call it the DREAM Act, but for the rest of Americans, it would be a NIGHTMARE.

How ironic that Barnes’ candidacy, which is anchored in ever-more Democratic Cobb, could hinge on his positions this summer on an issue crystallized for most Georgians by the furor over an illegal alien in Cobb County who nearly no one had ever heard of as the year began.

Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the new “Then & Now: Marietta Revisited.”

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