Brunswick News

Verifying work status is a necessary step

12/20/2010

There is a strange debate raging in this state. It’s an argument between legislators that’s drawing more proponents than opponents just weeks before the beginning of the 2011 session of the Georgia General Assembly.

The issue is illegal immigration – or, more specifically, what the state can and ought to do to protect itself from men and women who are here illegally.

To most Americans, that might not sound like much of an argument. After all, who supports illegal immigration? Anyone who remembers Sept. 11 and the sudden need to know who is in this country and why would be inclined to favor stepped up efforts to identify who’s working or traveling in this country.

Amazingly enough, there are those who apparently disagree. These people actually believe that any new Georgia law that does what federal law is already supposed to be doing – verifying the status of noncitizens – would be an economic attack on the agricultural industry in this state.

It is unclear how checking the work status of noncitizens in Georgia, an idea being debated by a special legislative panel, would harm farmers. Surely they are not saying that anyone should be able to penetrate U.S. borders and do as they please and go anywhere they want. Surely they are not saying that, not after Sept. 11 and the deaths of thousands of people at the hands of terrorists on U.S. soil.

Any man or woman who is in this state legally – that is, those who went through the proper channels and checkpoints to get here – are welcome. They have a right to be here.

Those who are in this country illegally, however, are not welcome, nor should they ever be. They should be required to return to their native lands and fill out the proper paperwork for entry into the United States.

Georgia, like every other state, ought to know who is living in its communities. That’s really all those who favor a state law that requires work status verification really want.

Yes, this is a federal issue, but like so many other of its responsibilities, Washington is slow to act, if it even acts at all.

HERE