My MDJ column today

The Marietta Daily Journal
January 19, 2011

D.A. King: E-Verify enemies and the H2A Ag Worker visa

The Georgia General Assembly will begin the committee process on legislation next week and the budget-crashing crime of illegal immigration will be in the news. But even the most attentive news hounds will only get part of the story.

Many in the media have decided that there are components of the immigration story that should go unreported.

By now, most people realize that most illegal immigration is the direct result of illegal employment.

A reminder: There is an “app” for that. It is called E-Verify and is a no-cost federal database available to all employers in the nation. E-Verify is used to check the immigration status of newly hired employees. Its possible required use terrifies the anti-enforcement mob – both on the radical left and the profiteering right.

Arizona has had an E-Verify law for all employers since 2008. Along with the subversives in the ACLU and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, another of the groups that have sued to undo Arizona’s E-Verify law is the Arizona Chamber of Commerce.

Unless the Chamber of Commerce here in Georgia has already been successful in killing them in the back rooms of the Capitol, there should be one or two bills requiring all employers to use E-Verify introduced here.

The business lobby has already teamed up with the radical ethnic-based illegal alien lobby and started bullying legislators who may be willing to protect jobs for law-abiding workers by stopping the hiring of illegal aliens.

The anti-enforcement coalition has agreed to center the “no-to-enforcement” argument around the fact that Georgia’s largest industry is agriculture. Their ridiculous message: “No illegals – no crops.”

From a recent Georgia Farm Bureau press release: “We oppose any immigration law that discriminates against the farm worker and puts the farmers of Georgia at a disadvantage to farmers in other states. Immigration is a federal issue, not a state or local issue. Agricultural interests must be considered when immigration legislation is debated.”

Translation: “We have been using cheap, submissive illegal aliens for decades and nobody from the Georgia legislature should even consider doing what we long ago made sure the federal government will never do. We are powerful! Don’t even think about a state law that would make it difficult for us to continue to hire our illegals! Other farmers do it!”

Chiming in with the points against enforcement he was sent out with, Jerry Gonzalez, of the Jane Fonda-supported Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, recently told legislators on a Gold Dome fact-finding committee that, “This is a similar moment in history which Georgia faced during the civil rights moment. … Georgia is not Arizona and we cannot afford to ‘enforce the rule of law’ because of our agricultural industry, along with other industries, desperately need immigrant labor in order for them to be successful. Without the immigrant labor, many more jobs would be lost and our state would suffer even more serious economic hardship” he breathlessly said.

By now, there are few Georgians who don’t recognize race-baiting and the endless and insulting attempts to blur the line between real immigrants and the illegal aliens that Gonzalez uses as political tools.

Here is an important fact the Farm Bureau, the ethnic hustlers, the Chamber of Commerce and many in the liberal media hope Georgians will never find out about: the H2A Ag worker visa.

The long-standing H2A agricultural visa program establishes lawful means for agricultural employers who anticipate a shortage of domestic workers to bring an unlimited number (no ceiling!) of temporary foreign workers into the United States.

But the grateful, legal, temporary workers must be treated with dignity and respect. Employers must provide free housing that meets lawful safety and health standards and provide workers’ compensation insurance to workers at no cost to the worker.

The wage for H2A workers must be the same as that for U.S. workers. The rate must also be at least as high as the applicable prevailing wage rate.

The employer must provide either three meals a day to each worker or furnish free and convenient cooking and kitchen facilities for workers to prepare their own meals.

The H2A requirements obviously make hiring the desperate, fugitive illegals considerably more profitable. And there is little fear of federal punishment.

It also makes for poor prospects for creating a resentful “oppressed” and “victimized” political constituency for the dangerous political left.

The H2A visa – tell your state legislator.

D.A. King is a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration and president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – D A King E Verify enemies and the H2A Ag Worker visa