HERE

Augusta Chronicle

Top immigration bills beat Capitol deadline

With a big immigration bill clearing each chamber of the Georgia Legislature, Republicans seem to be following through on their promise to focus on the issue, but a number of smaller immigration measures have failed to advance and might be stalled for this session…

HERE

CBS ATLANTA CHANNEL 46 REMOVES ALL DOUBT! A screamer! They never varied from the script provided by the anti-enforcement open borders mob – but I could see their lips moving!

ILLEGAL ALIEN PRESENTED AS VICTIM # two gazillion (and this is only part one!) – CBS Atlanta 46 confirms its own irrelevancy, bias and what it will do to find viewers (anything) – a hilarious, ham-fisted infommercial for the “victims” of American borders and immigration laws. Too funny.

See the CBS Atlanta “news” video of the victim of geography HERE – they gave no credit to La Raza or the rest of the open borders lobby for assistance and guidance in production. They kept a straight face for the entire three minutes!

CBS Atlanta News Department CALL: 404.327.3000 if you want. Contact the news Director HERE if you want.

Be polite if you want. Tell them we take in more than a million real immigrants each year – more than any other nation – if you want. Tell them we have our own poor to take care of and that we have more than twenty-five million Americans and real immigrants out of work and that illegals lower wages for our own working poor if you want. Tell them they have not fooled anyone if you want. Ask them if they have any sense of shame.

Ask them if they think there is a story in the unemployed Americans who still pay for the illegals here. Send them this link to report on how many real immigrants the USA takes in each year if you want.

SUCCESS! and ACTION NEEDED! Please help save HB 59

TWO DAYS LEFT TO GET ILLEGALS OUT OF GEORGIA’S PUBLIC FUNDED UNIVERSITY SYSTEM!

More on this (HB 59) further down

Yesterday: SB 40 passed the Senate – your calls and emails made a big difference.

SB 40 was somewhat cleaned up on the Senate floor yesterday and passed. We now have two enforcement bills, HB 87 and SB 40. Let me be clear: SB 40 is as poorly written a bill as I have seen. But I have only been going to the Capitol for eight years. It never should have gotten out of the committee process. There were many amendments offered and made on the floor, but it still has big problems. Very unusual day.

SB 40 HAS NO PENALTY IN THE E-VERIFY SECTION (SECTION 3) FOR EMPLOYERS WHO REFUSE TO COMPLY AND USE THE E-VERIFY SYSTEM.

IT ALSO REMOVED SOME IMPORTANT LANGUAGE TO DEFINE SUBCONTRACTORS ON PUBLIC WORKS JOBS.

Good news: CONTRARY TO WHAT THE AJC HAS PUBLISHED TODAY

AJC:

“…Like the House legislation, Murphy’s bill would require many private businesses to use E-Verify to confirm their newly hired employees are eligible to work in the United States. But unlike the House bill, the Senate legislation includes exemptions for farmers and other employers who hire migrant workers through a federal guest worker program…”

( Note from D.A. – NO it doesn’t!)

THE EXCEPTION FOR H2 VISA WORKERS ON USE OF E-VERIFY WAS REMOVED ON THE FLOOR WITH AN AMENDMENT BY SENATORS CHIP ROGERS AND JUDSON HILL.

The problem with SB 40 being so weak is that it can be used in a conference committee (a process in which the Senate and the House appoint a small committee to agree on a compromise at the end of session) to dilute the very strong HB 87.

It is not over yet. Sometime after Wednesday, the Senate bill will go to through the House committee and the House bill will go through the Senate committee process. Each bill can still be altered in those committees. OUR EFFORT NOW IS TO KEEP HB 87 STRONG AND MAKE SB 40 much stronger.

Again: GOAL for pro-enforcement Americans: Keep HB 87 strong, make SB 40 stronger. If there is no penalty there will be little compliance.
For those of you who don’t know, the Georgia legislature meets for 40 session days. Wednesday is day 30, the day by which a bill must clear either the House or the Senate to be “alive”. We still have some other bills that need to clear both chambers before midnight on day 30 – tomorrow, Wednesday.

MORE WORK NEEDED!
HELP PLEASE! The most important one of these is HB 59 – a simple bill that will keep all illegal aliens out of our public funded university system.

HB 59 should have cleared the House long ago. It has not. The rumor is that Governor Deal is having second thoughts on his campaign promise to support the bill. Maybe the Speaker is as well. The huge majority of Georgians want illegals kept out of our university system.

ACTION NEEDED TODAY AND TOMORROW !
Please call both the Governor’s office and the Speaker of the House office to say that you want illegal aliens out of Georgia’s university system…like it is done in Mexico.

Message:

” YES TO HB 59! Why is the Speaker/Governor ignoring the polls? We cannot continue to allow real legal immigrants and American citizens to be displaced in our colleges by illegals. Illegal aliens are deportable at any time, and are not eligible to work in the USA upon graduation. WHY are we spending tax dollars to educate them? Do we need more illegal workers? Do we have an unlimited budget now?… I am one of the majority of Georgians who demands that HB 59 be passed! PLEASE TELL THE SPEAKER TO LET HB59 OUT OF THE RULES COMMITTEE ! Governor Deal made clear promises on this during the campaign. We expect them to be kept! – I am a proud pro-enforcement American and voting Georgian who demands that we honor real immigrants by enforcing our immigration laws and using common sense. YES TO HB 59!!!”

Please call and email both Speaker Ralston’s office and Governor Deal’s office starting now – and again this afternoon AND ALL DAY TOMORROW UNTIL MIDNIGHT or until we win! The Capitol will be full of people until midnight Wednesday.

CALL! Speaker Ralston’s office 404 656 5020 – then email his Chief of Staff with a similar message at spiro.amburn@house.ga.gov
You cannot do this too often!

CALL! Governor Deal’s office 404 656 1776- then send an email HERE – The illegal alien lobby is calling and emailing and sending people in to them right now PLEASE HELP US GET HB 59 passed!Speaker of the House
David Ralston

Spiro Amburn

– Chief of Staff

Marshall Guest

– Deputy Director of Communications

Dianne Hardin

– Executive Assistant

Leishea Johnson

– Executive Assistant

Kristy Lindstrom

– Director of Communications

Gina McKinney

– Executive Assistant to the Chief of Staff

Bill Reilly

– General Counsel

Hayley Yaun

– Deputy Counsel

Room 332, State Capitol

Atlanta, Georgia 30334

404.656.5020

POLL:

Athens Banner Herald

67 percent would bar undocumented from attending

Poll: Keep illegal immigrants out of colleges

By BLAKE AUED –

Published Monday, September 20, 2010

Two-thirds of Georgians want to bar illegal immigrants from attending the University of Georgia and other public colleges, even if they pay out-of-state tuition.
Sixty-seven percent of people polled last week by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research for the Georgia Newspaper Partnership favor a law requiring proof of legal residency to attend a Georgia college or university, while 22 percent opposed such a law, and 11 percent were undecided.

Illegal immigrant students now are allowed to attend college if they pay out-of-state tuition, but state lawmakers have said they will try to change that policy early next year.

The poll results came as no surprise to D.A. King, founder of the anti-illegal immigrant Dustin Inman Society.

“We have a finite amount of classroom seats,” King said. “It’s always been a mystery to me for seats to go to people who are deportable at any time and cannot work upon graduation when unemployment is 10 percent.”

Illegal immigrants who go to college usually have grown up in Georgia and are among the best and the brightest, said Jerry Gonzalez, director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. They should be allowed to continue their education, he said.

“We’re holding the child accountable for a situation their parents put them in,” he said.

Gonzalez chalked up the poll numbers to anger over the federal government’s failure to enforce or reform immigration laws. But he said he believes the U.S. Senate is poised to pass a bill that would allow illegal immigrants who have no criminal record and complete two years of college or serve in the military to become citizens.

“I think the public is frustrated with the fact that our congressional leaders have not taken action in reforming the immigration system that we have,” he said.

The issue came to the forefront in May, when police pulled over a Kennesaw State University student for a traffic violation and discovered that her parents had illegally brought her from Mexico to the United States as a child.

Jessica Colotl was paying in-state tuition at KSU, an open-enrollment school, but when administrators discovered she was not a legal resident, they began charging her out-of-state tuition.

Immigration officials gave her a year to finish her last year of school before she is deported.

After the Colotl case brought public attention, a University System of Georgia investigation found a handful of other illegal immigrants attending public colleges and universities. A Board of Regents committee is meeting Tuesday and is expected to recommend more thorough residency checks, but illegal immigrants still will be admitted unless the state legislature changes the law, regents spokesman John Millsaps said. The full board is scheduled to take action in October.

The legislature exempted the Regents from a 2006 ban on illegal immigrants receiving many government services.

“Current law allows undocumented students to apply to college and be accepted,” Millsaps said. “It just doesn’t allow them to pay in-state tuition. That’s the current law, and that’s what we have to operate under.”

Changing the law enjoys broad support from almost every demographic group. Seventy-five percent of men, 61 percent of women, 46 percent of Democrats, 79 percent of Republicans, 77 percent of political independents, 71 percent of white people and 55 percent of black people favor changing it. The rest were opposed or undecided.

Nidya Gonzalez, 33, a Realtor from Winder, said she usually votes Republican, but thinks the party makes too big a deal out of immigration for political reasons. Gonzalez said she immigrated legally as a teenager and now is a U.S. citizen.

“I love this country very much, and I adopted it as my own,” she said. “I pursued my education, and I would like them to have that same chance.”

But it sometimes seems like the government cares more about foreigners than citizens, said Fredrick Williams, 50, of Elberton.

“I don’t mean to sound racist, but they can go to school in Mexico,” Williams said. “They can go to school in China, or Iraq, or Afghanistan, or wherever they’re from.”

Both gubernatorial candidates, Democrat Roy Barnes and Republican Nathan Deal, say they support barring illegal immigrants from attending public colleges and universities.

Illegal immigrants take spots that rightly belong to Georgians, Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said.

“Generally, I do not believe that a child should be punished for the crimes of the parents; but, I agree that we all have a duty and an obligation to obey the law, and we should obey the law,” Barnes said in a written statement. “Therefore, I am not in favor of illegal immigrants attending Georgia’s public colleges and universities.”

Both candidates for an Athens-area state Senate seat, Democrat Tim Riley and Republican Frank Ginn, also said they opposing letting illegal immigrants into UGA.

In the area’s other competitive race, for a state House seat representing Oconee County and surrounding areas, Republican Hank Huckaby and Democrat Suzy Compere did not respond to requests for comment.

Originally published in the Athens Banner-Herald on Monday

, September 20, 20

D.A. King — Gwinnett Daily Post

Even Obama knows E-Verify is a winner

House Bill 87, the most potentially effective and well-written state illegal immigration and employment enforcement bill in the nation, passed the Georgia House 113-56 last week. — “Kill the bill” faxes from the business community started coming in to state Senate offices about 20 minutes later…

HERE

Laura Armstrong — Marietta Daily Journal

Rep. Morgan must remember vow to put special interests aside

… Yesterday, contrary to the idea of getting away from special interests, [State Rep. Alisha] Morgan conducted an education forum, not in her district but in a City of Atlanta middle school near midtown. Her co-hosts were the radical and litigious special interest group Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF)…

HERE

Insider Advantage Georgia (HERE) a subscription Website. We are grateful for the permission to repost the below here.

What about the Senate bill on illegal immigration?

Q&A with D.A. King

March 12 2011

It seems that most of the discussion on illegal immigration legislation under the Gold Dome is focused on the House bill (HB 87) authored by Rep. Matt Ramsey. We wondered about that and asked frequent IA guest columnist D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society about SB 40 from Senator Jack Murphy. King is a widely recognized authority on the issue, and actively involved in legislation and all things illegal immigration related at the Capitol. It should be noted that King has reportedly assisted with HB 87 and worked towards its passage.

IA: In layman’s terms, what are the major differences in the two bills, HB 87 and SB 40?

King: The House bill is far more comprehensive and wide-ranging and with great respect to all concerned, much more detailed and well thought-out. It is truly comprehensive immigration reform for Georgia.

Nobody disputes the fact that illegal employment is the direct cause of most illegal immigration. The heart of HB 87 is the requirement of businesses swearing to use of the no-cost E-Verify system to obtain or renew a business license/occupational tax certificate. This is intended to be a built-in self-enforcement method to encourage businesses with more than four employees to verify newly hired employees.

It has no exceptions for any industry or visa holder. Not so for SB 40. It has many significant, inherent problems and contradictions.

IA: What do you see as the major problems with SB 40?

Section 3 of SB 40 excludes from E-Verify verification “any person or entity with respect to any employees procured through the federal H2 worker visa program”.

It is not too “inside baseball” to point out – as it was in the Senate Judiciary committee – that H2 visas include the H2A category which is a temporary agriculture worker visa but also the H2B visa which covers a wide range of workers, industries and job descriptions. Just a few examples: Hospitality workers, hotels / motels, chefs, resorts, construction workers, painters, roofers, maintenance, janitorial, landscaping, security, restaurants and bars, warehouse, retail stores…

A self-poisoning pill in this exception to use of E-Verify is that under the user contract with the feds, the employer can depend on his authority to use the system to be quickly revoked by the Department of Homeland Security if he does not run all newly hired employees through the system as agreed. H2 visa holder or not.

This part of SB 40 is completely unworkable. An employer may not legally pick and choose which employee gets verified or use the system as a screening device before hiring.

SB 40 also dictates that once an employer obtains an E-Verify “user number”, which is given to all system users, that employer may not be authorized under state law to drop E-Verify and then go back, obtain new authorization and begin to use the system again. This is completely contrary to federal regulations on E-Verify. Any user can give 30 days notice and get out of the program, then regain authority at a later date with a new, but different, user number.

To complete the triple play on the unfortunate language of just the E-Verify section (Section 3), there is no penalty for violation. Not that it could be legally or practically implemented anyway. The bill allows for the labor Commissioner to adopt rules and regulations to implement enforcement some time in the future.

Sort of a penalty that may be named later.

IA: Please expand?

The problem with the 2006 Georgia immigration law – which was as good as could possibly have been passed at the time – is that there is no penalty for violation by any of the public employers or their contractors who are already required to use E-Verify and the federal system for verifying eligibility for public benefits (SAVE). We still don’t have 100% compliance on either – and this from people running our state and local governments and agencies. This is déjà vu all over again.

IA: Anything else?

You don’t have the space. But one gem is the striking in Section 1 of a simple but important sentence from the 2006 law that does a great and all encompassing job of defining “subcontractor” for public works purposes: “Subcontractor includes a subcontractor, contract employee, staffing agency, or any contractor regardless of its tier.” There are many interested parties for whom that language is far too clear, complete and uncontestable.

IA: Any good ideas in SB 40 that are not in HB 87?

Yes, Section 6 is the beginning of a terrific idea. It ties the ability for businesses to deduct the wages of workers from their state income taxes to use of the E-Verify system. It needs some work and clarification, but is sound and would be quite workable.

IA: Do you think SB 40 will pass a floor vote?

SB 40 is not ready for the big game. Were this bill to be presented as is to the entire Senate, let alone actually passed, that body would become a laughing stock nationwide for anyone with a basic understanding of the issue. I don’t envy the job of anyone who would be assigned the task of reconditioning this one.

IA: Any advice for the Georgia Senate on these bills?

Yes. If the senate wants to save time and trouble, and pass a workable, well-written and lucid piece of comprehensive immigration reform legislation to advance enforcement in Georgia, they may want to consider simply substituting the language of the House bill for all of SB 40, adding in sharpened language aimed at requiring documented and constant use of E-Verify to deduct the cost of wages from state income tax returns, voting YEA and moving on.

IA: Thanks for your input.

Letter t0 the editor published in the AJC today from our own Inger Eberhart

IMMIGRATION

Illegal-immigration fight in no way akin to racism

As one of the millions of black Americans who demand enforcement of our borders, immigration and employment laws, I understand that we must honor real immigrants by stopping the line jumpers. I understand that the first groups hit by the crime of illegal immigration are African-Americans and native-born Hispanics.

I understand that we are throwing our own poorest under the bus in a rush to prove how benevolent we are, by treating illegal aliens (from anywhere) as victims and heroes.

I have had more than enough of endless comparisons to Jim Crow, “racism”, Klan rallies and “hatred and anger” whenever the majority of citizens like myself speak up for enforcement and justice under the law.

The anti-enforcement hucksters should stop the race-baiting on illegal immigration. It is not fooling anyone.


Inger Eberhart, Acworth

HERE

HERE

More than 243,000 employers representing more than 834,000 worksites currently use E-Verify and an average of 1,400 new employers enroll each week.

The below column is posted on the subscription Website Insider Advantage Georgia today. We are grateful for the permission to repost here and thank IA editor Gary Reese.

Insider Advantage Georgia

D.A. King: E-Verify, an education

Rep. Matt Ramsey’s HB 87 passed the Georgia House last week by a very large margin (113-56).

Now it is on to the Senate. Language in the bill that requires use of the no-cost, federal E-Verify system is the major complaint from its shrinking opposition.

In the House floor debate, the long line of Republicans from all over Georgia rising to speak in favor of the bill included the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Tom McCall. He reminded other members of the House of their oath of office to uphold the law and added that “this bill is the right thing to do.”

Ramsey proudly reports some important facts on the vote: “We got every single South Georgia Republican with the exception of one. Rep. Greg Morris, who represents Vidalia onion country, spoke on behalf of the bill saying, “I regret this bill is necessary, but it is!” Rep. Jay Roberts, a farmer and E-Verify user himself, spoke from the well in favor of the bill.

Ramsey beams when he reports that four Democrats voted for his well-thought-out enforcement legislation.

Because you won’t get it elsewhere, here’s an E-Verify education from pro-enforcement American:

Ramsey is not treading on new ground. Georgia has had an E-Verify law in place since 2006. All public employers and their contractors are already required to use the system. Thank you Sen. Chip Rogers and former Gov. Sonny Perdue.

In expanding the regulation to require use of E-Verify to protect legal workers in the private sector, Georgia would catch up with four other states, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina and Mississippi.

It is interesting to note that the 1980s-era “I-9” paper system of collecting documents from employees does not require a Social Security Number. But E-Verify does. Therefore, with E-Verify use, all newly hired employees, including seasonal, temporary, and rehires must actually have a SSN. How draconian.

More than 243,000 employers representing more than 834,000 worksites currently use E-Verify and an average of 1,400 new employers enroll each week.

An employer who verifies work authorization under E-Verify has established a rebuttable presumption that it has not knowingly hired an unauthorized alien.

That can’t help the anti-enforcement argument…can it?

A list provided by the folks at E-Verify as of September 2010 shows that about 16,000 Georgia employers are already using E-Verify, all voluntarily except for the public employers and contractors under the existing state mandate.

Another more recent list from January of this year only includes businesses with five or more employees. There are more than 11,000 employers listed there – which tells us that about 5,000 very small businesses are also using E-Verify because they want to avoid hiring black-market labor.

Here is a short sampling of some Georgia businesses that are already using E-Verify voluntarily: Frito-Lay; Dunkin Donuts; Chick-fil-a; Baskin Robbins; PepsiCo Gatorade; Hispanic Golden Arches; Con Agra; Fieldale Farms; Pilgrim Pride Inc.; Gold Kist; Tyson Foods; Claxton Poultry;Tip Top Poultry; Vidalia Onion Farm; Turf Pride; Bland Farms, Glennville, Ga.; Tifton Turf Farms; The Dustin Inman Society.

Did I mention the automatic photo-matching E-Verify feature that is ever-expanding and improving? The photo-matching step occurs automatically when an employee presents a Permanent Resident Card (Green Card) or an Employment Authorization Document (work visa) as documentation. This helps ensure that the documents provided are valid. Does this help or hurt E-Verify’s case?

As of Fiscal Year 2010, 98.3 percent of employees are automatically confirmed as authorized to work using E-Verify.

Of the 1.43% of employees not found to be work-authorized: 1.3 percent who receive initial mismatches do not contest the mismatch.

Some 0.01 percent of employees who receive initial mismatches contest the mismatch and are not found work-authorized.

Some 0.14 percent of employees with initial mismatches are unresolved because the employer closed the cases as “self-terminated.”

Most of the new employees who get a negative response simply walk off the job and apply down the road with an employer who is not using the effective system to save jobs.

I know what readers are likely thinking about here. “Does E-Verify work to confirm the farm workers who are looking for a better life when they come here legally under the H2A agricultural visa that has no limit or ceiling?” Yes, H2A visa workers fly through the E-Verify system.

A recent AP news item quotes Frank Funderburk, executive director of the Georgia Peach Council and part-time extension agent for Peach County, as saying that E-Verify will not affect the peach industry because they use the H-2A program. “Our growers can’t afford to not have a work crew,” Funderburk said. “They bit the bullet several years ago (and joined H-2A) and they jumped from paying $7 an hour to $9.”

We now have a good idea of the savings involved in using black market labor and the price of the rule of law.

President Obama is promoting use of the E-Verify system as “the right investment in building a viable tool to ensure a legal workforce in the United States.” Last week, no less than Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Cynthia Tucker acknowledged that illegal employment is the clear cause of most illegal immigration and that E-Verify use is the solution. Who knew?

One must wonder about the response from the few Republican senators who will vote against HB 87 because of the E-Verify section when it is pointed out that they are putting themselves to the left of Barack Obama and Cynthia Tucker.

You will read it here first.

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society and a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration. He is an uncompensated advocate for HB 87. www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org