Retired senior Immigration enforcement agent writes to the Atlanta History Center – Re; race-baiting poster in exhibit on Georgia’s HB 87:

Ms. Snyder, ( csnyder@atlantahistorycenter.com )

I am a resident of Georgia and I am a former Senior Patrol Agent of the U.S. Border Patrol. I am also a U.S. Marine combat veteran of the war in Vietnam. I and many others that had careers in immigration law enforcement looked upon our service as wholly patriotic in that we were protecting and defending Americas national security, and the American workforce. Not for one single minute did I ever think of myself as carrying out some diabolic practice of discriminating against any race, creed or culture. I was an equal opportunity enforcer of laws passed by our congress, which are still on the books to this very day.

The people of the state of Georgia demand protection in the workplace from illegal immigrants, safety in their homes and communities from criminal aliens. You might be unaware, but both federal and state prisons in Georgia have thousands of criminally convicted deportable aliens. Many of them I put there, not to discriminate, but to protect the American people.

Your poster distorts a very complex issue regarding immigration. I ask you to reconsider and either replace the current poster, or provide a balanced clarity to the subject. Laws such as this one aren’t passed in secrecy.

Sincerely,

Robert M. Trent
(Brunswick)

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Letters to the editor,

September 9, 2016

Lopez not in tune with most Georgians

We are proud to have easily organized the opposition to Dax Lopez for the state Supreme Court and the letter-writing campaign to the governor. Contrary to reports, our objections have nothing to do with Lopez’s ethnicity.

Dax Lopez spent more than a decade as a board member of the anti-enforcement immigration corporation GALEO, which is funded by big business. Lopez acted as keynote speaker at a GALEO funder after becoming a state court judge.

Lopez’s declaration that he “agrees with their mission” must always be viewed with the knowledge that the Jane Fonda – supported GALEO has smeared law enforcement officers who dare to help enforce immigration laws. GALEO has marched against immigration enforcement, lobbied against E-verify laws designed to protect legal workers, against local jails honoring Immigration and Customs Enforcement holds for criminal aliens, and vehemently opposed voter ID. And they lobby against English as our official language.

Neither GALEO or Lopez are in the Georgia mainstream.

D.A. KING, PRESIDENT OF THE DUSTIN INMAN SOCIETY

HERE

Insider Advantage Georgia

September 8, 2016

Race-baiting poster illustrates 2011 illegal immigration law at the Atlanta History Center

Georgia’s internationally-publicized 2011 illegal immigration law is now a museum piece-– literally. HB 87, the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011” is part of a new Atlanta “Timeline” display inside the recently-opened “Gather Round, stories of Atlanta” exhibit at the Atlanta History Center.

The reprehensible, race-baiting poster put on display as the sole graphic to represent the state law should create some questions about the politics at the AHC.

HB 87 is part of a presentation of notable occurrences in Atlanta history and is set alongside events that include Atlanta’s original establishment, the Civil War Battle of Atlanta, Reconstruction, Coca Cola being served in a bottle for the first time, the Cotton States International Exposition, both World Wars, “the revival of the KKK,” Gone With the Wind, the tragic Winecoff Hotel fire, Hank Aaron’s record-setting homerun number 714 and the 1996 Olympics.

Each event has a short description and a visual aid. As one might expect and as an example, there is a copy of Gone With the Wind, a WW l Army uniform, a baseball with to a photo of the Brave’s “Hammerin’ Hank” rounding the bases, various artifacts from Atlanta’s distant past– and an Izzy doll to represent the ’96 Olympics.

The visual for the law that passed with bipartisan votes under the Gold Dome aimed at cracking down on illegal employment and illegal immigration may came as quite a shock to patrons not immersed in the never ending battle over enforcement of American immigration laws.

For that image, the Atlanta History Center chose an anti-enforcement poster from the corporate-funded illegal alien lobby that accompanied the failed effort to convince Gov. Nathan Deal to veto the legislation after it had passed the General Assembly by large margins.

After seeing the HB 87 display on a July 4th visit, I spoke with Calinda Lee, an AHC historian and curator of the exhibit. “We select objects to represent important events and try not to take a political perspective” she told me. “We are constantly having to make editorial decisions…”

I urge readers to go see the exhibit and make up their own minds on the AHC editorial direction.

The non-negotiable heart of HB 87—which contains 23 sections— was the requirement for use of the federal employment verification system, E-Verify for nearly all private employers in Georgia. HB 87 was aimed at protecting jobs and benefits for legal Georgia residents. It worked.

In early 2011, to no one’s surprise, the anti-borders gang screamed in the streets that if put into law, the measure would encourage “racial profiling,” create second class “citizens” and would harm the state’s economy, particularly the agricultural industry.

Fast forward: According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Georgia’s agricultural exports reached an estimated $3 billion in 2013, up from $1.8 billion in 2009. Somebody remind me, how many times since 2011 has Georgia been declared “the number one state in which to do business?”

As a result of HB 87 becoming law most businesses in Georgia are required to use the no-cost internet-based E-Verify system. Federal regulations require that all E-Verify users display an official poster in their business that reads: “This employer participates in E-Verify.” The poster must be clearly displayed in both English and Spanish.

There is a better choice for the AHC graphic

I asked the AHC curator, Ms. Lee, if she would reconsider her choice of visuals for the HB 87 display and either replace the race-baiting “poster art” with the official E-Verify poster to better educate museum goers on the real purpose of HB 87 – or at least add the E-Verify poster for educational balance. She demurred.

When I went back this week to confirm that the Atlanta History Center’s HB 87 exhibit was unchanged from when it opened in July, I noted a long line of school busses outside and large numbers of impressionable school kids inside who are being taught that state law, HB 87 — enforcement of immigration and employment laws and protecting American workers from black-market labor — is somehow “anti-immigrant” and based on skin color. How “progressive.”

You read it here first.   NOTE: Atlanta History Center phone number is 404-814-4000

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society.

Atlanta Journal Constitution

Sept 6, 2016

Latino judge faced stiff opposition to seat on Georgia’s top court

Greg Bluestein reporting

More than 130 lawyers were nominated for the three open Georgia Supreme Court slots, but there was only one who provoked a storm of letters to Gov. Nathan Deal’s office.

Two county sheriffs urged Deal not to appoint State Court Judge Dax Lopez to Georgia’s highest bench. A conservative Atlanta group said his history should “disqualify” him from the seat. And a string of voters added their objections, using the words “frightening” and “stupid” to describe his potential candidacy.

The judge’s offense? His past membership in the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials, a bipartisan advocacy group that supports a path to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally and fought tougher state laws on immigration.

For Lopez, a Hispanic Republican who decided last month not to seek appointment to the state’s top bench, it is a familiar line of attack.

The same criticism led U.S. Sen. David Perdue to scuttle Lopez’s nomination in January after President Barack Obama sought to make him the state’s first lifetime-appointed Latino federal judge. And a Republican challenger in a failed May campaign to oust Lopez from the DeKalb County bench labeled him a “rejected politician.”

The pushback against him illustrates the GOP’s hard-line tilt over immigration that fueled Donald Trump’s presidential nomination — and why it can be difficult for the party to attract Latinos.

Deal has three slots to fill on the Georgia Supreme Court because state lawmakers went along with his plan this year to add two positions to the court. Another long-serving justice is set to retire in January.

Lopez, who declined to comment Tuesday, stepped down from GALEO in September 2015, shortly after his nomination to the federal bench. But he has said he was frustrated he did not get a chance to tell his side of the story during the federal nomination process. Latino advocates say it’s symptomatic of deeper problems.

“Anti-immigrant activists are extremists and not in the mainstream, and GALEO has Latino community members from both sides of the aisle,” said Jerry Gonzalez, GALEO’s executive director. “The current political environment has stoked many xenophobic and racist ideas that, polls show, are repulsed by many Americans.”

‘History should disqualify him’

When Obama tapped Lopez for the seat in July 2015 it seemed to many to be a foregone conclusion. State Republican Party counsel Anne Lewis, former state House Majority Whip Ed Lindsey and other prominent GOP attorneys signed a letter to the senators in support of Lopez a few months later.

But a groundswell of conservative blowback quickly slowed the momentum as critics highlighted his past membership on GALEO’s board. It dovetailed with a hardening GOP immigration stance that featured Trump’s tough-talking call for mass deportations of millions of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally and construction of a wall on the border with Mexico.

That opposition continues to haunt Lopez, a member of the conservative Federalist Society who was first appointed to the Georgia bench by then-Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue. Under pressure to increase diversity on the state’s top bench, Lopez was considered by some observers a serious contender for an open seat.

But The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that Deal had received a string of anti-Lopez letters that revealed just how divisive his nomination would have been. The Lopez critiques were the only ones sent to Deal’s office in recent months singling out a potential judicial candidate.

The executive board of the Conservative Republican Women of North Atlanta wrote Deal that Lopez’s “history should disqualify” him. Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway said Lopez “closely aligned himself with a radical organization,” and Union County Sheriff Mark Mason said Lopez’s ties to GALEO were a deal-breaker.

“Say it ain’t so!” added a voter, Ernest Wade of Loganville. “If you appoint Dax Lopez to Georgia’s Supreme Court, then we all know that you have been deceiving us.”

Much of the opposition was marshaled by D.A. King, an activist who casts himself as a defender of immigration law and an opponent of GALEO. King cheered Perdue’s decision to block the Lopez nomination earlier this year, and urged his supporters to dial Deal’s office last month to oppose an “anti-enforcement judge from the illegal alien lobby.”… READ THE REST HERE

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