California state Senator Kevin de Leon = photo: California senate

A reply from Georgia: Senator de Leon and his race-baiting anti-enforcement immigration column

D.A. King

A response to state Senator Kevin de Leon concerning his race-baiting statements in a recent Mercury News column in which he so vehemently attacks President Trump, opposes enforcement of American immigration laws and defends his sanctuary state legislation, SB 54.

Clearly, Senator de Leon stands in opposition to borders and immigration laws in general, but he should not be allowed to go unchallenged in his position that President Trump’s fulfillment of his campaign promises on immigration enforcement is “racist-driven.” Was immigration enforcement “racist-driven” when former President Obama tried to make America believe he had deported more illegal aliens than any other president? Are the brave Border Patrol Agents who risk their lives each day on our borders “racist-driven?” For those who do not know, about half of the Border Patrol is made up of proud Hispanic Americans who value equal protection and the rule of law.

Is Mexico’s unapologetic policy of the deportation of Central Americans who cross those borders illegally “racist-driven?”

The senator wants us to believe that California and America itself must have permanent access to black market labor to survive and state laws that require compliance with federal immigration and employment laws are prohibitively costly. In that effort de Leon cites discredited arguments against the 2011 immigration law here in Georgia, HB 87, that requires most employers to use the no-cost federal E-Verify system. On passage of Georgia’s HB 87, he writes: “As a result, farmers fell 40 percent short of the labor needed at harvest time, triggering an estimated $140 million in agricultural losses.”

This anti-enforcement fable was invented by the agriculture lobby here and happily disseminated by the liberal Georgia media. Georgia, like much of the nation, suffered a record drought that year which accounted for massive crop losses – thereby massive profit losses. The New York Times covered it with this:

“The heat and the drought are so bad in this southwest corner of Georgia that hogs can barely eat. Corn, a lucrative crop with a notorious thirst, is burning up in fields. Cotton plants are too weak to punch through soil so dry it might as well be pavement. Farmers with the money and equipment to irrigate are running wells dry in the unseasonably early and particularly brutal national drought that some say could rival the Dust Bowl days.”

Our governor declared twenty-two south Georgia farming counties disaster areas because of the drought in 2011. We can’t imagine how Senator de Leon missed this.

Also absent from the senator’s diatribe against immigration enforcement is the fact that agriculture is the only industry in the U.S. with their own visa for lawfully importing an unlimited (no numerical cap) number of temporary foreign workers. This visa, called the H2A, is widely avoided by many farmers because they are obligated to pay the legal workers a living wage and provide decent housing. Illegal labor is cheaper.

Due to the pressure created by Georgia’s 2011 HB 87 and its E-Verify component here – where agriculture is our largest industry – growers have moved to the H2A visas and the legal workforce it provides.

In 2012, the value of Georgia agricultural exports topped $3.32 billion, a 26 percent increase from 2011. And that Georgia’s agricultural exports reached an estimated $3 billion in 2013, up from $1.8 billion in 2009. And that since 2011 and passage of HB 87 and our E-Verify law, Georgia has been declared “the No. 1 state in which to do business” five times by the influential Site Selection magazine.

We think Senator de Leon may have a much different view of immigration enforcement if the hordes of illegals were English-speaking, potential conservative voters looking for a better life as they stream into California from Manitoba.

“Racist-driven deportation policies”, indeed.