AJC Political Insider
Your morning jolt: Rare agreement on the flaws of an illegal immigration bill

9:55 am February 7, 2011, by jgalloway

D.A. King, the illegal immigration activist, and representatives of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Official get along like a house on fire.

If that house is also filled with kegs of gunpowder and roofing nails.

State officials have been known to insist that King and Jerry Gonzales, GALEO’s executive director, sit on opposite sides of the room at hearings.

So when the two sides agree on anything to do with immigration, we must pay attention. This morning’s topic is SB 40, state Sen. Jack Murphy’s attempt to require all businesses in Georgia to use the federal computer registry called E-Verify – or something like it – to make sure their hires are legal U.S. residents.

The bill includes this exemption, presumably intended for farmers:

This Code section shall not apply to any person or entity who has filed an H-1 or H-2 application, or similar type of application, with the United States Department of Labor.

Last week, King labeled the loophole “preposterous.”

“On illegal employment, the bill’s author has excluded so many industries from the badly needed required statewide use of the no-cost federal E-Verify system so as to make it a parody of an employment enforcement bill,” King said, promising to see the bill changed or killed.

King is not an immigration lawyer. But Charles Kuck, who calls himself the “token Republican” on GALEO’s board of directors, does have a shingle.

More than that, Kuck is also the past president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. And Kuck says King is right.

On Friday, during a break in a hearing on state Rep. Matt Ramsey’s immigration bill, Kuck noted several flaws in the exception carved out by SB 47. Chief among them is the fact that it is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that handles work visas – not the Department of Labor.

Kuck continued:

“There’s no such thing as an H-1 or H-2 petition….. Let’s presume [Murphy is] speaking of H1Bs, which are used by the AJC to hire foreign reporters, or Georgia Pacific to hire an engineer or, really, any company, and the H2As, which are [for] temporary agricultural workers, and H2Bs, which are [for] temporary, ‘other’ workers.

“Say I’ve got a landscape company, I just got a contract with the state to take care of the highways. I need 500 guys. I do an H2B, I bring in 500 workers. Those people – those employer who doesn’t use any of those – don’t have to enroll in E-Verify. That’s every employer in Georgia, potentially….

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