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