Cobb BOC not using federal IMAGE tool to protect jobs
by D.A. King

The Marietta Daily Journal

July 03, 2012

D.A. King is an immigration enforcement activist and the president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society. When contacted by the Journal on President Barack Obama’s recent immigration announcement, King said: “Like most Americans, I have great sympathy for the young people who were brought here as babies illegally. But that’s not what this is about. This is about incrementalism on amnesty. This will be followed by a demand that their parents should be legal.”

“All politics is local”— former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill

On March 2, 2011, Obama’s ICE Director, John Morton, issued a policy — “the Morton Memo” — to ensure that his agency would only enforce immigration law against a specific subset of illegals by setting forth new priorities for the capture, detention and removal of those in this country illegally.

On June 14, the Washington Times reported that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with guarding the U.S. border, has written a secret draft policy telling Border Patrol agents to release “low-priority” captured illegal immigrants rather than bring them in for processing and prosecution.

“The memo pointedly warns that ‘no public mention’ should be made of the policy in order to keep it from being subject to Freedom of Information Act requests,” says the newspaper.

The memo says the policy was drafted at the behest of “immigrant rights” groups.

The next day, Obama made an announcement (it was not an Executive Order) from the White House Rose Garden that he had instructed his DHS Chief, Janet Napolitano, to “temporarily” defer enforcement action on yet another group of illegal aliens who say they were brought here as children and who claim to be less than 31 years old. With raging unemployment, “Dear Ruler” also plans on issuing them work permits.

Readers who believe the latest Obama amnesty is temporary, please write in with your reasons for trusting that the Easter bunny is right now preparing chocolate egg gifts for next spring.

This, while out-of-the-loop dupes who strive to join the American family lawfully wait in line and go through the immigration process according to that now fading Rule of Law.

But everything is going smoothly here in Republican controlled Georgia and Cobb County as far as illegal immigration enforcement goes. Right?

Wrong. Nearly 1,200 official agencies statewide — including here in Cobb — are not even filing required reports to show if they are actually following state law on E-Verify use. You can see a list of violators from the Department of Audits and Accounts on my MDJ blog.

The Cobb Board of Commissioners pose yet another glaring problem: They have failed to require that public contractors use a sure-fire tool still offered by the feds to ensure contractors hired by Cobb and others are in compliance with E-Verify laws. It’s also a tool that would make it considerably more difficult for job-thieving illegal aliens to use false ID documents and also — and this is key — to get the black-market labor that was hired before E-Verify use began off the payrolls of those contractors payrolls.

The no-cost E-Verify system may be used only on newly hired employees after the employer begins use.

Illegal aliens employed before use of E-Verify have near zero chance of being busted. Which is one reason why we see periodic hidden-camera news reports on local TV showing smirking illegals working on county-funded construction jobs boasting that “we don’t need no stinking papers …”

The Cobb County Board of Commissioners should already have passed an ordinance requiring that all taxpayer-funded contractors providing workers on jobs over which the BOC has authority be certified and audited under the no-cost federal ICE Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers program.

The BOC has already signed an agreement with ICE to become IMAGE certified, which means that the Human Resources Department has conducted a self-audit of past employment records known as “I-9” forms. That was merely step one. Step two should be to make it clear that only IMAGE-certified contractors will be considered for bidding on jobs after January of 2014.

The outraged and determined opposition coming from the very well funded contractors lobby centers around the audit of past I-9 employment forms. Because the feds will verify employee identity documents offered at hiring years ago — including Social Security numbers that are compared to existing records at Social Security headquarters — the black-market workers on the contractor’s payroll stand a very good chance of being discovered. That is the last thing many public contractors want.

Until Ruler Obama says that Social Security and ID document fraud is a protected crime for illegal aliens, this is a no-brainer of a decision for BOC members who genuinely desire to honor “real” (legal) immigrants, American citizens and protect taxpayers from funding illegal labor.

Candidates for county chairman need to educate themselves and announce their position on IMAGE-certified contractors. And thinking county voters should be asking why that hasn’t already happened.

Because all politics is local.

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Cobb not using tools to save jobs and tax dollars