Republican state senator Chuck Payne. Photo: Senate website.

Just in from various sources at the Georgia Capitol

Scott Tidwell has reportedly qualified to oppose Dalton’s Chuck Payne in the GOP primary for North Georgia’s Senate District 54.

Including from this pro-enforcement outlet, Senator Chuck Payne has been under barrage of fire recently for his “no” vote – along with Senator Kay Kirkpatrick – in the senate Public Safety Committee last month on an illegal alien drivers license reform bill (SB417) offered by conservative Senator Josh McKoon. A nearly identical bill passed the senate in 2016 with a near two-thirds majority but was not allowed a hearing in the House.

According to DDS, Georgia has issued, renewed or replaced more than 21,000 drivers licenses and or ID Cards for aliens USCIS says lack lawful status.

Payne penned a response to this writer’s letter to the editor of the Dalton Daily Citizen that was not well received by many conservatives in his district. Word from Dalton is that Payne has created almost as much anger over his curious public defense of his vote as he has the vote with the Democrats to kill McKoon’s legislation.

Details to follow.

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*Update, 12:50: I just spoke to Mr. Tidwell who was calling from the Georgia Capitol. He qualified about 11:00AM and said he had prayed about this decision all week. I asked him about Patne’s vote on the drivers license reform bill. He was not happy with his senator’s vote. “My vote would have been the opposite of that” he told me. On illegal immigration told me “this is a big issue with me…I am not for amnesty or this sort of thing” he said. His idea is that no illegal aliens should have a Georgia drivers license.

Age forty-six, Scott Tidwell is a native Georgian who grew up in the Powder Springs – Austell area of Cobb County. He lives with his family in Resaca. More details to follow.

Scott Tidwell qualifies for senate race. Photo: Special to DIS.

Photo: Bitalia & Co

Sent via email tonight at 10;13

Please consider this my official request for public records under state law.

IERB

Please send me the minutes of the February 28, 2018 IERB meeting.

Please send me any existing taxpayer funded audio or video recording of the February 28, 2018 meeting.

Please send me a list of the IERB members the Chairman counted as ‘present’ at the February 28, 2018 meeting.

As I have never been allowed to see or address these documents, please send me the written responses (including ‘Stipulations of Dismissal’) sent to the board by all of the respondents who had complaints addressed in the February 28, 2018 IERB meeting.

Please send the minutes of the IERB meeting in which Shawn Hanley was elected Chairman to replace Ben Vinson.

Please send me contact information for the court reporter who worked the February 28, 2018 IERB meeting.

Please send me any all documents that identify the person (male) who addressed the board and had the dismissals organized for the board to address and his position and title.

Please send me a copy of any IERB rule that addresses and allows any member to be regarded as “present” if that member is not physically in attendance at a “hearing.”

Please send any document or reference to a IERB rule that allows an initial hearing of a complaint and action on that complaint without allowing the complainant to offer or explain evidence or to address the board.

Please send any document or IERB rule that puts a time limit on a complainant’s question or observation in addressing the board.

D.A. King
2984 Lowe Trail
Marietta, Ga. 30066

WebPage-3  

On the bill from the anti-enforcement @AP.

Illegal aliens protest borders in Atlanta, January, 2016 – photo DIS

Dear editor at The Hill

Mollie Hooper gets it wrong — twice — in a February 28 piece on Rep. Steve King in which she tells readers that the DACA solution offered by Rep. Bob Goodlatte includes a path to U.S. citizenship.

“King also said he opposed a GOP immigration bill sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) that would provide a pathway to citizenship for people covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. DACA allowed immigrants who came to the United States illegally as children to work and go to school without fear of deportation” writes Hooper.

The Goodlatte bill codifies Obama’s DACA decree and provides a three-year renewable legal status with work and travel authorization. It does not grant green cards and thus no specific path to citizenship.

And let’s not overlook the fact that likely half of the now illegal victims of American borders did not cross those boundaries illegally. The DACA amnesty has also been extended to individuals who came to the U.S. lawfully and then illegally overstayed their visas.

I would have written sooner, but I assumed an astute editor would note the important error. This loyal reader asks for a correction.

D.A. King
Marietta, GA.

photo: FAIR

Pennsylvania Sued Over Noncitizen Voters

Here.

Red circles are “NO” voters on pro-American public safety bill.

Dalton Daily Citizen

Letter to the editor

Sunday, March 4, 2018

Not buying Sen. Payne’s explanation

I appreciated the letter to the editor from Mr. D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society educating us on Sen. Chuck Payne’s vote to kill a Republican-sponsored illegal alien driver’s license reform bill. Thanks to the Daily Citizen-News editors for running it.

It came as shocking news for many people that GOP Georgia is giving any driver’s licenses to any illegals.

The fact that we are documenting “the undocumented” doesn’t square with the message that politicians who campaign as Republican “conservatives” are doing everything possible to make Georgia unattractive to illegal immigration. The fact that non-citizens, who the Department of Homeland Security says lack lawful immigration status, carry around the same state-issued credentials as the legal immigrants we welcome is just wrong. Additionally, the revelation that the illegals use their driver’s licenses as valid federal ID for things like getting through security at American airports as easily as Americans boggles the logical mind. Can you see the potential security threat? I certainly can.

At our house, we are having trouble following Payne’s intellectual consistency on his recent votes. His rebuttal letter to Mr. King here tells us he thought the monetary cost of a law that would clearly mark the illegal aliens’ driver’s licenses was too high and that he thought it would cause the “creation of a whole new bureaucracy to enforce these new provisions would come without any warranted difference from what we currently have.” Huh? I still don’t have any idea what that meant. And I didn’t see him say what the cost was. Don’t all laws have a cost? Some new spending, especially on matters of public safety, is wise.

Less than a week after Payne joined the Dems in voting “no” in a committee against reliably-conservative Sen. Josh McKoon’s driver’s license bill, he voted “yes” in the full senate on SB452, a bill that will increase the chances of authorities being informed of the status of illegal aliens after they are arrested and prosecuted for additional crimes. I applaud that common sense vote. But I don’t follow Payne’s logic or priorities in adding to “the size of government.”

Maybe Payne is getting confusing advice from his campaign manager/advisor or the Gold Dome cheap-labor lobbyists on illegal immigration. Whatever the case, his letter here was unconvincing and discomforting to conservative voters who value public safety and steady, consistent, logical representation in Atlanta.

Denise Burns

Ringgold

Here

Atlanta Jewish Times
Friday, March 2, 2018

Break Chain Migration

Wonderful stories of our immigrant ancestors don’t change modern realities.

D.A. King

I enjoyed reading Dave Schechter’s Feb. 16 column (“Blessing the Memory of Immigrant Forebears”). It is easy to see that he loves his family and has an interest in the current debate on immigration. His narrative creates the welcome mental image of lawful immigrants struggling to join the American family while obeying our laws at the turn of the last century.

Schechter’s great-aunt Fannie sounds like a real character: “She enjoyed drinking scotch and liked a good liverwurst or smoked fish. She smoked cigarettes for 65 years, until she was 80, when a longtime friend’s admonishment put an end to that habit, and she lived another decade after that.”

I am truly sorry I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting her, or that my own great-aunts and grandmother didn’t get to hang out with Aunt Fannie.

But I am not sure that recounting his delightful family is a convincing argument in favor of continuing the chain migration policy that started in 1965.

Chain migration dictates that immigrants select the next wave of immigrants, regardless of any benefit or improvement offered to the common needs of the nation. It certainly doesn’t create the diversity we are told is the new standard of greatness.

An example: According to the Department of Homeland Security, Mexico, China and India send us the most immigrants now merely because they have sent us the most immigrants since the mid-1960s.

Even though we are now taking in about 1 million legal immigrants every year, Aunt Fannie would have a much more difficult time migrating to New York from Poland now than she did in 1905.

President Donald Trump is calling for an end to chain migration in favor of a system that admits migrants based on what they can contribute to American society. The current, broad “family reunification” policies should be updated with a system designed to admit immigrants with job skills needed in the U.S. economy, as well as the education and language ability to succeed. Only the spouse and unmarried minor children of the primary applicant would qualify as future immigrants.

While politically correct, chain migration doesn’t place the interests of American citizens first. Too many deserving potential immigrants are passed over in favor of the relatives of previous migrants, no matter what they bring — or don’t bring — to the table.

Replacing chain migration with a merit-based system would lower the overall number of aliens accepted into the country each year, promote assimilation and ensure that those accepted are able to further the economic priorities of the nation.

Ending chain migration should be viewed as the pro-American update it is intended to be. And we should all note that there is no universal civil right to live in the United States.

Perhaps the late Barbara Jordan said it best when she was the Bill Clinton-appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform from 1994 to 1996: “It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.”

Indeed.

photo: DIS

Renegade GOPers Sabotage Official English Bill

Insider Advantage Georgia

by Phil Kent | Mar 1, 2018

Capitol sources indicate that state Sens. P.K. Martin, R-Lawrenceville, and Renee Unterman, R-Buford, kept complaining to the GOP Senate caucus leadership that they would be hurt in their districts if they supported a constitutional amendment by Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, and 30-plus co-sponsors to designate English as the official language of government operations. This caused Senate leaders to back away from holding even an up-or-down floor vote on the amendment.

The measure passed the state Senate with a two-thirds vote in 2016 but observers say reluctance by the two Republicans and the loss of former Sen. Hunter Hill’s district to a liberal Democrat soured passage chances for this year.

The amendment, subject to ratification by a statewide referendum if passed by the legislature, would provide “that official state actions be in English” and “prohibit … any language other than English be used in any documents, regulations, orders, transactions, proceedings, meetings, programs or publications” as well as “prohibit discrimination, penalties or other limits on participation against persons who speak only English.”

“Georgia has an official English-in-government statute but it contains loopholes that would be closed with this amendment,” says Stephen Guschov, executive director of the Washington-based ProEnglish organization. “For example, the Georgia Department of Driver Services administers the permanent resident driver’s license test in 11 foreign languages. That ought to end because it undermines public safety, since all road signage is in English.”

“There are also common-sense exceptions for the state and its political subdivisions. They include the teaching of languages other than English, the promotion of diplomacy, trade, commerce and tourism with other languages, the protection of the rights of crime victims and criminal defendants if other language usage is required and continued use of terms and phrases from other languages that are commonly used,” Guschov noted. “Perhaps Senators Martin and Unterman didn’t read that section.”   Here.