May 23, 2011

Enforcement works….Secure Communities in MA

Posted by D.A. King at 9:57 pm - Email the author   Print This Post Print This Post  

Jessica Vaughan and Mike Stopa — Boston Globe

Immigration and ‘Secure Communities’

Most illegal [aliens] worry about being deported, so it is not unusual that they fear the police. This fear erupted into protests when Governor Patrick announced in December that Massachusetts would implement Secure Communities, a federal program that helps ICE coordinate efforts with state and local police to find and remove criminal illegal [aliens]…

HERE

May 21, 2011

Associated Press mixes race and ethnicity and legal status…wonder why? Anyway- HB 87 is working as planned: illegal aliens migrating out of Georgia, growers looking for legal workers through long standing Ag visa system

Posted by D.A. King at 1:08 pm - Email the author   Print This Post Print This Post  

Immigration crackdown worries Vidalia onion county

Associated Press

LYONS, Ga. (AP) — Signs point to an exodus in Vidalia onion country. Fliers on a Mexican storefront advertise free transportation for workers willing to pick jalapenos and banana peppers in Florida and blueberries in the Carolinas. Buying an outbound bus ticket now requires reservations.

Illegal immigrants and their families who harvest southeast Georgia’s trademarked sweet onions are considering leaving rather than risk deportation in the wake of a law signed by Gov. Nathan Deal targeting illegal workers.

While most states rejected immigration crackdowns this year, conservative Georgia and Utah are the only states where comprehensive bills have passed. With the ink barely dry on Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the country, the divisions between suburban voters and those in the countryside are once again laid bare when it comes to immigration, even among people who line up on many other issues.

Sandra Almanza, 20, cried behind the counter of her mother’s store, La Michoacana, at the thought of leaving to protect her husband, an illegal immigrant from Mexico City and the father of her unborn daughter. The couple was finishing the nursery.

“We just finished painting her room, but we don’t know how long we’ll stay there,” said Almanza, a U.S. citizen whose parents originally came to Lyons years ago to work in the onion fields. Their store sells phone cards to migrant laborers and wires their money back home. “We really don’t have that many options.”

The crackdown proved popular in suburban Atlanta, where Spanish-only signs proliferate and the Latino population has risen dramatically over the past few decades. Residents complain that illegal immigrants take their jobs and strain public resources.

“The citizens of Georgia demanded action,” said Republican Rep. Matt Ramsey, the bill’s sponsor, who lives about 30 miles southwest of Atlanta. “They let their legislators know that this was an issue they wanted to see addressed.”

The new law penalizes people who harbor or transport illegal immigrants in some situations and allows law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of suspects who can’t show an approved form of identification. Using false documents to get a job will be a felony once the law goes into effect in July.

Private employers with more than 10 workers must eventually use a federal database called E-Verify to check the immigration status of new hires. That doesn’t sit well with farmers or many of their illegal laborers.

Drive three hours from Atlanta into vegetable country — also a right-leaning region — and many oppose the law out of fear it will drive out the workers, legal and illegal, who stoop to pull up the Vidalia onions and other produce that make Georgia farming famous.

___

There’s no easy way to harvest an onion.

Mechanized threshers and reapers can pluck cotton, peanuts, corn and wheat from the earth. Machines shake pecans from trees and sweep them up. But easily bruised fruits and vegetables require hands-and-knees labor for planting and harvesting.

On a dusty field near Lyons, clusters of Latino fieldworkers hunched over onion beds, snipping green stalks from onion bulbs in 90-degree heat. They placed the bulbs in a red plastic bucket. Each full bucket tipped into a truck earns workers 38 cents.

A good worker might fill 300 buckets daily, earning just more than $100. Legal workers brought in on temporary work visas get better pay.

They sweat through long-sleeve shirts, jeans, bandannas and hats worn to shield them from the sun. A thin layer of gray-brown dust kicked up from the field quickly settles in the nostrils and sticks to the skin.

Alfredo Perez said he arrived illegally from Mexico three years ago. He travels between Florida, Michigan and Georgia picking crops.

“I think this law is difficult because they don’t want to let us work here. We’re not delinquents,” he said. “We usually come here during onion season, but because of the law, we’re going to have to think about whether or not we’ll come back.”

Authorities face a decision on how strictly to enforce parts of the law.

Toombs County Sheriff Alvie Lee Kight Jr. knows the dilemma well. He’s responsible for patrolling the area. His family also grows Vidalia onions. Prominent famers want him to show leniency. An elected official, he may well face pressure from voters to target illegal immigrants.

He’s sympathetic to many sides of the debate. Kight said his family farm has at times been unable to get visas for temporary field workers, forcing it to hire local labor. That comes with the risk of employing illegal immigrants. As long as workers present what appear to be legitimate documents, employers cannot delve deeper into their immigration status.

He supports tightening border security to stanch the flow of illegal immigrants. Then, Kight said, the country must address the illegal immigrants already here. He didn’t know how to solve the problem, but he felt the country could ease the barriers to bringing in legal workers.

“We shouldn’t have illegals here,” he said. “But I also think it should be a workable solution. We need them here to work, but we want them to be legal.”

Onion farmers fear losing their workers, legal or not.

Delbert Bland owns Bland Farms, one of the biggest sweet onion growers in the country. He and his father started with five acres in 1983. The international operation is now approaching $100 million in sales.

Rather than rely on local hires, Bland’s farm has enrolled in a federal guest worker program and brings in as many as 350 workers from Mexico for the spring onion harvest. The company must pay for their travel, housing and utilities, and pay above-market wages. Bland considers it worth the cost when compared to the losses he could suffer if there’s a labor shortage during the harvest from April to June.

If local police step up enforcement, Bland predicted it could have a chilling effect on all immigrant workers.

He recently called the local sheriff’s office to complain about a motorcyclist who had repeatedly sped past his plant. When deputies arrived to stake out the speeder, it triggered a panic among the workers, one of whom came to talk to him.

“He comes in here and he’s as white as a ghost. And he says, ‘Mr. Delbert, there’s somebody out there, the police is out there. What are we going to do?’ And the guy’s legal,” Bland said.

Bland’s chief operating officer, Michael Hively, called the immigration crackdown a political distraction.

“It took the focus off a lot of issues that are more important,” Hively said.

Farmer R.T. Stanley Jr. of Stanley Farms grows roughly 1,200 acres of onions. Some of his workers arrive with temporary agriculture visas, while others are hired locally. While those workers must present paperwork showing they are here legally, Stanley acknowledged some of it could be fake.

He scoffs at the idea of U.S. citizens doing the work.

“I hire locals usually the first of the season,” he said. “They come out and act like they really want to work. You know how long they stay? Two hours. They say this work’s too hard.”

___

When immigrant workers arrive in town, they often knock at the door of the Southeast Georgia Communities Project in Lyons, which operates a food bank, distributes clothing and hosts English classes. Its executive director, Andrea Hinojosa, serves as a go-between for Spanish-speaking migrants and the English-speaking world around them.

She said it’s popular for whites to say they want illegal immigrants gone. Yet they also profit from their presence. Acting on Hinojosa’s advice, the local Wal-Mart stocked up on beef tongue and tripe to increase sales to Latino workers.

“They leave thousands and thousands of dollars locally,” she said of the workers.

Hinojosa gets phone calls from whites seeking cheap labor, for example, for help with yard work or cleaning.

“These are people who, I know, would not vote for some type of work visas,” she said.

Few are certain what will happen to the area once the law fully takes effect, but some consequences are already being felt. Almanza predicts her mother’s store will close if its Latino clientele leaves. Having lived most of her life in a town of roughly 4,000 people, she rules out going to Mexico City to protect her husband.

“You don’t know anybody,” she said. “It’s a large city, you could easily get lost and, you know, I don’t think I could stay there.”

Stanley said that if the E-Verify system disqualifies large parts of his workforce, it could spell disaster for the business.

“It could shut me down, I don’t know,” Stanley said. “Got to wait and see.”

Copyright © 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved

HERE

Gay split on boycotting Georgia over immigration law

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Project Q — Atlanta

Gay split on boycotting Georgia over immigration law

The gulf between LGBT activists who support boycotting the state over its new immigration law and those who don’t widened considerably on Friday when a leading Latino activist, who is also gay, pooh-poohed the idea. — If the reception to opposing boycotts as a response to House Bill 87 is anything like the reception we received when we criticized the idea in April, Jerry Gonzalez ought to stay out of gay bars and businesses for a while…

HERE

More Obama immigration claims that just aren’t true

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Bob Dane — Fox News

4 Obama immigration claims that just aren’t true

“Are the borders really secure?” is probably not the best set-up for the next Geico commercial. No, they’re really not secure. — This president would have us believe otherwise. His immigration speech in El Paso, Texas, bordered as much on deception as it did physically with Mexico, just over the Rio Grande….

HERE

Usual suspects miffed over new Georgia immigration law

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Dalton Daily Citizen

Usual suspects miffed over new Georgia immigration law

“Latinos unidos jamás serán vencidos!” — The phrase — ‘Latinos united will never be beat!’ — was chanted by a handful of protesters in front of Dalton City Hall on Friday afternoon rallying against House Bill 87, Georgia’s new immigration law critics say unfairly targets Hispanics… HERE

May 18, 2011

See if you can detect the message the illegal alien remora have agreed on to try to keep their flock here in Georgia after HB 87 – translated

Posted by D.A. King at 1:45 pm - Email the author   Print This Post Print This Post  

TRANSLATION From the foreign language newspaper Mundo Hispanico on trying to convince the illegals to not migrate out of Georgia because of HB 87 HERE

Several activists communitarian proimmigrants and organizations insisted to the Latin undocumented people to maintain the calm and not to make decisions hurried after the promulgation from the law antiimmigrant HB87. These are some of their recommendations:

“We needed to maintain the calm and to make rational decisions, not based on the fear or the emotion. The HB87 will not be implemented until the 1 of July and we waited for demands similar to which happened in Arizona and Utah”. Jerry González, Executive Director of the Association of Elect Latin Civil servants of Georgia (GALEO) ——————–

“La Latin American AsociaciĂłn (LAA) is very disappointed of which the governor signed the HB87, turning it into law. We are worried that it will cause economic difficulties for the state and many of our families. What we mean to him to our families is that, the first thing who we must remember, this law will not be effective until the 1 of July and that will be several demands that they will prohibit that this law becomes effective”. Jeffrey Mud wall, director of Operations of 
 Latin American AsociaciĂłn (LAA) ——————–

“First, (the HB87) it is not law until the 1 of July and people must have a little faith, only right now we began the fight. They relax, follow with its life. They do not have to make drastic decisions without analyzing its situation. They speak with its lawyer if it is necessary”. Charles Kuck, lawyer ——————–

“We do not want that people flee from the state. Those that wants this law want that the community immigrant goes away. We think that we have the right to remain and that the immigrants are welcomes to Georgia. We animated to him to be united to the fight to form popular committees, committees of defense of the community and to work in each neighbourhood to protect its right to live here”. Lisa Adler, Amnesty International ——————–

“People need to know at this moment what is this law and to arm themselves with that knowledge and to share that information in her community, with its family and in her churches. (Thus) people will begin to understand what she is happening”. Helen Kim Ho, director of Asian American Legal Advocacy Center (AALAC) ——————–

“GLAHR asks to him to the community that does not let itself take by the panic against this law. This law can be fought and is necessary to fight it in all the fronts. And this law yes can be defeated and yes it is going away to defeat. State and local laws on migratory subjects normally have been countermanded by the courts because it does not correspond to him to the states, counties or cities to legislate on migratory subjects. That corresponds to him to the federal Government”. Adelina Nicholls, director of the Latin Alliance Pro Human rights of Georgia (GLAHR) ——————–

“We In this state Must right to have left where we have lived, worked and studied, some of us almost all the life. We will not obey a law that is unjust, that it only looks for to remove to our families and to criminalize our community. We will resist until justice prevails and HB87 and all the laws antiimmigrants are revoked”. Georgina Perez, student activist of the Alliance of Undocumented Young people of Atlanta HERE

Illegal alien lobby: We hate you and your stinking law! VIDEO

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HB 87 signing, courtesy of GALEO complete with howling mindless illegals and supporters

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HERE

Did you hear the Dustin Inman Society mentioned in the THANK YOU list? Me either.

And I won’t forget.

May 17, 2011

On his T-shirts, the Mexican-born Carlos Santana honors a Stalinist who abolished all civil rights in Cuba, craved to abolish them worldwide, belittled Mexicans as “a rabble of illiterate Indians,” and craved to nuke Santana’s adopted country– the one that showered him with multiple honors and millions of dollars

Posted by D.A. King at 8:29 pm - Email the author   Print This Post Print This Post  

Townhall Columnist Humberto Fontova

Humberto Fontova

“Georgia’s Immigration laws “Cruel and Shameful,” says Che Guevara fan Carlos Santana

“On his T-shirts, the Mexican-born Carlos Santana honors a Stalinist who abolished all civil rights in Cuba, craved to abolish them worldwide, belittled Mexicans as “a rabble of illiterate Indians,” and craved to nuke Santana’s adopted country– the one that showered him with multiple honors and millions of dollars…

HERE

May 16, 2011

video 11 Alive news in which I respond to Carlos Santana

Posted by D.A. King at 8:25 pm - Email the author   Print This Post Print This Post  

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