My guest column in today’s MDJ

Contact info for each candidate for Georgia governor:

Nathan Deal HERE

Karen Handel HERE

Roy Barnes HERE

Marietta Daily Journal

July 28, 2010

COMMENTARY

D.A. King: Candidate questions

Trio of gubernatorial hopefuls quizzed on illegal immigration

Below are six questions on illegal immigration I sent to the three remaining candidates for Georgia governor (Republicans in a runoff, Nathan Deal and Karen Handel, and Democrat Roy Barnes) Tuesday:

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Georgia ranks 50th among the states in most year-over-year job losses and has lost more jobs than any other state except California.

Georgia ranks sixth in the nation for the population of “undocumented workers” and is home to more black-market labor than the state of Arizona. Most Georgians realize that illegal immigration is not a separate issue from “jobs, jobs jobs.”

1.) Will you commit to using the power of the Governor’s office to put in place legislation that requires use of the no-cost federal E-Verify employment verification system to obtain or renew a business license/ ‘occupational tax certificate’ in Georgia?

This is a YES or No question.

One requirement (OCGA 13-10-90) in the 2006 Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act is that all public employers and their contractors use the federal E-Verify system. According to a recent list provided by the E-Verify office there is not yet 100% compliance from local governments.

The effective date of the mandate was July 1, 2007.

2.) What will you do, if anything, to improve the law to protect jobs for Georgians on Public Works contracts for legal labor?

Georgia law requires all official agencies in Georgia to use the federal Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database to verify the eligibility of non-citizen applicants for Public Benefits, after an affidavit process.

The effective date was 1 July 2007 and then another on 1 January 2010. (OCGA 50-36-1)

There is no real penalty for ignoring the law and legislation aimed at creating sanctions has been gutted and defeated in each of the last two sessions (HB 2 in 2009, HB 1164 in 2010). According to a list provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as of July 1, there are only 211 agencies in the process of gaining SAVE authority with 189 active users.

There are 159 counties and 535 municipalities in Georgia. The number of other government agencies administering Public Benefits is unknown. There is no state oversight or educational agency to monitor and measure compliance or to improve effectiveness.

3.) Given the state of the Georgia budget, what will you do, if anything, to improve existing Georgia law and procedure to gain compliance with the code that is aimed at stopping Georgia’s finite and shrinking taxpayer-funded public benefits from going to ineligible illegal aliens?

Currently, there is much debate about the actual dollar cost of illegal immigration and illegal employment to Georgians. What is not in dispute is the high cost of K-12 education for illegals and the children of illegals. These costs are followed by medical treatment, incarceration and translation services.

4.) On the premise that we cannot effectively change what we do not measure, will you commit to putting in place questionnaires and monitoring procedures to ascertain the citizenship/immigration status of individuals and families receiving federally mandated taxpayer funded benefits so as to create an official database from which to gain public knowledge of the real cost of illegal immigration to Georgians?

This is a YES or NO question.

5.) If elected, will you do whatever necessary to prohibit illegal aliens from attending any school in Georgia’s university system and our technical college system?This is a YES or NO question.

According to multiple media reports people who have been residing and taking jobs illegally in Arizona are migrating out of that state in fear of recent state legislation, the ‘Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act’ (SB 1070).

Nationwide, it has been proven repeatedly that illegal aliens leave areas and communities and states where immigration, benefits and employment laws are enforced. Departing illegals leave behind job openings and allow wages to go up for lawful labor.

Strain on state and local budgets is relieved due to an increased tax base and a decrease in the need for providing benefits and services to ineligible, illegal, low wage recipients.

The Arizona law mirrors long standing federal law and most agree that it is a proven deterrent and like federal law, clearly prohibits the use of race or ethnicity as reasonable cause for enforcement.

6.) Will you commit to using the power of the Georgia Governor’s office to create, pass and sign into law legislation based on Arizona’s SB 1070 – including making illegal immigration a state crime in Georgia?

I will let you know their responses next week, right here.

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which is opposed to illegal immigration. On the Web: www.TheDustinInmanSociety.org

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – D A King Candidate questions

Marietta Daily Journal

Joe Kirby:
by Joe Kirby
Columnist
July 25, 2010 12:00 AM

What has been the biggest and most incendiary issue in Georgia politics this year? Here are some clues: It’s not the economy. And it’s not education, although all of those have been much discussed.

No, the dominant issue this spring and summer has been illegal immigration and what to do about it. And that probably does not bode well for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes of Marietta.

Barnes will face either former Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel or former U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal this fall.

Barnes matches up very well with them on economic and education issues, and arguably is even stronger on them than they are. But to have any hope of winning, he must be strong on all three of the dominant issues – especially on immigration, since it is the most incendiary of the three. And right now he is not the strongest – although he has shown signs in the last 10 days of trying to catch that political “wave.”

He said at a Democratic gubernatorial debate July 16 that he would be willing to sign an Arizona-type law against illegal immigration, provided he was satisfied that it did not encourage racial profiling.

Barnes is trying to walk a hair-thin high-wire on the issue. If he were to take a pro-amnesty position typical of many Democrats, you could write the obituary right now for his hopes of winning. He immediately loses any hopes of support from stray Republicans. And my guess these days is that most Georgia independent voters – without whom he has little hope of winning – have views on immigration virtually indistinguishable from those of Handel or Deal.

Yet if he signals support for any immigration reform proposal that seems discriminatory, he immediately starts hemorrhaging support from the largest voting bloc among Georgia Democrats, African-Americans.

His debate comments were an attempt to send different messages to different constituencies at the same time.

Barnes until recent days had kept a low profile on the immigration debate, even as one of the biggest political stories of the year – the Jessica Colotl case – exploded in his own backyard.

Ms. Colotl is a Kennesaw State University student who was stopped for a minor traffic infraction while driving on campus, gave false statements to the police about herself, was discovered to be in the country illegally and then sent to an immigration detention center in Alabama. After the intercession of KSU President Dr. Dan Papp, she was released and told by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement she could remain in the country for another year to finish her degree. It’s not clear what good that would do her, because as the state’s best-known illegal alien, a “celebrity illegal,” as it were, it would be impossible for her to work legally in this state.

Barnes has finally weighed in on the Colotl case, although what he has said thus far appears somewhat contradictory. He told the Atlanta newspapers that illegal aliens should be barred from enrollment at public colleges and universities. But he said at the July 16 debate that it is wrong to expel students like Colotl who had been brought to this country by their parents at a young age. It was a compassionate response, but one that runs counter to prevailing sentiment in this state, where most people are outraged by the state Board of Regents’ position that coveted slots at the state’s public institutions of higher learning can be awarded to illegal aliens.

Yet to be determined are Barnes’ positions on immigration-related issues such as the controversial 287(g) program, used effectively in Cobb and Gwinnett counties to check the legal status of those arrested on other crimes and taken to jail; and whether he thinks the state’s 2006 law Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act, which requires public employers, their contractors – and their subcontractors – to use the federal E-Verify database, should be vigorously enforced at the state level.

And what is Barnes’ position on the proposed DREAM Act which is now before the U.S. Senate and is strongly supported by Obama? That proposal is aimed at young people like Colotl who are in the country illegally after being brought here by their parents as children and who now, having enjoyed a K-12 education, desire to go to college.

It would give amnesty to virtually anyone who entered the country before age 16 and would apply to “kids” up to the age of 35. It also would let aliens “claim” to be eligible for the amnesty without offering any proof, would require the feds to undertake costly, lengthy investigations to disprove any such claims, would provide for U.S. citizenship for parents of such students, and would remove the federal ban on in-state tuition for future illegal aliens. In short, it would be a mass amnesty.

Obama and his fellow advocates for illegal aliens call it the DREAM Act, but for the rest of Americans, it would be a NIGHTMARE.

How ironic that Barnes’ candidacy, which is anchored in ever-more Democratic Cobb, could hinge on his positions this summer on an issue crystallized for most Georgians by the furor over an illegal alien in Cobb County who nearly no one had ever heard of as the year began.

Joe Kirby is Editorial Page Editor of the Marietta Daily Journal and co-author of the new “Then & Now: Marietta Revisited.”

Read more: The Marietta Daily Journal – Joe Kirby A Hair Thin High Wire

Rome News- Tribune

GOP govenor hopefuls talk tough on illegal immigration

by KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press Writer

ATLANTA (AP) — With rhetoric about immigration intensifying nationwide, Georgia’s Republican candidates for governor are taking every chance they get to reiterate their tough stances on illegal immigration.

At debates and forums, on their websites and in television advertisements, the four top contenders in the seven-person GOP primary say they’d support a tough immigration law like the one that recently passed in Arizona. And they’re calling on state college administrators to make sure no illegal immigrants attend state schools.

“The competing Republican gubernatorial candidates are simply trying to show that they are very much committed to tougher immigration policy,” said University of Georgia political science professor Charles Bullock. “There’s probably not a whole lot of difference between what they would do but, you know, it plays well.”

With a comprehensive immigration reform plan seeming unlikely to make it onto the congressional agenda this year, immigration might have lost footing this election year to pressing issues like health care and the economy. But the passage of a strict new law in Arizona in April sparked months of heated debate.

“The reality is illegal immigration is a big problem nationwide, and it’s a big problem in Georgia,” said Stephen Puetz, campaign manager for Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, the GOP money leader. “Our state needs to do more if the federal government isn’t going to enforce their laws.”

The Arizona law, which goes into effect next month, requires police investigating another incident or crime to ask people about their immigration status if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally.

It has been widely decried by civil liberties and immigrant rights activists, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently said the federal government planned to sue over the issue.

The four leading contenders for the Republican nomination for governor in Georgia have all said they would like to see a law here that mirrors the Arizona law.

“Nathan would put into law legislation similar to what passed in Arizona,” said Brian Robinson, a spokesman for former congressman Nathan Deal. “Immigration reform will be part of his mandate in his first session at the Legislature as governor.”

The high-profile case of an illegal immigrant student at Kennesaw State University who was arrested in the spring after being stopped for a minor traffic violation and was nearly deported before the federal government deferred action on her case for a year has also fueled the immigration debate in Georgia.

“Karen thinks we should check the legal status of students, and that those who are not here legally should be removed from school and should, frankly, be sent back to their country of origin,” said Dan McLagan, a spokesman for former Secretary of State Karen Handel.

Handel and the other three leading Republican candidates have all called on the Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s public universities and colleges, to come up with a way to verify that applicants are in the country legally.

Former state Sen. Eric Johnson earlier this month unveiled a proposal that would require elementary and secondary schools to collect citizenship data on enrolling students and also would require public hospitals to find out which patients are in the country legally.

Deal has publicly sparred with Johnson over that proposal, saying teachers and hospitals shouldn’t be dragged into enforcement of immigration laws.

Oxendine has said he will work with the state’s next attorney general to sue the federal government to recoup prison and other costs incurred by the state for the detention of any illegal immigrant. His reasoning for that, said Puetz, is that states wouldn’t have to bear those costs if the federal government had effectively done its job of keeping illegal immigrants out.

In his role as insurance commissioner, a seat he’s held since 1994, Oxendine hasn’t dealt much with the issue of illegal immigration. The other three leading Republicans all tout their past records as indicators of future toughness.

Johnson notes that he was president pro tem in the state Senate when Georgia passed one of the toughest immigration laws in the country.

Handel implemented the use of the federal SAVE database to verify the immigration status of applicants for professional licenses when she was secretary of state, McLagan said.

Deal’s campaign notes he consistently pushed for stricter enforcement of federal immigration laws while he was in Congress.

While immigration has been a much-discussed topic for Republicans in the gubernatorial primary, it’s barely been a blip on the radar on the Democratic side. But Bullock, the UGA professor, thinks it’s a topic the Democratic nominee won’t be able to avoid.

“I think it will continue on into the general election,” he said. “It’s going to be an issue that I think we’re going to see Republicans using across the nation.”

That wouldn’t be a new tactic. When Gov. Sonny Perdue was running for re-election in 2006, GOP ads depicted him as tough on illegal immigration after he signed a strict immigration bill into law and accused Democratic challenger Mark Taylor of failing to show leadership on the issue.

Read more: RN-T.com – GOP govenor hopefuls talk tough on illegal immigration

Your morning jolt: Former Mexican president says we need softer border, receives (honorary) Georgia citizenship
May 13, 2009, by Jim Galloway

The former president of Mexico on Tuesday pointed to the European Union, where there are softer borders, a common passport design, and only one currency — the euro.

Mexico, Canada and the United States need something like that, said Vicente Fox, wrapping up a two-day visit to Atlanta at a conference at Kennesaw State University.

“Walls don’t work,” Fox said repeatedly, “There is a sense of fear in this nation after Sept. 11, and I understand that, but building walls is not the answer.”

Fox spoke to a group of about 150 who attended open panel discussions on the future of the North American Free Trade Agreement. They included my AJC colleague Mary Lou Pickel, who filed the information above — and below.

Outside, a handful of protesters gathered to tell Fox to go home. One sign read “No American Union.” D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society, an anti-illegal immigrant group in Marietta, said he did not organize the protest. King sat quietly inside, listening to the panel discussions and taking notes.

Fox spoke to graduating students at Emory University on Monday and received an honorary degree there. At KSU, state Rep. Pedro Marin (D-Duluth) presented Fox with a state certificate that declared him an honorary citizen of Georgia. The gesture was stuffed with irony.

The certificate was signed by Georgia Secretary of State Karen Handel, who strongly supported a new law this year demanding that new voters show written proof of citizenship before they’re allowed to register.

Proponents of that law said it would cut down on fraud and make sure that illegal immigrants do not vote. Opponents said it amounted to a poll tax against the poor and elderly, who would have to pay to get documents proving they were born in the United States, rather than simply swearing to it, as has been the practice.

Handel is now running for governor. Marin, a Democrat, just smiled when asked about the citizenship certificate. “I want him to keep Georgia on his mind,” Marin said.

The H1N1 virus was another topic of conversation. In Mexico, and here.

(Mulligans, a bar in nearby Marietta, known for its controversial messages on its sign out front, had this one this week: “Swine flu – another Mexican import!”)

Fox said his country was prepared to handle a pandemic, which the outbreak was not. But the country has seen a 90 percent drop in tourism, Fox said.

Cruise ships no longer want to stop at Mexican ports. “Oh, Mexicans have influenza! Right away – everybody hide!” Fox joked.

“The Chinese say, ‘We don’t want Mexicans for the moment,’” Fox said. Mexico, insulted by China’s stance, chartered a plane to pick up about 43 Mexican citizens who did not have the flu, but were quarantined in China nonetheless.

“It’s time to invite everybody to come back to Mexico,” the former president said. He plugged a festival in early June sponsored by his “ El Centro Fox,” a kind of presidential library he founded in Guanajuato, as a lovely reason to visit Mexico soon.

He did not say whether he would now attempt to register to vote in the 2010 race for governor of Georgia.

….more here

Keep illegal aliens out of Georgia’s public university seats – HB 59 COMMITTEE REPORT

ACTION NEEDED

You are loosing influence under the Gold Dome because of a weak, former Democrat, Republican committee chairman and the fact that the crazies sent in more calls and emails than Americans did – and sent more people to the meeting. Photos HERE

NOTE: If you don’t want to take the time to help with defending Georgia from the invasion of illegal aliens, please stop reading here. If you have children, read to the end for how to help protect them.

A not detailed enough report from yesterday’s (Tuesday) Georgia House of Representatives committee on Higher Education meeting on HB 59 , a bill that says we must obey the law passed in 2006 to save public funded classroom seats for citizens and real, legal immigrants.

By my count, most of the Republican controlled committee members attended. Being personally acquainted with most of them, I can tell you that we had a wide margin of YEA votes to easily pass the bill out of committee so that it could go through the House Rules committee and then to the House floor for a vote.

We have the votes there as well. And in the Senate.

The newly appointed Republican Chairman of the Higher Education Committee, former Democrat Rep. Carl Rogers of Gainesville, refused to allow a vote. This same bill easily passed this same committee under a different Chairman last year.

* It appeared to everyone present, including this pro-enforcement American, that he was quite intimidated by and perhaps sympathetic to, the room full of angry, self proclaimed illegal aliens organized by the ACLU, Amnesty International and the race-baiting separatists at GALEO. The room was packed.

* The Chairman actually asked for a show of hands of who opposed HB 59 from the radicals in the room and spent considerable time counting those hands – while you were at work trying to earn the money to pay your taxes so that the Board of Regents can obtain the budget dollars to continue to pay for universities to deny admission to citizen military members, veterans and real immigrants while admitting illegal aliens who hate us and who cannot lawfully obtain employment after graduation.

* Chairman Rogers allowed long, loud applause from the crowd each time a race-baiting liberal crazy finished their always over the allotted time rants and actually thanked some of them for coming.

It was the most unprofessional and poorly-run committee meeting I have ever seen in the Georgia Capitol. But I have only been going there since 2004.

You can read some press reports on the day HERE and HERE and HERE .

The Chairman has told the press that he wants to go through the “1000 emails” he has received to gauge public opinion on the bill. More than half of those emails are generated by the fringe ACLU and are coming from very resentful and angry wanna-be future voter, illegal aliens and the disgusting Jerry Gonzalez types.

The control of a major piece of illegal immigration enforcement legislation and maybe an important committee in the Republican controlled Georgia Capitol has now been turned over to the hate- filled race-baiters on the far Democrat left.

Governor Deal promised during the campaign to use the power of his office if elected to get exactly such a bill passed:

Question: “If elected, will you do whatever necessary to prohibit illegal aliens from attending any school in Georgia’s university system and our technical college system? This is a YES or NO question.
(Candidate Roy) Barnes: “I am not in favor of illegal immigrants attending Georgia’s public colleges and universities.”
(Candidate Nathan) Deal Deal: “Yes.”
(Candidate Karen) Handel: “Yes.”
( from the Marietta Daily Journal,August 1, 2010)

Now elected, the governor’s office has remained silent on this bill since it was introduced last February and on illegals in the state’s university system.

You are loosing influence under the Gold Dome because of a weak committee chairman and the fact that the crazies sent in more calls and emails than Americans did. If this bill is allowed to be held long enough (past day 30 of the session – today is day 11), it will die, which I believe is the plan of Chairman Carl Rogers.

If you care and want to help here is what must be done:

Call the Speaker of the Georgia House office 404.656.5020 to say that you are outraged at the way the House Committee on Higher Education Committee was run on Tuesday, January 31st and that you want HB 59 to pass. “Why did the Chairman refuse to allow a vote when the votes were clearly there to pass HB 59? Please get HB 59 to the House floor” Then send the Speaker an email with the same message. Be polite. The Speaker is a good man who helped us last year with HB 87. david.ralston@house.ga.gov

Call the office of Rep. Carl Rogers, the Chairman of the House Higher education Committee 404.656.5146 to express your outrage that he refused to allow a vote on HB 59. Politely explain that this is a conservative state and that we have not yet agreed to turn our state government over to screaming illegal aliens. Then send an e-mail. “HB 59 is a scorecard issue for the coming elections, why are you holding up a bill that has the votes needed to go to the floor? It looks like the illegal alien lobby is in charge of your committee.” carl.rogers@house.ga.gov

Then, call the office of the Georgia Governor 404 656 1776 and leave polite word that you want to know why the governor has failed to speak up on saving public university states for real immigrants and American citizens as he promised us in his campaign. Then send an email CONTACT HERE

Or sit back and ignore all of this. Maybe the illegal alien lobby won’t be so bad when they take complete control of the Georgia Capitol.