{"id":3562,"date":"2010-09-24T11:11:04","date_gmt":"2010-09-24T16:11:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedustininmansociety.com\/blog\/?p=3562"},"modified":"2010-09-25T07:23:35","modified_gmt":"2010-09-25T12:23:35","slug":"da-king-said-efforts-to-add-enforcement-have-been-opposed-by-the-association-county-commissioners-of-georgia-and-the-georgia-municipal-association-immigration-reform-ads-key-to-8th-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/24\/da-king-said-efforts-to-add-enforcement-have-been-opposed-by-the-association-county-commissioners-of-georgia-and-the-georgia-municipal-association-immigration-reform-ads-key-to-8th-race\/","title":{"rendered":"“…D.A. King said efforts to add enforcement have been opposed by the Association County Commissioners of Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association – Immigration reform ads key to 8th race”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Immigration reform ads key to 8th race<\/strong>
\nBy MIKE STUCKA – mstucka@macon.co m <\/p>\n

Fights over illegal immigration are taking center stage in the 8th Congressional District race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This past weekend, U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., released what is at least the third television attack ad in a he-said, he-said fight with Republican challenger Austin Scott over who can be tougher on illegal immigration. <\/p>\n

Some of what\u2019s in those ads is true. Some is misleading. Some is irrelevant, because the legislation addressed in those ads appears to have little effect on illegal immigration.<\/p>\n

As big as the fight gets between Scott and Marshall, the candidates essentially agree on the broad outlines of immigration reform. Both candidates say illegal immigration is a serious problem. Both of them want increased security at the border. And both have backed legislation to block employers from hiring illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n

Beginning of an attack<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fight began with a pair of 2006 Georgia House bills that Scott, then a Republican state representative from Ashburn, voted on. <\/p>\n

Marshall, a Democrat, based the first attack ad on Scott\u2019s vote against House Bill 1238, which aimed to put a 5-percent tax on illegal immigrants\u2019 using Western Union or other services to send money back home. That bill ultimately was gutted, but not before Scott gave a four-minute speech on the floor against it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly believe that what we\u2019re about to do is tax people who are doing the best that they can to provide for their families, and I\u2019ve got a moral problem with that, and I\u2019ve got a problem with the fact that I\u2019m afraid that we\u2019re about to move down piecemeal immigration reform when what we really need is meaningful immigration reform at the federal level from our Republican Congress and our Republican Senate,\u201d Scott said, according to a video of the speech provided by Marshall\u2019s campaign staff.<\/p>\n

Marshall\u2019s ad zeroed in on the \u201cmoral problem\u201d phrase: A narrator intones, \u201cMr. Scott, what about the problem of illegal immigrants breaking the law?\u201d<\/p>\n

That Marshall ad appears to show a story about the House vote on the front page of The Telegraph. The newspaper actually ran a three-paragraph Associated Press story on page 3B, a version that does not quote or mention Scott or any other legislator. A statement by Scott was included in a longer version of the story.<\/p>\n

Scott said this month that he opposed the bill because it would have made Western Union an enforcement agent for the federal government. That motive wasn\u2019t mentioned at all in his four-minute speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 14 years I\u2019ve been in office, I\u2019ve only voted against one immigration bill, and that\u2019s it,\u201d Scott said.<\/p>\n

Counterattacks on the way<\/p>\n

Scott launched a counterattack on Marshall. The heart of the ad: \u201cTimes are hard, which makes Jim Marshall\u2019s attacks so shameful. But while Jim Marshall talks the talk typical of Washington politicians who failed to secure the border, Austin Scott has walked the walk, voting for the toughest illegal immigration bill in the country, to make English our official language and to stop illegal aliens from getting taxpayer-funded benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marshall\u2019s campaign launched an attack against that ad, citing an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article that says Scott\u2019s \u201ctoughest\u201d law can\u2019t be enforced.<\/p>\n

\u201cProsecutors say they can\u2019t bring charges under the law because it provides no penalties. But when Austin Scott did have a chance to vote for a tough law, he said, \u2018I have a moral problem with that,\u2019\u201d Marshall\u2019s announcer intones.<\/p>\n

Both of those ads are factual. Scott helped pass the tougher law, 2006\u2019s Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act. But that law is completely separate from the one Marshall initially attacked Scott on, and Marshall has no obligation to praise Scott for votes he agrees with. The vote on the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act came weeks after Scott\u2019s floor speech and \u201cno\u201d vote on the bill taxing illegal immigrants trying to send money.<\/p>\n

But all this may be moot.<\/p>\n

Searching for solutions<\/p>\n

D.A. King of the Dustin Inman Society, probably Georgia\u2019s most strident voice against illegal immigration, said the Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act was the toughest bill in the country at the time, and he helped the General Assembly work from a largely blank slate.<\/p>\n

The bill aimed to stop governments and private employers from using illegal immigrant labor and to prevent illegal immigrants from getting public benefits.<\/p>\n

King says the legislation failed on a critical point: There is no way to enforce the law. He estimates agencies and local governments ignore the law 40 percent of the time when they offer public benefits.<\/p>\n

King said efforts to add enforcement have been opposed by the Association County Commissioners of Georgia and the Georgia Municipal Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cEnforcement works, so we must find a government in Washington that will secure our borders and will enforce existing law,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n

In that, he\u2019s nearly echoing Marshall and Scott.<\/p>\n

In a Telegraph interview, Scott said \u201cthe debate over immigration should be about protecting America, about protecting our borders and the integrity of our laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Marshall wants to improve the borders but also focus on employers. His last bill got four co-sponsors before it withered in a subcommittee.<\/p>\n

\u201cCongress should simply pass the legislation that I\u2019ve drafted, which significantly enhances our current electronic employment eligibility verification, significantly stiffens penalties \u2014 both civil and criminal \u2014 for failure to use the program, and effectively gets rid of the subcontractor loophole\u201d that lets companies hire contractors that don\u2019t get checked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-425 1. <\/p>\n

Read more: <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Immigration reform ads key to 8th race By MIKE STUCKA – mstucka@macon.co m Fights over illegal immigration are taking center stage in the 8th Congressional District race. This past weekend, U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., released what is at least the third television attack ad in a he-said, he-said fight with Republican challenger Austin Scott […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thedustininmansociety.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}