At issue is Senate Bill 458, introduced by state Senator Barry Loudermilk (R-Cassville) which would streamline the process by which official agencies administer public benefits, increase security on acceptance of foreign passports as “secure and verifiable” identification to obtain benefits and insert impossible-to-redefine or ignore language into 2006 state law that was intended to have already stopped admission of illegal aliens into USG.
On the anti-enforcement, opposition side are the usual suspects, including commentary writers at the Atlanta newspapers, the ACLU, virtually all of Georgia’s many well-funded, tribal-centric, leftist illegal alien lobby corporations and yet another militant faction calling itself the “Georgia Undocumented Youth Alliance” (rallying cry? “Undocumented, Unafraid, Unapologetic.” Recently seen T-shirt blurb? “I am here I-L-L-E-G-A-L-L-Y! Screw you!”).
Along with the above, this legislation has brought another foe to the committee table. With accompanying entourage, the Chancellor of the Board of Regents, Hank Huckaby, recently appointed by Gov. Deal, has testified in committee against passage of SB 458.
The goal of all state legislation aimed at illegal immigration is to make Georgia very unattractive to that crime. Enforcement, an undeniable deterrent, works. Resentful illegals have threatened to leave Georgia if the bill passes and is actually enforced.
The Regents’ stated ambition is to educate the illegals so as to further “a productive Georgia.”
Nevermind our raging unemployment and that illegal aliens are not legally eligible to work anywhere in the country. And that if admission policy in our tax-funded post-secondary education system is based on the ludicrous premise that another amnesty is just around the corner, we may as well hoist the flag of surrender on all of our immigration laws. And our borders.
The outcome of SB 458 in the Republican-controlled Capitol will be quite enlightening for attentive voters for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is watching to see whether Gov. Nathan Deal fulfills his rock-solid, no-nonsense campaign promise made in the Marietta Daily Journal to “do whatever necessary to prohibit illegal aliens from attending any school in Georgia’s university system and our technical college system.”
The governor has remained silent on the bill. There are six more days remaining in the 2012 session.
A similar House measure (HB 59) was allowed to expire this year after the former Democrat chairman of the House Higher Education Committee, Carl Rogers (R-Gainesville), refused to allow a vote when it was clear that there were more than enough to pass the bill.
It is important to know that the same bill was heard in the same House committee last year and passed, with a “YES” vote from then-legislator Hank Huckaby. Because it was halted to focus on HB 87, it had to repeat the committee process this year.
The author of the landmark 2006 Georgia law on illegal immigration, Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, has testified three times in committee that the intent of his law was to keep illegal aliens out of the University System of Georgia.
The Chairman of the Senate Committee on Rules, Don Balfour, has testified that his own active-duty Army son was unable to register for all of the preferred and needed classes to get a full load at Gainesville State University because of lack of classroom seats.
On her blog, “Dissident Prof” Georgia-based writer and Emory University professor Mary Grabar recently described a February “Teach-In” she attended at Georgia State University College of Education, where “the discussion focused specifically on lobbying against legislation in the Georgia General Assembly. The event was attended by professors, teachers, students, and professional activists. Jennifer Esposito, Associate Professor in the Georgia State College of Education, pledged to give her students extra credit for writing letters to Georgia legislators opposing legislation restricting illegal immigration.”
Grabar reports that another topic discussed at GSU was “classroom strategies for putting Christopher Columbus, Queen Isabella, King Ferdinand, and others on trial for ‘genocide.’”
Our universities have become defacto training camps to further radicalize students — including illegal aliens — who the far left sees as potential future voters.
Georgia should not be denying public college classroom seats to legal immigrants and U.S. citizens while illegals are admitted. The attitude of the GOP-led legislature should be “pro-enforcement, unafraid, unapologetic.”
We will soon see.
D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society and is a nationally recognized authority on illegal immigration. On the Web: wwwTheDustinInmanSociety.org
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Great column. As always.
Yeah, kids are smarter now...but aren't taught who George Washingtomn was and can't find China on a map.
People here illegally cannot work legally. People who have probation or some extension on a visa have the documents to prove that status. Green cards are documents that prove PERMANENT LEGAL RESIDENCE genius.
Human Rights: You flunked the part of your Marxist open borders seminar that taught how to fuzz the issue and lie thru your teeth. Not even close to a NICE TRY. Your additionb of "hatred and xenophobia" will get your at least a partial grade with Jerry Gonzalez. hahahahahaha
To assume that educating our best and brightest children is somehow dangerous or deleterious to Georgia is absurd. If you are worried that a kid without a green card is going to take your child's place at UGA, etc., it's time for your kid to start studying. College admissions are really competitive these days, and it's because the kids are smarter and test well, not because of illegal immigration.
God bless everyone, no person is "illegal."
Try telling the parents and loved ones of those who have been killed by illegal aliens that no person is illegal. Try telling that to the parents of Dustin Inman, inspiration for the Dustin Inman Society for which Mr. D.A. King leads, who were both permanently disfigured and whose son was killed by an unlicensed illegal alien in a rear-end automobile collision at a stoplight on Hwy 515 in North Georgia.
Try telling that "no person is illegal" bleeding-heart nonsense to crime victims (armed robbery, burglary, the rampant crime of identity theft to which massive illegal immigration has been a prime contributor, kidnapping, human smuggling, enslavement, prostitution, murder, etc) of Latin American street gangs and drug cartels like ... whom have all totally THRIVED and PROSPERED off of this nation's virtual lack of illegal immigration enforcement and lack of a coherent immigration policy.
The ILLEGAL immigration debate is NOT a "human rights" issue as the bleeding heart, this is an issue of safety for the general public and an issue of financial solvency for our government institutions as illegal immigration costs this nation, state and local governments hundreds-of-BILLIONS of dollars in public money that the taxpayers cannot afford.
It seems to me that the illegal alien lobby as Mr. King correctly calls it always says that if we are against ILLEGAL immigration that we are "anti-... ( Mexican, Latino, Hispanic, immigrant...) You can't have it both ways concerned mother.
I was waiting for soem mindless nonsense like htis to show up here.
D.A. got it just right as always. I want a tshirt that says I am a Documented American and I am not going to take it anymore!
"I was waiting for soem mindless nonsense like htis to show up here." <-- really cute way to call something mindless.
Mr. D.A. King is precisely correct about the tribal ideology of Georgian Undocumented Youth Alliance and other groups of their ilk.
There is EXTREME tribal ideology at play as they feel as if they are entitled to the very same benefits as U.S. Citizens, benefits like unfettered taxpayer-funded access to higher education at American colleges and universities and their illegal and "undocumented" status.
Their illegal status, which they have the nerve and the absolute gall to loudly pronounce and take great pride in, clearly gives them absolutely no right to the same unfettered access as American citizens to taxpayer-funded benefits like state-supported education, especially when the government heavily strains to barely provide that benefit to qualified LEGAL citizens of the State of Georgia.
Our public schools have really cheated our students and many are not prepared for college. My son is an engineering major and is struggling to keep pace.
School children in China and India speak one unified language and therefore are not delayed while the classes are dragged down by illiterate invaders.
I predict that if the bill to bar illegals from all public colleges and universities reaches his desk, Governor Deal WILL sign it into law as he most definitely should.
This bill does not go nearly far enough in helping to deter illegal immigration within the State of Georgia, but it is a very good first step in helping to deal with this issue, a problem that threatens to eventually spiral out-of-control if unaddressed early-on (see California and Texas as prime examples of two states where the enrollment of illegals and undocumenteds within those states' university systems have spiraled out-of-control and allowed the university systems in those states to be almost overrun by illegals, a situation which cannot and should not be allowed to happen in Georgia, especially with our severely-limited educational financial resources).
That is precisely right.