Many thanks to Cobb GOP Chairman Joe Dendy for his kind permission for this permanently independent voter to take up space at the crowded Republican breakfast event last Saturday. As a reluctant denizen of the state Capitol, it was great to see so many of my friends and neighbors take an interest in their government.
A “what are the issues?” gathering, the morning was dedicated to more than an hour of exchanges between the Republican crowd and a large part of the Cobb GOP Statehouse delegation on what the looming General Assembly session should address.
I heard suggested topics like gun laws, taxes, transportation, voting security, mental health care and others that seemed to be mostly headline-driven.
But, it seemed that “Jobs! jobs! jobs!” was so “last year” a topic. I didn’t hear anything about unemployment. From anyone.
It is hard to decide if it is more fascinating that Georgia’s decades-long illegal immigration and illegal employment crisis was not a central issue for Founding Fathers-quoting state legislators — or that no one in the audience brought up the fact that Georgia contains more, ahem … “undocumented workers” than Arizona. We also have had recent unemployment rates of 8 percent to 9 percent and even higher for black and Hispanic Americans.
The estimate is that 7 percent of the Georgia workforce is made up of people who escaped capture by our Border Patrol Agents. Nobody suggested that “getting back to the Constitution” and “taking back our country” and “freedom and liberty” are elusive concepts as long as America’s antienforcement immigration policy is run by the powerful business lobby, ethnic-identity oriented liberal radicals and the illegal aliens themselves who angrily march in American streets demanding — and being promised — another amnesty. And the right to vote.
The state budget was a big issue, but not that fact that Georgia’s governor complained in 2011 that we spend at least $2.4 billion a year on illegal immigration. Or that he has now gone silent on the problem.
I predict this frog-in-the-pot mindset will change when (and if) my Republican neighbors realize that adding between 11 million and 20 million now illegal, low-wage, future Democrat biggovernment voters is not beneficial to advancing their patriotic, conservative agenda.
Nobody at the meeting brought up the fact that it has been discovered that for six years not one but two commissioners of the Georgia Department of Agriculture managed to ignore the state law passed in 2006 that requires all public employers to use the no-cost E-Verify system to help protect government jobs for legal workers. Nobody brought that up despite the frontpage Associated Press report on the Cobb & State section of this newspaper that morning.
Neither did many folks I spoke to seem to comprehend the brewing scandal right in their own Cobb County Commission backyard recently reported by the MDJ.
It goes like this: To his credit, last May, after a unanimous “Yes” vote by the Board to apply to the feds and about 18 months of processing and self-auditing of its past hiring records, Cobb Board of Commissioners Chairman Tim Lee publicly signed an agreement with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for the BOC to become “IMAGE certified.” This was a result of a job-protection suggestion from Commissioner Bob Ott. Illegal aliens obtain jobs through fraudulent means by presenting false documents and stealing someone’s legal identity. To combat illegal employment, ICE created the no-cost Mutual Agreement between Government and Employers program in 2006. The program entails the federally certified and monitored use of the E-Verify database for newly hired employees.
But it also involves allowing ICE to inspect past hiring records to locate any phony or stolen ID documents used by all employees. The feds can detect the use of false Social Security numbers for example. Short explanation: IMAGE creates and protects jobs for legal workers by exposing illegal workers on any employers’ payroll. (I have posted a link to the official IMAGE website on my MDJ blog).
Before the primary election last July, Lee promised to “bring forward an addition to the county code that will require those doing business with Cobb to also enroll in the IMAGE program.”
The trouble is that Tim Lee now is hedging on his campaign promise and the wording of an ordinance sponsored in good faith by commissioners Ott and JoAnn Birrell came out of the commissioners’ legal department having nothing to do with requiring county contractors to be IMAGE compliant.
Quite surprised, Commissioner Ott has requested that the language of his ordinance get a do-over to actually do what he intends.
The IMAGE ordinance will be the topic of public hearings on January 22. The sound you may hear is the contractors’ lobby and the local Chamber of Commerce wailing “No!” to IMAGE.
Stay tuned for much more on this next week.
D.A. King is president of the Cobb-based Dustin Inman Society.
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If Cobb does use this program to protect jobs paid for with our tax money, there is no fooling anyone ever again. Except, maybe the unquestionig, silent robots at the Cobb GOP.
Dave Gorak
Executive director
Midwest Coalition to Reduce Immigration
La Valle, WI
YES ON IMAGE!
I would just take a few sentences to outline how the numbers of illegal aliens is most likely well in excess of the 11-20 million figure commonly used. Of course, no one really knows for certain - primarily because it's difficult to account for people who do not want to be counted.
However, using rough numbers based on official estimates, I provide the following.
Start with the 1986 amnesty, which was supposed to only apply to between 1-1.5 million illegals - but ultimately was granted to over twice that number. As always, when an amnesty program is announced, a surge in illegal entries/overstays begins, so the estimated number (according to the federal government) of illegal alien crossings was 4 million per year. The U.S. Border Patrol reported that they intercepted 1 million per year, therefore the nukber of successful illegal entries was 3 million per year. That means that over a 25 year period (1986-2011), there were roughly 75 million successful illegal entries.
However, the federal government reported that they removed about .5 million illegal aliens per year, so subtract 12.5 million from 75 and you have 62.5 million illegal aliens still in the country.
Additionally, groups that support illegal aliens claim (with no way of proving) that roughly .5 to 1 million aliens 'self-deport' each year. If so, that would mean that between 12.5 to 25 million illegal aliens leave each year. This would reduce the number to between 37.5 and 50 million illegal aliens still in the U.S.
Now, this has not taken into account the numbers of aliens who enter lelgally, but remain (overstay) illegally. This is estimated to be between 100,000-250,000 per year - which adds 2.5 to 6.5 million aliens for the 25 year period, bringing the total up slightly to 40-56.5 million illegal aliens.
When I have given these numbers previously, I have been told that I have failed to account for aliens who were deported and re-entered. Well, I would estimate that number being about 25%.
If so (please remember that no one knows with any accuracy), the number still remains at between 30-40 million illegal aliens.
Just to be 'fair', I will even allow that my figures are still high and voluntarily reduce the totals another 25%. This still leaves the estimated numbers at between 23-30 million illegal aliens present in the U.S.
Say what you will, but my numbers are just as accurate as anyone else's 'best guess'. I just wanted to out forth that by using the 11-20 million figure, it will come back to slap us in the face when we finally do offer up amnesty.
Already, the actions by the federal government to offer quasi-amnesty to a select 'few' illegal aliens has spurred an increase in illegal crossings. But, of course the federal government is reporting that the border is more secure than ever.
Lastly, and with an ironic twist, as I mentioned before, groups that support illegal alien 'rights' have stated that millions of illegals 'self-deported' over the uears - BUT they are now saying that se;f-deportation does not work. Really?
I predict DA will beat Lee & the Chamber. I can't wait to see what Rich Pellegrino says when he comes around on his next orbit. Or what Kevin Foley can find here to attack DA on. I really want to see what the ACLU and that hateful, creepy Jerry Gonzalez do.
Thank you DA for the entertainment. Great column again!
Kevin Foley: don't you wish you had the ability and the knowledge to think for yourself and write about something like this? Lib in Cobb- waaaa, waaa, waaah! This is so much fun for us!
No appeasing, outreach, or bribes have worked at all to turn this reality around.
Hispanics, out of all "minority voting blocks, in particular, are the voting block in favor of freebies and big government.
No "outreach" has ever worked and it never will.
You are telling it like it is.
Those who profit by hiring these people, of course, are turning a blind eye to what you wrote. When I was young, it was called --treason, but it is a different time and some call it boosting the profit line.