The Indypendent e-news
April 18, 2011
The Georgia Legislature last night approved a bill that empowers local police to check the immigration status of any suspect, even those stopped for alleged traffic violations. The final vote in the House came just two hours before the close of the legislative session. The bill, which closely resembles Arizona’s embattled SB 1070, is the first copycat bill to pass through another state legislature. It will now be sent to the Governor Nathan Deal’s desk for signature.
The 11th hour vote came amid mounting pressure from a diverse coalition to kill the bill. In the two weeks leading up the vote, Georgia immigrant rights advocates and civil rights groups collected 23,000 signatures opposing the legislation. Protesters rallied in at the capitol in Atlanta this week with signs reading, “RIP Dr. Kings Dream” and “RIP Georgia Economy.” Business groups, fearing the truth of the later, joined the opposition, forcefully rejecting the requirement that employers implement the E-Verify program to check the immigration status of all employees.
Yet, despite the broad opposition, conservative state legislators ended the week with a victory.
“It’s a great day for Georgia,” Rep. Matt Ramsey, the Republican who authored the bill told the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “We think we have done our job that our constituents asked us to do to address the costs and the social consequences that have been visited upon our state by the federal government’s failure to secure our nation’s borders.”
However, Ramsey’s enthusiasm may be short since the bill will now face significant challenges. Gov. Deal has 40 days to sign the bill into law and he has expressed some reticence recently about the potential costs of the law.
“All eyes on the governor,” Azadeh Shahshahani, of the Georgia ACLU told Colorlines.com. “We do hope that the Governor will veto the bill. Obviously from our perspective the bill has serious concerns. This bill makes the whole state ‘show me your’ papers territory.”
Most expect Gov. Deal to sign the bill into law, and as soon as that happens, Georgia will almost certainly face legal challenges. On Monday of this week, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower courts ruling that struck down the most controversial parts of Arizona’s SB 1070 that require local police to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be undocumented. That suit is now making its way to the Supreme Court. In Georgia, legal advocates are likely to seek an injunction in court to the bill from taking effect until it’s constitutionality can be determined.
The bill’s drafters say it was carefully crafted to avoid such legal challenge. Indeed, Georgia’s bill differs from the one in Arizona. Unlike the Arizona bill, the Georgia bill does not outright require police to check suspect’s immigration status but, rather, authorizes them to do so. Its proponents hope that this will be enough to protect it in the courts. Like the Arizona law, Georgia’s bill makes it a state crime to be present on state soil without proof of lawful status.
Many worry about the financial costs of the bill. Though these are surely not the greatest concerns for immigrant communities who would be most impacted if Georgia’s bill is enacted, many business groups are anxious. A national boycott of Arizona cost the state an estimated $250 million in lost taxes, tourism and other revenue, according to the Center for American Progress.
Even before the Georgia bill passed, a group of organizations across the country threatened to wage a boycott of the state of Georgia if it enacts the legislation.
Immigrant and civil rights advocates say the bill will spur increased racial profiling. And, says Shahshahani, this is on top of a climate in which state of Georgia already let’s racial profiling flourish.
“People of color are already being profiled across the state. Georgia does not have racial profiling laws on the books. There is no uniform system for data collection when it comes to traffic stops and there are no oversight mechanisms in place at the state level to prevent racial profiling. This bill is only going to worsen a bad situations.”
At least four Georgia counties currently empower local police to enforce federal immigration laws through the federal 287g program which makes cops into immigration agents. That program has for years been criticized for facilitating racial profiling.
Even if the law is rejected in a legal suit, it is sure to hurt immigrant communities. After Arizona’s law passed, and even since the courts blocked key portions of it, many in Arizona were fearful about how police and other institutions would be required to act vis-à-vis immigrants. The director of a Phoenix shelter for survivors of domestic violence told Colorlines.com earlier this year that in the period after SB 1070 passed, shelters saw a steady decline of women seeking help. The director attributed this to a growing fear among undocumented women about abusers ability to report victims to police and about whether state funded entities like shelters would turn undocumented women away.
Georgia now becomes the first state to pass a bill that closely resembles the one in Arizona. Similar bills have been introduced in at least 24 other states since SB 1070 passed last year. The majority have has been killed or have failed to move.
This failure is despite a well-organized and well-funded strategy to move more such bills across the country. Those efforts, as NPR reported last year, have involved a national network of state legislators and private enterprise, including private prison and immigrant detention companies with clear interests in increasing the number of immigrant detainees.
All eyes now move to a handful of other states where similar bills may still pass. The Alabama House passed an SB 1070-like bill last week and bills have been approved by one house of the South Carolina, Oklahoma and Indiana state legislatures as well.
This article was originally published on ColorLines.org.
Comments
No need to deport as the cost would be enormous; not that matters to Washington? The demand from TEA PARTY Senators and Congressman of the newly revised, E-Verify that will detect illegal aliens in the workplace will enforce the 1986 Reagan law. Nobody is to be exempt--longtime employees and new hires will be verified; Attrition by enforcement! Severe fines of companies who scorn the law, including business asset confiscation and imprisonment; not house arrest, but placement in the general prison population. Just because you own a business, doesn't mean you can hire illegal labor? Fact is they are stealing employment, from the ten million Americans out of work. They have families to feed, mortgages to pay and so there should be zero tolerance for this heinous criminal issue. Auditing of companies should be stepped up and those caught red-handed, should be imprisoned as an example of not less than one to five years. No more slap on the wrist, but be held accountable. TO ME THAT'S A FELONY? IN FACT ENTERING AMERICA WITHOUT PERMISSION SHOULD BE CLASSIFIED AS A FELONY.
As thousands of illegal alien families are leaving Arizona, so the price to support them there is going down. Medicaid payments for economic non-citizens will be receding, including the costs for education, health-Care and prison cells, which is the States portion of the obligation. Hundreds of millions will be saved, even a billion or so. Utah--The sanctuary State of California, Nevada can least afford it, with the Golden State bordering on a 24 Billion dollar insolvency. Those lax States are financially seem unconnected to the honest population, will find the U-haul's and trucks crossing the State line hoping for a new refuge? They certainly won’t be heading for Georgia, but they could easily go northwards to Oregon or Washington, if State legislators approve driver’s licenses for illegal aliens. Assuredly, New Mexico that has just canceled enactment of a bill to deny driver’s licenses will get their share of economic refugees from Arizona.
Other States where citizens and permanent resident’s rights are sold to the highest bidder will also see crowds of foreign national families arriving there. The fact is today through rampant incompetence of both political parties covering decades. The invasion has allowed by sheer neglect, attributing to the damaging US treasury deficit, that is destroying America. Households may have two parents that have been allowed to stay, because a newborn baby has received instant citizenship under the misinterpreted 14th Amendment. Over time other illegal family members have stolen across the body living in the same likely Section 8 housing. Few lawmakers have dared declare they are anti-illegal immigrant as they cringe against the Leftist "Political Correctness" garbage of the racial bigotry. But that’s the only agenda the Left has got, because they cannot fight the massive costs presented to them.
But a few brave political advocates are not being deceived, by the gaping border fence and are now enacting laws to stem the continuous influx of illegal migrants, immigrants, criminals and almost certainly murdering terrorists. Last week, Rep. Bilbray R-CA) added his name to the list of co-sponsors for the Nuclear Priority Act that would end chain migration and the CLEAR Act that would require collaboration between local law enforcement agents and federal agents in the enforcement of federal immigration laws. Ordinary working people are informing ICE of employers who are hiring illegal aliens and as the job market gets even rougher "Whistle blowers" will come out of the woodwork to report suspicious goings on? The TEA PARTY will not abide the liberal court system or the Leftist Czars hidden in the Department of InJustice. They are using unconstitutional means for clandestine amnesties, Immigration Reform, Sanctuary States or anything that has the obnoxious stench of Amnesty.
Read about illegal alien widespread Tax fraud at http://www.thesocialcontract.com/ the Pdf file "Illegal Aliens and American Medicine." http://tinyurl.com/o6r27 and the report "DRAINING AMERICA INTO POVERTY" at http://tinyurl.com/3mv3vzm These are reports that the Leftists, US Government Czars and radical open border zealots or lobbyists prefer you didn’t see.
The Tea Party has a propagating foothold in the Republican Party, as thousands every day of every party affiliation is joining. The Tea Party lawmakers will not tolerate raising the debt ceiling in the US budget, to support the 20 million plus illegal alien families using the birthright baby law to gain a foothold in America. Thousands will keep coming until the American people demand the real fences be constructed and every tool available is used to stop this invasion. Want truthful answers, to your question of costs and so much more, view NumbersUSA website.
The Tax code as it is now Creates Inequality
it’s time that US lawmakers implemented a flat tax for everybody. The tax code is so full of fraud, so full of loopholes that corporations like General Electric, Google pay nothing; Oil companies, the sugar industry gets massive subsidies; some politician, wealthy people and corporations slip past our IRS masters, by hiding money in tax havens overseas. If everybody paid according to what they brought, sold all consumers would pay their fair share. Just like US citizens and legal residents, the average US taxpayer are forced by laws, to pay for the support of foreign nationals illegally settled here. In 2012 we must vote for a Tea Party president and a Tea party Senate and Congressman.
Do you go pasting this around everywhere Brittanicus? desperate much?
do yall know if yall pass that law yall will have to work on the fields because no white or black mmens are going to work on the fields. all of georgias economy will drop and yall will gain less power and earn less money because aint no one going to work out there in the fields.
Juan jarquin is right no white man is going to want to work as hard as we hispanics do and if economy was bad its only going to get worse when the SB Law goes into action
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