I had the chance to meet Georgia State Rep. Stacey Evans (D-40) earlier this year, was impressed with her knowledge on issues, and asked her to comment on Georgia's new law.
"Illegal immigration is a problem. Nobody is going to say that it's not. I don't think this bill that was signed into law was the best way to deal with it, though.
"The reason why the bill passed is because the Republican base was calling for it. It's sorta like that's their red meat for this legislative session. They had to throw the base something.
"The law enforcement piece is just hateful. If you want to get rid of illegal immigration, if you want to stop people from coming here illegally, you get at the source of the problem: the availability of jobs for undocumented workers - beginning and end of story.
"If we continue to deal with it on the law enforcement end and by trying to cut off services to these people, we are treating symptoms. They don't have good hospitals or schools in countries that they are coming from, so if we tell them that we're not going to give you a pass to our hospitals and schools, they're not going to care. That's not going to make a difference to them.
"They are coming here because of the availability of jobs. If we stop and focus on that, we will get rid of our problem. This bill didn't go far enough in addressing that, in my opinion.
"Every employer should be responsible for verifying status of employees, no matter how many employees they have. And if they are caught employing undocumented immigrants, then there should be serious fines used as a deterrent, and people won't be profiting for hiring workers at $2 per hour.
"It also has to apply to contractors. This bill does not address contract workers at all. If you have less than 10 workers, you don't have to E-Verify. Those are huge loopholes that swallow the law."
Learn from history.
On December 20, 1828, the Georgia legislature enacted a series of laws outstripping the Cherokee of their rights to live and hunt on native lands. When Cherokee Indian Chief John Ross and his delegation failed to successfully negotiation the matter, it was challenged in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Cherokee Nation asked for an injunction, claiming that Georgia's state legislation had created laws that "go directly to annihilate the Cherokees as a political society." They asked the Court to void all Georgia laws extended over Cherokee lands on the grounds that they violated the U.S. Constitution, United States-Cherokee treaties, and United States intercourse laws. The court refused to hear the case.
Thousands of Indians were relocated from their homelands by the Indian Removal Act. Many died on the Trail of Tears because the white man desired their land and President Jackson ordered it. (Info from Wikipedia and published through a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.)
©2011 Tomi Johnson. All rights reserved.
What would expect from this crowd down at the State? You can start with any subject and go from there. It could be Education, strip funding and don't educate and we will have a "dumb down" voting public that we can control. Voter ID, what a joke. Suppress the vote by requiring a govt issued ID card. Sounds like a "quiet form of "poll tax" to me. I could go on and on about this crowd. Maybe the public will finally get tired of the BS and get some folks elected that will as Mike Thurmond said " Putting Georgia First"!!
ReplyDeletei completely agree with your statement as far as the problem is not being solved... only symptoms treated. Its a rather sad irony that nowadays Americans are trying to do away from immigrants when this country was founded by them. If they only knew the hardships many immigrants must go through to live a better life, they would be respected. Unfortunately, not all nations have the same privileges as the United States does. It's bad out there...
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