As lawmakers prepare to return Monday, our team of journalists spends this week helping you better understand the issues facing the state. Today we look at the debate over illegal immigration.
A year ago, state lawmakers were busy crafting a sweeping illegal immigration law.
As the lawmakers prepare to head back to the state Capitol for a new legislative session starting next week, they’ll continue to grapple with the issue of illegal immigration.
Some Georgians are calling on lawmakers to undo some of the law’s unintended affects. Others say the law has sent a clear message that illegal immigrants aren’t welcome here.
Lawmakers in both the House and Senate say they are willing to consider new measures and to make changes to the state’s crackdown on illegal immigration — but none that would water down the law.
“There will be great resistance to any measure that seeks to weaken it,” said Rep. Rich Golick, R-Smyrna, chairman of the House Judiciary Non-Civil Committee and one of the measure’s co-sponsors.
That law, some argue, has scared away agriculture workers and resulted in losses of nearly $75 million for Georgia farmers. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011 also threatens to delay the issue of tens of thousands of professional licenses.
One idea to help farmers — creating a guest worker program in Georgia — is a dead end, State Agricultural Commissioner Gary Black said Tuesday.
A guest worker program would allow noncitizens to work legally in Georgia for short periods of time. But only the federal government can create and manage such programs.
“The state-run guest worker program does not match up with federal law,” Black said. “The Congress must fix this program, and I suggest they need to fix it in 2012.”
Republican lawmakers set to work on the law late in 2010, saying the federal government was not doing enough to seal the nation’s borders.
Something, they said, that needed to be done to protect the state’s taxpayer-funded resources, including public schools, jails and hospitals. An estimate released by the Pew Hispanic Center in February sought to quantify the scope of the problem: Georgia has 425,000 illegal immigrants living here.
So in April, the Legislature passed House Bill 87, and Gov. Nathan Deal signed it the following month. The law, among other things, authorizes police to investigate the immigration status of certain suspects; it punishes those who transport or harbor illegal immigrants; and it requires people applying for public benefits — including professional licenses — to show a certain form of “secure and verifiable” identification.
A coalition of civil rights and immigrant rights groups is suing to block several parts of the law, and in June, a federal judge in Atlanta temporarily put key provisions on hold.
Georgia is appealing.
Workers disappear
Just days after Deal signed the measure into law, the state’s $68.8 billion farming industry — Georgia’s largest industry— started complaining the law was scaring off the migrant Hispanic workers.
In a report issued in October, the industry said labor shortages contributed to $74.9 million in estimated losses in seven fruit and vegetable crops last year.
State Sen. John Bulloch, chairman of the Senate Agriculture and Consumer Affairs Committee, said he would like to see the state help its farmers.
“I think you will see some farmers make adjustments and they may not plant as many vegetables,” said Bulloch, a Republican from Ochlocknee who raises pecans, cotton and corn. “We have lost a lot of migrant labor. They have gone to other states where they didn’t feel threatened.”
Meanwhile, state officials are predicting a new requirement in the law that says people must show certain forms of identification to get public benefits will cause months-long delays in issuing professional licenses. Business leaders worry those delays could harm the state’s already weak economy.
Secretary of State Brian Kemp confirmed last month that he had talked to the author of the law — Republican state Rep. Matt Ramsey of Peachtree City — about tweaking it to prevent such delays.
While Ramsey said he would consider suggestions, he, too, doesn’t want to do anything to weaken the measure.
House Speaker David Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, went further in an interview last month, saying he was pleased with the law and does not plan to seek changes to it in the upcoming legislative session despite its unintended consequences.
He noted that parts of the law are tied up in federal court while other provisions have been in effect for only six months.
At the same time, Ralston said the House would consider other immigration bills that stalled last year, including House Bill 59, which would ban illegal immigrants from attending state colleges and universities.
Lawmakers would also review HB 296, which would require public schools and hospitals to count the illegal immigrants they serve and report that information to the state, Ralston said.
Alabama has a similar law in place for counting illegal immigrants in its public schools, but a federal appeals court has put that provision on hold after a court challenge from the Obama administration.
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