As I watched coverage of legislators debating the Arizona-style immigration bill on the final day of the 2011 Georgia General Assembly, I was struck by the irony of passing this bill exactly 150 years from week that Fort Sumter was attacked. It is ironic that in 2011, the Legislature blames the federal government for failing to enforce laws necessary to prevent “illegal” immigrants from coming into Georgia, while in 1861, Georgia felt the need to leave the union, because the national government was not diligent enough in returning (involuntary) immigrants to their “owners” under the Fugitive Slave Act.
If I were still teaching high school American history, there is no doubt that a topic my class would be covering this week is how the immigration legislation signed by Gov. Nathan Deal Friday compares with the actions taken by the state on Jan. 19, 1861—the day Georgia seceded from the Union.
The similarity of issues is amazing. In both situations, Georgia blamed the federal government for not following the laws of the land in respect to how large numbers of people from foreign countries residing in Georgia should be treated. And in both cases, the state’s elected officials justified their actions as being necessary to protect the state’s economy. That, however is where the similarities end. The state’s actions were vastly different in 1861 than in 2011 — or were they?
In 1861, the people from foreign lands were African slaves, and the sin of the federal government, according to the state, was that Washington was not enforcing the fugitive slave law that required the return of runaway slaves. Here is what Georgia’s secession declaration said: “For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic.”
How things have changed. On April 15, Georgia’s legislators claimed that the state’s economy was suffering because the federal government was not preventing illegal immigrants from coming into the state and not forcing them to go back to their native lands.
In 1861, the state’s plantation owners wanted workers so desperately that they were willing to enslave people and force them to perform the work that no “free” workers would do. Those slaves were, by the way, “legal” under the laws of the day. In 2011, there are plenty of workers in Georgia willing to work in the fields and the chicken plants, but now that the economy cannot absorb them, the General Assembly wants them to leave the state and blames the federal government for not forcing them to leave. These voluntary workers are, by the way, “illegal.”
So in 1861, Georgia passed an act of secession because the federal government was not doing enough to return (slave) workers to their owners, while 150 years later, in 2011, the state passed legislation to allow the state to require employers to verify that workers are “legal” and to expedite the removal of voluntary “free” workers who are found to be “illegal.” According to the legislation’s supporters, those “illegals” cost the state too much for education, health care, and other services. Obviously, those issues were not a concern in the slave economy of 1861.
Georgia is vastly different in 2011 than in 1861, but some things have not changed. Our state and nation still have not developed workable immigration and labor policies that will provide the workforce necessary to help our economy expand and prosper. The Civil War may have eliminated the most evil system of slavery, but no one seems to know how to solve the problem of having too many eager illegal immigrants in our state who are very willing to work. Our only “solution” so far seems to be to get rid of them. Hopefully it is a better answer than the one our ancestors dreamed up in 1861. That one did not work out very well for our state or nation.
Lee Raudonis, a communications consultant in Big Canoe, is a former high school history teacher and executive director of the Georgia Republican Party.
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