“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” Attributed to George Orwell.

 According to the federal government, only seven states host more illegal aliens than Georgia. The leftist Georgia Budget and Policy Institute says we are home to more illegals than Lawful Permanent Residents (“green card” holders). Pre-Biden/Harris/Mayorkas, the estimates on how many “undocumented workers” live in our state varied, but after nearly four years of illegal open borders, use of about 500,000-600,000 is a conservative ‘guesstimate.’

This is no way to run a state.

Absent the promised federal protections of defended and secure borders, it does not require an advanced political degree to recognize that our state and local governments should be doing everything possible to drive illegal aliens out of Georgia.

This writer has spent the last nineteen legislative sessions under the Gold Dome in Atlanta to that end. Working together with lawmakers, we have put a long list of statutes in place designed to make Georgia inhospitable to the federal offense of illegal immigration.

But many of them are not enforced. Enforcement is the task of the executive branch of government.

To noodle out what is really going on with illegal immigration in Georgia, it helps to realize that there are essentially two sides to our current immigration crisis: Pro-enforcement and anti-enforcement.

This writer is pro-enforcement. I have been researching and actively fighting illegal immigration for more than two decades. I am not well-liked at the Gold Dome. I am not a member of any political party.

I am grateful to publisher Will Davis who has kindly consented to allowing me to send educational commentary columns for readers of this newspaper. My goal is to provide a better understanding of illegal immigration in Georgia.

To that end, we recently published a column that highlighted Georgia’s Dual Enrollment (DE) program.

To recap, DE is a taxpayer-funded arrangement in which high school students – mostly 11^th and 12^th graders – can attend taxpayer-funded public college classes and get both high school and college credit. They do not pay a dime in tuition or for books and fees. The budget for 2025 is north of $91 million. It is intended as a head start on an employment career for the students. There is nothing in the Dual Enrollment program that excludes illegal aliens from taking the zero cost classes provided Georgia taxpayers.

Maybe Republican lawmakers have forgotten that federal law says illegal aliens are not eligible for employment anywhere in the nation.

Suggestion: Ask your state lawmakers why they are using our tax dollars to fund a college education for illegal aliens in the name of “workforce expansion.”

Dual Enrollment vs Instate Tuition for illegal aliens

The DE program is separate and quite different than the “shall we provide instate tuition to the annual illegal aliens who have already graduated our highs schools?” question.

Instate tuition is significantly lower (but not free, like DE) than the out-of-state tuition rate. How much lower? A look at the Middle Georgia State University website shows that total instate tuition and fees for a fifteen-hour class load is $3641. The out-of-state rate is $10,316. That is a difference of $6675.00. That is per semester.

Instate tuition is intended to benefit Georgians in Georgia. An American student living in Michigan (for example) who wants to attend Middle Georgia State College must pay the much higher out-of-state tuition rate.

Believe it or not, prodded by the extremely powerful Georgia Chamber of Commerce lobbyists in Atlanta, some GOP state lawmakers annually push for instate tuition for illegal aliens for whom then-President Barack Obama illegally invented the “DACA” program in 2012.

In March of 2019, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit found that illegal aliens with Obama’s DACA are not eligible to enter the United States, are removable (deportable) and do not have “lawful presence.”  The decision was unanimous.

“We have continuously and clearly taken the position in ongoing legal cases that DACA does not confer legal status…” says Georgia Attorney General Chis Carr.

Shorter: Illegal aliens with DACA are illegal aliens – but Obama gave them a work permit anyway.

Suggestion: Ask your state legislators if they support allowing any illegal aliens to pay $6675.00 less in tuition per semester at Middle Georgia State than Americans and legal immigrants who live in other U.S. states.

I respectfully advise that you start with Rep. Dale Washburn (R-Macon), as he is the number two signer on the most recent legislation (HB 131) aimed at rewarding and welcoming illegal aliens with the much lower tuition rate. Is that pro-enforcement?

D.A. King is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society. X/Twitter: @DAKDIS

A version of the above essay was published in the Monroe County/ Macon Reporter on October 23, 2024.