The below column on the priorities in the U.S regarding veterans and illegal aliens was originally published in Washington Times newspaper in 2006. Yes, seventeen years ago. As it appears not much has changed at the Veteran’s Administration on this topic since then, we post it with updated links as “rerun” commentary on illegal immigration with the reminder that public silence is public consent. – dak

A second look at veteran priorities

By D.A. King, (Washington Times, February 26, 2006)

In 1966 my friend Fred was sent to Vietnam and survived a year as a door gunner on a U. S. Army “Huey” helicopter gunship. You won’t hear it from him, so I will tell you that Fred had one of the most dangerous jobs possible in that long ago and divisive war. While Fred’s ships went down more than ten times in action, he came home without a scratch.

Welcome home Fred Dague – and thank you.

Unlike Fred, in 1970, after observing my 18th birthday in Marine Corps boot camp, I was fortunate enough to draw duty in sunny southern California.

We both kept our promises to our nation.

Like our fathers, as young recruits, both Fred and I were promised lifetime no-cost medical care by our government as a benefit of our service.

We are learning that this is not our father’s America.

As “50 somethings,” Fred and I have both applied to the Veteran’s Administration for those promised medical benefits. In 2004, both of our applications for that promised free health care were denied.

The response from the VA reads in part: “Each year, the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs determines which priority groups will be enrolled in the VA health system, you are not eligible for enrollment or VA health care for most conditions.”

Fred and I have been placed in the “Priority Group 8g” which means that we applied after January 2003, earned over $31,000 last year, and have no service related ailments — thereby disqualifying us for the free medical care we were promised as young men.

Priority Groups are the result of the federal government’s budgetary priorities. Veterans without service-connected health problems are now held up to a means test to determine eligibility for VA medical benefits. For now, we can both make do without the promised care, but many of the approximately 200,000 other category 8g veterans cannot.

So much for the promise. So much for priorities.

For Fred, myself and the other vets who are denied or offered limited medical care from our government, these priorities are difficult to accept while we watch millions of illegal aliens not only demanding, but receiving taxpayer funded free medical care at American emergency rooms and clinics.

There is no “means test” for the free health care provided for anyone – from anywhere in the world – who can illegally cross our intentionally unsecured borders (or overstay a temporary visa) and get within 250 yards of an American emergency room. It’s the law.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985 (EMTALA) is a law that is vigorously enforced.

We are taxpayers, Fred and I, so to us, it is a little more than ironic that as veterans, we are paying for health care for millions of illegal aliens while we are not eligible for that same promised free care from our own Veterans Administration.

The Medicare Prescription Drug Modernization Act of 2003 included one billion dollars to help reimburse American hospitals for the federally mandated health care that they must provide to illegal aliens. It included nothing to help Priority Group 8g veterans.

Priorities indeed.

Because illegals and their criminal employers seem to have a better lobby than American vets in Washington, our nation is keeping the promise to the illegal aliens.

This definitely is not our father’s America. We are no longer certain it is our America.

With millions of illegal aliens pouring into our republic each year and tens of thousands of brave young American troops defending borders all over the world, we cannot help but question which of the promises being made to our future vets will be kept.

We can’t help but wonder how giving illegal aliens and their employers amnesty — no matter the label used — will discourage more illegal immigration. It clearly didn’t twenty years ago. 

The same people who have decided which promises to keep have also made a decision on which of our laws are enforced. Not that anyone asked, but if it is a matter of priorities, in our search for a better life, Fred and I would much rather see the laws that apply to border security and illegal immigration enforced and the VA Priority Groups ignored.

If it is a matter of priorities.

__

Mr. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society, a Georgia-based coalition of citizens dedicated to educating the public on the consequences of illegal immigration.

On the Web: https://newdustininmansociety.org

The above column was also published in the November 13, 2023 edition of the Glynn Co. (GA) newspaper, The Islander.

 

 

The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley | The Center Square contributor

Nov 1, 2023

“The majority of gotaways are single, military age men. However, they also include women and children, many who are smuggled, law enforcement officers say.”

(The Center Square) – Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection Chief Mark Morgan estimates the number of people who entered the U.S. illegally and evaded capture in fiscal 2023 is closer to one million, much higher than the “over 600,000” that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told U.S. senators at a Tuesday hearing.

Morgan told The Center Square Wednesday in response to questions about Mayorkas’ testimony that official known gotaway data could hit one million in fiscal 2023, and the nearly 1.7 million gotaways since January 2021 is underreported by at least 20%.

It’s “closer to over 2 million,” he said of the gotaway numbers since President Joe Biden first took office.

Gotaways is the official term used by Customs and Border Protection to describe foreign nationals who illegally enter the U.S. primarily between ports of entry and don’t return to Mexico or Canada. They generally don’t file asylum or other immigration-related claims and intentionally illegally enter to avoid being caught. Many have criminal records, and run when pursued by Border Patrol agents or others in law enforcement, officials have told The Center Square.

“The question Secretary Mayorkas should be providing the American people an answer to is how many aliens on the Terror Watchlist or Special Interest Aliens, who come from countries we know sponsor or harbor terrorist organizations, are among the [close to 1.7 million] known gotaways who have entered our country under his watch,” he told The Center Square.

“The answer is – he has no idea. It’s not if, and when, the threat arrives in our homeland. It’s already here.”

Read the rest here at The Center Square

 

 

 

I did not recieve a reply to the below request.

Agenda and speakers list for the Oct. 31, 2023 final scheduled meeting of the Senate Occupational Licensing Committee. Chairman, Sen. Larry Walker

October 18, 2023  12:58 PM

Sen. Walker

This is my request to be included as an educated and expert presenter at the next meeting of your occupational licensing committee. I have been assisting state legislators with the drafting and passage of what is now state law regarding verification of lawful presence for public benefits since 2005. Please see OCGA 50-36-1 for an example. See also line 77 of HB 155 as passed. Occupational licenses and professional licenses are public benefits

I hope to put some facts, and experiences advice on the record for your committee and to offer my own advice on what should be carefully included in any recommendations from the committee.

You are getting considerable input from Darlene Lynch. There should be some balance to that agenda. Please see my experience with a previous committee aimed at expanding “the global workforce” as posted on what is now James Magazine Online. Below is a link to the same narrative of the three meetings of that committee from my own site. https://immigrationpoliticsga.com/foreign-cops-lower-college-tuition-for-illegals-than-americans-anyone-complete-coverage-of-ga-house-study-committee-innovative-ways-to-maximize-global-talent/
Thank you for your consideration,

I look forward to a reply.

D.A. King

I have been working on the assumption that SPLC first made their designation of DIS as  “an anti-immigrant hate group…” for the year 2018 and made that designation public in Feb. or March of 2019 on the “hate map” and in the Intelligence Report (which I have learned is no longer published as of Sept. 2019).

Georgia’s existing laws on occupational licensing are “onerous and burdensome” say the Senators who voted for SR 85. That vote record is on the bottom.

The below is taken from the 9-27-2023 meeting of the Senate Study Committee on Occupational Licensing created by SR 85.

Video here. Partial transcript below (more coming).

• There was no public comment.

First, you need to know about some of the language in SR 85. Consider this from line 6: Did you know that “research has shown that this state has some of the country’s more burdensome occupational licensing laws?”  Or this from line 4 of the legislation: “onerous occupational licensing requirements can inhibit economic mobility, limit job prospects, and hinder small businesses.”

What is the answer? If you ask some of the handpicked experts who testified to the committee on Sept. 27 meeting of the committee the answer is to lower the existing licensing standards and use tax dollars to pay some non-profits to help the ethnic group of choice (“cultural and linguistically diverse”) and “integrate foreign trained health professionals” to provide an easier time of becoming mental health workers in Georgia.

You can watch the archived video of the first and second meetings here – no word yet on when the third meeting is scheduled.

We have to admit, the “expert witnesses” haven’t been as overtly extreme as we predicted, yet. It appears they learned from the fiasco of the 2021 House Study Committee on “Innovative Ways to aMaximize Global Talent.”

• Taxpayers should check the names of board members of Voices for Georgia’s Children to see if you know any of them.

_The above is not final.

 

Lesley Kelley:
Lesley Kelley. I’m a senior policy analyst with Voices for Georgia’s Children. [inaudible 00:00:05]

Christopher Perlera:
I’m not gonna move that. And I’m Christopher Perlera. I’m the external affairs consultant for Ser Familia.

Lesley Kelley:
I just wanted to thank, um, the chairman and the committee members for giving us this opportunity to present today.

Uh, again, as Polly said, a lot of this information has been presented by, um, previous presenters. And so I’m just going to kind of quickly go over some of these statistics and then really kind of, uh, focus in on the licensing barriers, um, and, or the licensing res-, rules and restrictions and then the barriers that were a little different from what had been already presented. [inaudible 00:00:49]

So as everybody’s already talked about, we know that, um, Georgia’s, uh, Hispanic and Asian populations are growing. Um, also the, this, and this is a national statistic, but the US psychological workforce, um, is not, uh, ra- based on race and, uh, race and ethnicity, is not keeping up with, um, what the population is.

So the, as, uh, some of the presenters previously spoke about, there are healthcare shortages in Georgia. Um, Georgia’s registered nursing workforce is not growing as fast as the population is growing. Uh, between 2017 and 2020, there was an overall downward trend in the prevalence of general and specialty practitioners in Georgia, and the pa- pandemic exacerbated already high burnout rates among physical and behavioral health providers.

Christopher Perlera:
And so a lotta this information, you may already be familiar with but we’re just gonna highlight the importance and the relevance of this in our conversations today. So, um, as Georgia’s Hispanic community, also my community as a Central American that came to this country, was the firstborn in my family, we have seen an incredible need for behavioral healthcare during the pandemic. It spiked significantly, and it’s especially, um, the, the bandwidth limitations are especially prevalent for providers that are culturally and linguistically competent. Uh, and so of course we really wanna highlight that the number of Hispanic youth in Georgia have disproportionately been impacted in the client base that we serve. And for context, Ser Familia is the largest Hispanic non-profit by budget in Georgia. We contract with about 17 government agencies.

We’re the only Hispanic non-profit of its kind focused on behavioral health. Uh, that means just in 2022 alone, ’bout 7,800 clients from 31 different counties. Currently, we’re seeing about 16 mental health screenings a day. So you predict about 80 a week or over 4,000 at, a year at this rate, just for context.

Again, Ser Familia documented that i- inside the Hispanic community, uh, during the COVID-19 pandemic, depression and anxiety significantly increased, domestic violence increased, as well as sexual and physical abuse. I would like to highlight, uh, besides these facts and figures, that a lotta that was due to non-familial units joining in in, uh, in housing for financial reasons or any other kind of emergency. So you had unrelated individuals within the household that contributed significantly to this. Um, and of course, I think a few times we’ve seen other colleagues here highlight that people who speak a second language many times revert to their language in which they’ve learned their feelings in a moment of trauma or stress. That is even true for me, who English was my first language but I speak Spanish fluently. Spanish is the language of my emotions. There’s a definitive benefit when you’re dealing with individuals in behavioral health being able to treat them in the language they feel most comfortable in. Uh, and that’s particularly, again, important in trauma and distress. [inaudible 00:04:04]

Mm-hmm. So, again, in, uh, excuse me, sir. Do do do. Georgia’s Hispanic population is rapidly increasing while barriers to licensure prevent expansion of already limited Hispanic behavioral workforce. We are very familiar with that. We’ve heard about that from multiple communities. Again, I’ll remind, um, the chairman and the members of the committee, uh, you may already be familiar with this, but as a reminder, about 700,000 Hispanic, uh, community residents in the Metro region alone. Uh, and by, with a 153% increase by 2040, which means a million just in Metro Atlanta alone. Uh, the other 300,000 current Hispanic residents in Georgia are typically found, again, in Dalton, Hall County, some in middle of Georgia, but of course also include our migrant farming communities in South Georgia, just for context.

Uh, and a very important statistic or metric, the number of licensed clinicians, social workers, counselors, and psychologists, uh, who are culturally and linguistically proficient to serve our Hispanic community is estimated between 100 to 125. Uh, which, that’s 1.1 specialized clinicians per 1 million Georgians but specifically one clinician per every 10,000 Hispanic resident.

And, uh, we’ve already covered from, with other individuals here earlier, that Georgia requires more supervised hours than any other state in the Southeast for professional counseling licensure. Uh, and we think that, um, some of the bar-, some supervision requirements can be a barrier to licensure. Uh, such as, you know, graduates coming from minority communities having greater difficulty completing their licensing due to financial, a lack of financial support from their families. I could say that’s true for me in my pro-, my career. I wouldn’t be he- here if it wasn’t for UGA and the HOPE Scholarship. Wouldn’t be able to testify in this room because it woulda been a, too much of a financial burden to my family. And of course, graduates are not being paid a full salary since they are not fully licensed and they’re incurring the expense of supervision, making it very difficult for them to complete the process.

Lesley Kelley:
Okay, so, um, as I previously, um, said, and I believe Polly passed out, um, this full memo, uh, this table that you’re seeing right here for the licensing rules and regulations in Georgia is kind of a Reader’s Digest version of that. Um, I know that some of the previous presenters, um, Miss Lynch and Dr. Manzini, have, um, already gone over some of these, uh, behavioral health specialties with, with all of us. Um, but I’ll just really kind of highlight some of the things that they did not touch on. Uh, Dr. Manzini spoke about, um, the kind of bundle of counseling, social work, and marriage and family therapist. Uh, the way I’ve kind of designed this table is to, A, look to see if there’s a specific licensing pathway for foreign-trained professionals. And what I mean by that is, do the Georgia rules and regulations define, acknowledge a specific pathway and tell you how to do it? Um, so for this bundle of licenses, there is no foreign, there is no specific pathway for these foreign-trained professionals.

Um, as far as accreditation for their foreign education, um, there are four agencies that accredit, um, these three, you know, master’s degrees, meaning master’s in counseling, an MSW, a master’s, um, in marriage and family therapy. And the only, um, education programs that they accredit outsi-, uh, accredit outside of the United States are in Puerto Rico and Canada. And the only, um, Puerto, the only program in Puerto Rico is an MSW program and the only program in Canada is an MFT. So if you have a counseling degree, um, there’s nowhere outside of the US that would be accredited.

And then as far as accreditation for foreign post-graduate experience, there is, um, no accreditation for that, um, for counseling, social work, marriage and family therapists. And there is no temporary licensure option for foreign-trained professionals, um, again, in this, uh, bundle of licenses.

Uh, the second, uh, rules and regulations that we looked at are nursing. So, as far as behavioral health goes, this would, um, cover advanced practice registered nurses who are specializing in, um, behavioral and mental health. So, uh, there is a specific licensing pathway for foreign-trained registered nurses. Um, this is the only licensure that I covered where there is a specific pathway set forth in the rules and regulations. So, for registered nurses, um, their foreign education is accredited. Um, they just have to get it, their credentials evaluated by the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools. And that, um, commission appears to accredit nursing programs worldwide. And for, um, as far as post-graduate experience, um, so yes, again, for registered nurses, their post-graduate experience is accredited. And then any additional education experience that, uh, is needed for an advanced practice nurse, uh, must be verified by, again, that same commission that accredits educations and then they must pass an exam to become board certified. Um, I put “not applicable” in the temporary licensure for foreign-trained professionals for nurses because they actually do have a pathway.

Um, the next, uh, field that I looked at, which I don’t think anybody has, um, covered previously, is, um, psychology. And the real, the, there’s not a specific pa- pathway set forth in the rules and regulations, but there is a, um, there is a licensure by endorsement option. So the thing to know about this, though, is that in order to be eligible to be licensed by endorsement, you must be licensed in another state. So while there, uh, while there are, um, there is accreditation for, um, education and supervision in Canada and Puerto Rico, they still must be licensed in another state before they could become eligible for licensure by endorsement. Um, and there is a temporary licensure option for foreign-trained psychologists. Again, um, it’s only if they are applying, um, to become licensed by endorsement. And so they have to be licensed in another state, um, to even be eligible for a temporary license.

And then, uh, Darlene, or Miss Lynch, ‘scuse me, um, covered the physician licensure rules pretty well. Uh, there’s no specific, um, pathway set forth in the rules and regulations, um, for the Medical Board. Um, as far as accreditation for foreign education, yes, um, all that’s really needed is a certified transcript in English or, um, approval by the Federation of State Medical Boards. And then, um, just for, because we are covering behavioral health, I was really looking at a pathway for a foreign-trained, um, psych-, uh, psychiatrist. So obviously, that’s a physician with a, um, psychiatry specialty. And there are four, um, agencies that accredit psychiatric residencies. Um, a- and, uh, they do cover some residencies in Puerto Rico, Canada, and then five other countries. So it is possible, if you, um, were educated in one of these countries and got your psychiatric residency in one of these countries, that you would be able to be eligible for the psychiatric exam. And then as far as temporary licensure, um, the rules and regulations say, uh, yes, it’s possible, but it’s at the discretion of the executive director of the board.

So looking at what some other states have, um, done in the past couple years to, uh, kind of eliminate some of these barriers for these foreign-trained behavioral health professionals, um, as I just talked about, um, temporary licensure, uh, while working to complete full licensure. So Colorado, Massachusetts, and Missouri have all o- offered temporary licensure options. Um, again, very important, these d- defined pathways for foreign-trained healthcare professionals, kind of like what they, um, set forth for the, uh, registered nurses. Uh, they’re doing this in Vermont, um, Minnesota, and Utah. And then, um, creating a task force or a study committee to explore solutions for all healthcare professions, and obviously that, that kinda helps you taper your solutions to your own state. And they’ve done this in Minnesota, Massachusetts, and Vermont. Um, I do understand that these states are far away from Georgia (laughs).

So some of our recommendations, um, so building off the work of the 2021 House Study Committee on Innovative Ways to Maximize Global Talent, um, the work that this study committee is doing and the Georgia Works Licensing Commission, uh, we’d really like to prioritize the solutions to integrate foreign-trained health professionals into Georgia’s healthcare workforce. Again, we’d like to see, um, the creation of specific or, specific licensure pathways to simplify the process for foreign-trained health professionals who are licensed in other countries, including the use of a credential evaluation service to accredit foreign education and supervised experience. And last, we’d like to allow the issuance of temporary licenses, um, for those, obviously those licensing, those licensed positions that don’t already offer one, um, so that foreign-trained health professionals can work on meeting full, can work while they’re meeting full licensure requirements, would again, which would again allow them to take care of themselves and their families while working towards licensure.

Christopher Perlera:
And so we have a couple of key recommendations that could help Georgia reduce licensing barriers for culturally and linguistically diverse US-trained professionals. Um, I’ll quickly read them and give you my, my detailed thoughts. But they, um… Creating funding opportunities to allow non-profits to provide supervised hours at no cost to culturally and linguistically diverse graduates working towards licensing. And assisting with costs associated with relocation and licensure for culturally and linguistically diverse healthcare workers. I’ll also add that it’s, it’s our firm belief that improving a path to licensure for culturally and linguistically diverse US-trained professionals increases availability of existing professionals for all Georgians. Everyone benefits by improved access to quality care by increasing the total number of clinicians capable of serving Georgians of all background.

Lesley Kelley:
And I will add, um, just in case you fall asleep before you make it (laughs) that far, there is a full, um, chart of the requirements for each of the, um, professions that I covered in this memo. But I’ll be happy to a- answer any questions that you have. (laughing)
Let me know how that goes. (laughs) [inaudible 00:15:27]

Christopher Perlera:
The national data slide. This one?

Lesley Kelley:
Yes, sir.

_____