ACTION NEEDED, PLEASE. 

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January 22, 2022

Below you can see short explanations of three bills pending under Georgia’s Gold Dome. Powerful, well-funded lobby groups are pushing the Republican-controlled legislature to pass HB 120 and HB 932. The same forces are trying to kill HB 228. Please make your voice heard. Contact your state legislators now and often. There will be more bills analyzed here soon. We need help.

* HB 120 would give illegal alien college students living in Georgia with a deferral on deportation in Obama’s DACA program the much lower instate tuition rate in public colleges and technical schools. Americans and legal immigrants from other states who attend the same schools are not eligible for that lower rate and must pay out-of-state tuition.

For academic year 2020-2021, the average tuition & fees for colleges in Georgia was $4,739 for instate and $17,008 for out-of-state according to experts at collegetuition.com.

Last year a federal judge ruled the DACA program to be unlawful. The 11^th circuit appellate court ruled in 2019 that illegal aliens with DACA are still illegal aliens. They do not have legal status and are removable at any time. The Georgia Attorney General’s office takes a similar position. There are about 20K DACA recipients in GA.

Republican Rep. Kasey Carpenter introduced HB 120 in 2021. It puts DACA illegal aliens in front of Americans and legal immigrants. We regard that as un-American. The instate tuition for illegals concept is publicly pushed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce because it would lower wages for Americans and raise corporate profits.The Dustin Inman Society opposes HB120.

Ask your state Rep to oppose. Then call and or email the Speaker’s office (404-656-5020) and leave a polite message with your opinion on this bill. These phone lines have voice mail so you can call on weekends and after business hours.

* HB 932 would allow refugees, foreigners here on Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and Afghans on “humanitarian parole” to be excluded from the current state law and BOR policy that says newly arrived college students must be GA residents for 12 months before they can access the much lower instate tuition rate in Georgia’s university system. (The Special Immigrant Visa grants permanent residence to foreign nationals who claim to have helped the U.S. government abroad).

HB 932 does not cover Americans and immigrants outside the above description who move to Georgia from other states – they would still be required to pay the higher tuition rate for public colleges/tech schools for the first year of their residence.

HB 932 is sponsored by Republican Rep Wes Cantrell and has Democrat cosponsors. We regard HB 932 as un-American. The Dustin Inman Society opposes HB 932.

Ask your state Rep to oppose. Then call and or email the Speaker’s office  (404-656-5020) and leave a polite message with your opinion on this bill. These phone lines have voice mail so you can call on weekends and after business hours.

 * HB 228 (Republican Rep Charlice Byrd) addresses the fact that Georgia issues drivers licenses and ID Cards to foreigners but has no law that excludes these credentials from acceptance as “proper identification” for voting purposes. The bill fixes that loophole and adds the wording “BEARER NOT U.S. CITIZEN-NOT VOTER ID” to the front of the non-citizen drivers licenses and ID Cards. It also requires DDS to change the first two characters of the serial number of these credentials to “NC” to reflect non-U.S. citizen status for mail-in vote security. We regard this bill to be a commonsense fix to a needless gap in election integrity. The Dustin Inman supports HB 228.

Ask your state Rep to help with passage as a cosponsor. Then call and or email the Speaker’s office – (404-656-5020) and leave a polite message with your opinion on this bill. These phone lines have voice mail so you can call on weekends and after business hours.

 More information is easily accessed at ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com and NewDustinInmanSociety.org.          dak – 22 Jan 2022

*Updated, Jan 24, 2022 5:03 PM with a correction on HB 932 to “the state’s university system.”