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The below column was written and sent as a submission to NRO but politely declined with an explanation from the submission editor who told me he was “satisfied” with their coverage of the Georgia GOP gubernatorial primary race. I wrote and submitted on Friday, May 13. Turns out the same editor had posted his own column on Georgia’s GOP race the same day. His take (and I think information level) was different than mine.

Update 10:20 AM: National Review endorsed Brian Kemp for reelection the next Friday, today, May 20 without any mention of Kemp’s betrayal on his 2018 campaign promises on “criminal illegals.”

As of about 10 minutes ago I am no longer a National Review subscriber. We have the liberal AJC and a plethora of biased TV “news” outlets here (not to mention the Associated Press) to ignore Kemp’s defiance on illegal immigration in Georgia, we don’t need NR.

 

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Submission:

The GOP Gubernatorial Primary and Illegal Immigration in “Georgiafornia”

 A pro-enforcement report from the now purple Peach State

 D.A. King

According to latest estimates from DHS, Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than Arizona. In the partially successful effort to end 287(g) agreements in the state, the corporate-funded Georgia Budget and Policy Institute used a pie chart to point out that “the Peach State” is also home to more illegal aliens than green card holders. We have taken to referring to our home state as “Georgiafornia”

With the May 24^th state Republican primary looming, conservative observers around the country may assume that a very large part of the gubernatorial candidate debate between incumbent Gov Brian Kemp and Trump-endorsed challenger, former Senator David Perdue, has been on illegal immigration in Georgia. They may also logically assume that Perdue would be laser-focused and effusive on Kemp’s dismal record on illegal immigration as governor and his 2018 campaign promises on that matter. Not exactly.

Kemp has the well-deserved Georgia Chamber of Commerce endorsement. To get an idea of the politics of immigration here, readers should know that the Georgia Chamber fought the passage of the 2011 law that implemented E-Verify for some private employers and is pushing to allow illegal aliens with DACA status to pay instate tuition as part of a “Global Talent Initiative.”

The afore-mentioned E-Verify law was weakened after it was put in place and enforcement is all but nonexistent. Kemp’s endless reelection mantra is that “Georgia is number one for business” and that he has kept all his 2018 campaign promises. Apparently, it is. He hasn’t.

As one may expect and as Mark Krikorian at the Center for Immigration Studies noted on NRO near the end of the primary runoff race here four years ago, Kemp did not make promises on attacking the root cause of illegal immigration (spoiler: it’s  illegal employment). Back then Kemp largely hung his hat on a repeated pledge to go after what he called “criminal illegals.”

He promised to create a public registry of criminal illegal aliens and put out a detailed outline of legislation he pledged to send to the state legislature entitled “Brian Kemp’s Track and Deport Plan.”

In his not-to-be missed first 2018 TV campaign ad Kemp expanded on the theme by assuring voters that he would “…enforce the ban on sanctuary cities and track and deport all criminal illegal aliens so our kids don’t become the next victims.” Never mind the fact that governors have zero authority or ability to deport anyone. He was on a roll.

“I got a big truck just In case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ‘em home myself” was the line delivered by candidate Brian Kemp in another memorable 2018 TV ad.

None of it ever happened. Kemp has not mentioned any of it since 2018.

Now, all questions about Kemp’s promises about “criminal illegals” in Georgia are met with a diversionary reference to “the border.” The response to the glaring obfuscation from loyal and obedient Republican voters is often that “we don’t’ want Stacey!” in reference to Stacy Abrams’ candidacy for governor of formerly ruby red Georgia.

At the pro-enforcement Dustin Inman Society, of which this writer is founder and president, we collectively refer to Kemp’s silent defiance as the “big truck trick” and have installed a counter on our website to track the period of his silence.

For his part, Perdue has nothing on his campaign website “issues” page concerning illegal immigration and to our knowledge he hasn’t brought up the absence of any promised Kemp registry of “criminal illegals” or ending the openly illegal sanctuary polices in the state. He did take some shots at Kemp in the recent series of three TV debates.

“On the governor’s watch, we have more illegal immigrants in Georgia than when he took office. We actually have more illegal immigrants here than the state of Arizona” said Perdue. “As a matter of fact, if you look at Florida, 70% of their counties have a contract with ICE to find and deport illegal criminals. In Georgia, only 3% of our counties” in reference to the important federal Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program – essentially 287(g) light.

“On his watch, we have grown (the) illegal community here, and I think the Hispanic community here that’s hardworking, small business and all that, really want that cleaned up too.”

“I remember the governor, when he ran in ’18, told us that, you know, “I’m gonna round them up, put them in my pickup truck, and get them out of here.” Governor, what happened? Your pickup break down? Perdue asked.

In an apparent “because Covid” response, Kemp replied “No. Still running. Still running, still working, still creating jobs, still doing something about stopping folks coming across the border…I don’t know how going around picking up people that might have COVID when our law enforcement was sending, um, ventilators and PPE supplies to hospitals would’ve been a good strategy.” Transcript.

The Republican Party in metro-Atlanta’s Cobb County censured Kemp in October 2021 for his failure to honor his immigration related promises.

An eight-page January “Georgians First” campaign mailer from Kemp did not touch illegal immigration.

A May 10 Perdue campaign internal memo did not mention Kemp’s immigration, broken promises weakness.

An April 25 poll from the liberal Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper revealed that more than 90% of Republican respondents answered that immigration and border security was “extremely important” or “very important” in deciding how to vote in the Republican primary. (Editor: Q8 here)

Trump’s former Acting ICE Director, Tom Homan, came out in support of Perdue late last week with harsh words for Kemp. “When it comes to dealing with illegal immigration, Kemp has failed the people of Georgia and this nation.”

So far,  Georgia media has treated Homan’s expert observation a well kept secret.

# #

D.A. King of Marietta, GA is president of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society and proprietor of ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com. An independent voter, he has assisted Georgia lawmakers with illegal immigration-related legislation since 2005. @DAKDIS 404-***-****

 dak

 

 

SR 376 – A RESOLUTION creating the Senate Occupational Licensing Study Committee;

 

SR 376 is a product of the lobbying effort by a partnership of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the massive and wealthy refugee industry. The goal is more foreign workers and higher profits. Note to conservatives: Most immigrants and refugees do not vote for small government, low tax, secure borders, rule of law Republicans. They are the future Democrat base.

The concept for this committee is essentially a repeat of the House special committee created in 2021 by Woodstock Republican Rep. Wes Cantrell and pushed by the same people and for the same reasons. Cantrell also chaired that committee called “Innovative Ways to Maximize Global Talent.”

A “Progressive” woman named Darlene C. Lynch works for both CRSA and the “BIG Partnership” and organized and ran the Georgia House Special Committee “Innovative ways to Maximize Global Talent” that saw three 2021 Summer and Fall meetings – with two in Georgia’s public colleges. HB 932 is a product of those committee hearings. The special committee was created by a resolution that passed unanimously in the House at the end of the 2021 session. Rep Wes Cantrell was the sponsor of the resolution (be sure to see all cosponsors) and served as the chairman of the agenda-driven committee that took zero public comment and arranged the witnesses.

Some of the agenda items from the hand-picked, pre-screened witnesses at the special committee mentioned above from my coverage:

• Changing state law so as to allow foreigners to be law enforcement officers in Georgia
• Reciprocal agreements on occupational licensing rules with other states and foreign nations.
• *“Relaxing” state law that requires immigration verification of applicants for occupational and professional licensing.
• Lower tuition rates in public colleges for illegal aliens living in Georgia with DACA  status than the rate Americans and legal immigrants fro other states pay.
• Removing the existing 12 month residency waiting period before new Georgia residents can access instate tuition in public colleges for refugees – but not for Americans moving here from other states.
• Reducing the educational period to become a medical doctor by two years, student loan forgiveness for foreign medical students and “relaxing the immigration issues for foreign medical graduates.”
• Creating a new state bureaucracy to accommodate “an office or a division of cultural and linguistic responsiveness.

  I lost track of the number of times “…the number one state for business” was tossed out.

  Georgia voters should expect very similar results from SR 367 as we see from the Cantrell/Lynch/GA Chamber Resolution (HR 11),  in 2021.

 

HB 999: Direct payments from state coffers to illegal alien K-12 students with illegal alien parents put in charge of disbursement and oversight – what could go wrong?!

 

Republican legislators in Georgia are trying to dodge debate over the rising cheap-labor migration into their state — but they also are drafting bills that would steer more illegal migrants into the jobs and homes needed by young Georgians.

“Those of us who are in the [Georgia] Capitol for the last 18 years know that the big business lobby run by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce does not want any discussion about the hidden costs of black-market labor,” said D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, which opposes illegal migration.

“Most legislators under Georgia’s gold-domed capitol would rather have a root canal while sitting in a chair of broken glass than discuss black-market labor and illegal migration in Georgia,” King told Breitbart News.

The state is home to at least 400,000 illegal migrants and roughly 800,000 legal migrants, according to a 2020 estimate by a pro-migration group. Companies also ship in foreign workers, often illegally, to take low-wage, shorter-term jobs that would otherwise provide family wages to Georgians. In 2020, for example, then-GOP Rep. Doug Collins stopped an illegal scheme to import Korean construction workers for a battery factory in Jackson County.

The stealthy push for more migration into Georgia is just one of many state-level campaign efforts to get around the GOP’s voter-enforced opposition to President Joe Biden’s planned amnesties and migration expansions. The state campaigns hope to extract more migrant workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries for use in the U.S. economy. In Illinois, for example, the Chicago Sun-Times reported January 26 about plans to expand cheap healthcare aid to migrants:

[Angelica] Garcia, 51, of West Chicago, is among those pushing for Illinois to expand a health care program to more [illegal] immigrants like herself. Garcia, who volunteers at the cultural hub Casa Michoacan in suburban West Chicago, was among a group of … advocates Wednesday who detailed the economic and health care reforms they support.

Last year, Illinois expanded a Medicaid-like program that provides health insurance coverage to [illegal] immigrants who are 55 and older, the Associated Press reported. Garcia said she doesn’t qualify for that program because of her age. She and others want the program to expand to include other [illegal] immigrants like herself.

In New York City, advocates have passed a law allowing illegals to vote. In California, advocates have passed laws that provide taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegals. In Virginia, advocates want to start putting illegals on public healthcare programs  — but that will likely be blocked by elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In Texas, the GOP-led government is working to block migrants that are being welcomed by Biden’s federal agencies.

In Georgia, the HB 999 bill is a school-choice bill that would quietly provide state K-12 education funds to illegal migrants.

Advocates are rushing to pass the bill during the state’s legislature 40-day session, which ends April 4.

The HB 999 bill would send $6,000 per child into a “consumer-directed account” for private-school tuition, allowing many parents to keep their kids out of the federal K-12 pro-diversity schools. But the bill has no requirement excluding illegal immigrants. The bill is sponsored by GOP Reps. Wes Cantrell (Ga-22), Kasey Carpenter (Ga-4), Heath Clark (Ga-147), and several Democratic legislators, according to an article on King’s website, immigrationpoliticsga.com.

The bill was pushed January 28 by radio host Eric Erickson as a GOP outreach to non-white voters:

Jeb Bush’s education reforms … included robust school reforms and school choice initiatives … and [so] black families and Hispanic families shifted towards the Republican Party in the polling. So pretty big deal, and it’s insane for the GOP nationwide not to realize [if] you give parents the choice — particularly now in the the coronavirus situation —  … you give parents essentially an entitlement and then dare the Democrats to take it back. The latest state to advance this is the state of Georgia. House Bill 999 — Wes Cantrell, state representative — put has put together, get this, pay attention to this, a bipartisan, multiracial coalition. Black and white, male and female, Democratic Republican.

Erickson — who opposed Donald Trump in 2016 — invited King to comment on the bill. King said:

A lot of people will support “school choice.” Most people here in Georgia are not going to support the contents of the bill that allow direct payments from the state to accounts set up for illegal alien students, to be distributed by illegal alien parents, who are also given an opportunity to have oversight into compliance with this law. So it needs a lot of tweaks… the rest here

 

ACTION NEEDED, PLEASE. 

We trust you already know who your state lawmakers are. If not, please click here to find out and see contact information.

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.”

When President Biden entered office in January, with Democratic control of the Senate and House, there was a great deal of hope from left-wing immigration activists that 2021 would be the year in which a broad pathway to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants would be created and signed into law — but as the year ends, those hopes have so far been dashed as multiple efforts have hit the rocks.

The Biden administration released a proposal on Inauguration Day, which eventually became the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, and was headlined by an 8-year path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already in the country.

TOP DEM ADMITS PASSING BIDEN IMMIGRATION BILL A ‘HERCULEAN’ TASK AMID GOP OPPOSITION

It would also grant farmworkers, along with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), immediate green card eligibility. They would then be eligible for citizenship three years later.

While there was a smattering of security provisions, it was significantly less than seen in past immigration reform efforts — provisions that were key in getting Republican support. The bill also envisioned processing centers set up in Central America, more immigration judges — and avenues for legal immigration, including a mass “recapturing” of family and works visas from previous years.

However, with a 50-50 Senate, Democrats recognized that it would need Republican support to gain the 60 votes to overcome the threat of a filibuster. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., admitted that it would be a “Herculean” task to pass the reform effort.

Sure enough, with minimal border security measures in the legislation and a brewing crisis at the southern border, even Republicans who had supported reform efforts in the past balked — with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., calling it a nonstarter.

“There are many issues I think we can work cooperatively with President-elect Biden, but a blanket amnesty for people who are here unlawfully isn’t going to be one of them,” Rubio said.

MARCO RUBIO REJECTS BIDEN IMMIGRATION BILL, CALLS IT ‘BLANKET AMNESTY’

As the bill stalled in Congress, the White House expressed openness to breaking the legislation up into individual pieces that might be able to gain Republican support, with some Republicans having expressed willingness to grant permanent status to DACA recipients.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that “Congress will have to work through what it looks like moving forward, and what components will be included here and what components could be dealt with separately.”

But as the border surge of 2021 grew over spring and summer, with more than 200,000 encounters a month at one point, there was little sign of a broader Republican appetite for immigration measures that didn’t include border security. And so Democrats tried a different approach.

Build Back Better/budget reconciliation

As Democrats looked for ways to pass sweeping parts of President Biden’s agenda on issues like climate change, family policy and immigration, they eventually zoned in on the budget reconciliation process in order to bypass the Republican filibuster. The budget reconciliation process requires only 50 votes in the Senate, and therefore if all Democrats in the chamber voted in favor, with Vice President Kamala Harris casting a vote as a tiebreaker, legislation would pass the chamber.

In outlines for the bill were a variety of proposals for amnesty or protections for illegal immigrants, in addition to sweeping changes to legal immigration. The first of those plans would grant a pathway to citizenship for DACA and TPS recipients, farmworkers and those deemed “essential workers.” However, that… more here.