"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/7/'06 2:00 PM
"Georgia Immigration" - (Google) News Sweep - 4/7/'06 2:00 PM
4/7/'06 - The following article(s) were found in the media. Several stories are provided ... with links to the original sources ... for your convenience:
- Senate vote sidetracks immigration compromise
- READERS WRITE (AJC)
- Why hasn't Perdue signed immigration bill? Kinda makes you wonder (Gwinett Daily Post)
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http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/hall/newfullstory.asp?ID=102733
Posted Friday, April 7 at 12:04 PM
Senate vote sidetracks immigration compromiseby The Associated Press
Senate vote sidetracks immigration compromise
CAPITOL HILL - A bill that would offer the hope of citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants won't be passing anytime soon.
The Senate has sidetracked the sweeping immigration legislation Friday, just a day after a carefully constructed compromise was put together -- one that supporters claimed could win an overwhelming majority.
It didn't come close. The bill got just 38 of the 60 votes it needed to protect it from opponent-sponsored amendments.
An alternative bill from Majority Leader Bill Frist, which has no provision to let illegal immigrants stay and imposes fines on employers who hire them, received even less support in a test vote.
President Bush is pushing lawmakers to keep trying to reach an agreement, but both sides say that a breakthrough probably won't occur until after a two-week recess.
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READERS WRITE
David Mixon, Jerry Brimberry, Dick Marti, Roland Marbaugh, Otis C. Hicks, June Day, Emily Adams, Charles Cunningham - For the Journal-Constitution
Friday, April 7, 2006
Immigration
Employers like to hire cheaply
I worked with more than 30 Hispanic immigrants at a manufacturing facility. The problem is with the employers. Employers can hire two immigrants to replace one American for the same wage.
I observed many violations on the job that management knew were violations but got illegal immigrant employees to perform since Americans knew the violations and refused to commit unsafe acts or violations. The company I worked for hadn't given an American a raise in more than two years in hopes they would quit so more immigrants could be hired.
It's not just farm jobs. It's our major industries as well.
DAVID MIXON, Cordele
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Term 'illegal aliens' tells it like it is
My interest in Ralph De La Cruz's column turned to dismay when he argued against using the term "illegal aliens" to describe the 11 million to 12 million individuals who have either crossed our borders illegally or have remained after their visas expired ("Stereotypical shots only fuel the fire; U.S. needs realistic reform," issue, April 6).
Put simply, we are a nation of laws as well as a nation that prides itself on being a land of opportunity. Columnists need to get it right and not cloud the "illegal alien" issue by twisting and altering terms for the sake of political correctness.
JERRY BRIMBERRY, Lilburn
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Want amnesty? Give Mexico zone to U.S.
The immigration debate needs new ideas. So here's one. The price of amnesty for all illegal Mexican immigrants now in the United States shall be the northernmost 100 miles of Mexico, from sea to shining sea.
This zone shall be signed over irrevocably to the United States by a treaty between the two countries. Mexico will control the southern border of this zone, and the United States will control the northern (the current border between the two countries).
Mexican citizens may move into and out of this zone from Mexico from the south as Mexico determines. U.S. citizens may move into and out of the zone from the United States from the north as the United States determines. Furthermore, all new immigrants from Mexico will be allowed no further than this zone.
DICK MARTI, Tifton
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Remarkable workers, in the 1930s and now
When I was a teenager, 1933 to 1937, the area of Ohio and Indiana, where I lived, was big in commercial sugar beets and tomatoes. Many Mexicans came to plant and pick tomatoes and work in the beet fields. They lived in abandoned farmhouses or any place they could. I picked tomatoes right along with them. I thought they were wonderful, family-oriented people. To this day, I am an admirer of the Mexican work ethic.
Quite a few Mexicans settled in my community on small farms or in businesses. I am here to tell you that their descendants are top-notch citizens --- teachers, lawyers, judges. We in Georgia should welcome them with open arms and help the ones coming here to do so legally. We should never fault these industrious people who want only to make a better life for themselves and for us.
ROLAND MARBAUGH, Conyers
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http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=36&url_article_id=13660&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2
Why hasn't Perdue signed immigration bill? Kinda makes you wonder
04/07/2006
By D.A. King
Gov. Sonny Perdue has yet to sign the recently passed Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act.
Huh?
While we all ponder the few possible reasons for Perdue's delay in signing into law legislation that goes a long way toward making Georgia a less desirable place to employ - or be - an illegal alien, I am reminded of an old saying that I first heard from that old sausage maker, Jimmy Dean: "Most wounds are self-inflicted."
Considering that a recent Zogby/AJC poll showed that 82 percent of Georgia voters want state action on the illegal immigration crisis created by the president's refusal to secure American borders, one must wonder what the thinking is in the governor's office.
And how he will explain his hesitance to sign the bill while campaigning this summer?
Maybe he is still hoping that the feds will jump in and begin to do the job of securing our borders - and legalize the millions who it allowed to defiantly push the flag of Mexico in our face while demanding special "justice."
Maybe he wants us to believe that another amnesty like the one we tried in 1986 will somehow stop illegal immigration. It didn't then, and it won't now.
Until we find enough strong leaders in Washington, Georgia and the U.S. will always have an illegal immigration problem. The General Assembly-approved bill is only a foundation on which to build a state defense.
For those Georgians who may not have noticed, except for his public endorsement of a guest worker amnesty plan and perpetuating the nonsense that the illegal immigration crisis in Georgia is a "federal problem," Perdue has been decidedly silent on the issue that most will no longer ignore.
The bill is far and away the strongest state-level legislation of its kind in the nation. But that all of our elected officials in Washington demonstrated the courage of its author, state Sen. Chip Rogers.
Perdue can begin to heal his self-inflicted wound by signing the bill and listening to the voice of the voters who will remember in November.
Atlanta Latino, a local bilingual newspaper, quoted the governor's press secretary, Heather Hedrick, as saying that the governor's office received nearly 2,000 phone calls last Friday from people opposed to his signing the bill.
Maybe those phone calls are part of the reason for the delay.
Those of us who were in the Capitol during the legislative session watched the bill be debated and heard the concerns of the moneyed employers about the possibility of actually beginning to enforce - and obey - existing federal law must wonder how many of the calls were generated by that group of campaign donors.
The governors of other states are declaring states of emergency because of similar numbers of illegals as Georgia's migrating to their own states. They are also accomplishing some of the bill's goals through executive order.
It is more than a little alarming that Georgia's governor seems to be less than enthusiastic in protecting Georgians from the obvious consequences of the illegal bankers and employers. And the illegals themselves.
We have to ask: If the bill is not the beginning of doing exactly that, what is? If, after three months of contentious deliberation on the bill, now is not the time to demonstrate leadership on the issue, when will that time come?
Maybe some phone calls to the governor from citizens asking that question will number more than were received last Friday.
D.A. King is president of The Dustin Inman Society. For more information, visit www.thedustininmansociety.org.
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Erik Voss
erik@ICAtlanta.org
404-457-5901 Direct
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