Search Results for: court

Public Charge: Supreme Court says yes to Trump policy to deny immigrants who use welfare

January 28, 2020 By D.A. King

January 27, 2020 from the WASHINGTON TIMES. Steven Dinan reporting

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Trump administration can move ahead with its “public charge” regulation that could block immigrants who wind up on the public dole from earning a pathway to citizenship.

It marks another significant victory for President Trump, giving him a tentative go-ahead on one of his key policies aimed at putting Americans’ needs first in the immigration system.

The 5-4 decision stays a lower court injunction, allowing U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to move ahead with examining would-be immigrants’ history of access to public programs such as food stamps, many forms of Medicaid, public housing assistance, welfare cash payments and Supplemental Security Income benefits. Read the rest here.

Fast Fact: Appellate Court: Not lawfully present, illegal aliens with DACA are illegal aliens – Georgia issuing public benefits based on disputed status

March 8, 2019 By D.A. King

Ruling likely will lead to additional legal action on public benefits

DACA recipients are “inadmissible and thus removable” under federal law.

Illegal aliens who have been awarded deferred action on deportation proceedings through the DACA amnesty by both the Obama and Trump administrations are illegal aliens and do not have “lawful presence” says the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The decision was handed down March 6, 2019.

The ruling was in response to a suit brought by several illegal aliens in Georgia who are challenging the Board of Regents policy that requires lawful presence for instate tuition purposes and admittance to some USG universities.

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is Arizona. Statistics from the Washington DC – based Migration Policy Institute highlighted by the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute indicate that Georgia has more illegal aliens than green card holders.

A group of DACA recipients sued the leaders of the Georgia higher education system in 2016, which bars aliens who are not “lawfully present” from enrolling in some Georgia colleges and universities, even if they would academically qualify for admission. “The students argued that they were lawfully present under federal law, which preempted state law. They also claimed that the admissions bar violated their right to equal protection, as Georgia treats aliens who are paroled into the U.S. or granted asylum as “lawfully present,” reported the Immigration Reform Law Institute.

The Eleventh Circuit rejected all of the students’ claims. The court noted that “lawfully present” is not a standalone immigration classification, and it is not defined anywhere in the (Immigration and Nationality) Act” *(opinion here).

The ruling is consistent with an official October 2017 statement to this writer from the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) that “current law does not grant any legal status for the class of individuals who are current recipients of DACA. Recipients of DACA are currently unlawfully present in the U.S. with their removal deferred.”

Decision may lead to additional legal action on access to public benefits

The court’s decision likely portends more legal action. Georgia’s public benefits law, OCGA 50-36-1, requires “lawful presence” for non-citizens to access a host of public benefits, including drivers licenses, official ID Cards, health benefits, food stamps, insurance licenses and unemployment benefits. While it goes largely unreported by the Georgia media, various official agencies have been quietly issuing these benefits to DACA recipients since 2012 based on the applicant’s oath on affidavits that they are a “qualified alien.”

The monetary cost to Georgia taxpayers for benefits to the illegal aliens with deferred action on deportation, both in and outside of DACA is unknown.

Updated, 4:50PM March 8, 2019. Updated July 26, 2020 with addition of link to affidavit. Updated July 30, 2020 with link to “qualified alien.”

Skipping Court: U.S. Immigration Courts & Aliens Who Disappear Before Trial

January 25, 2019 By D.A. King

CIS.org

By Mark Metcalf on January 24, 2019

Download a PDF of this Backgrounder.

Mark H. Metcalf formerly served in appointed positions at the Justice and Defense Departments in the administration of George W. Bush. He served as a judge on the Miami Immigration Court from 2005 to 2008. He is a Kentucky prosecutor and a veteran of Iraq.

U.S. Immigration Courts & Aliens Who Disappear Before Trial

Key Takeaways

43 percent of all aliens free pending trial failed to appear for court in 2017.
Since 1996, 37 percent of all aliens free before trial disappeared from court.
Aliens abscond from court more often today than they did before 9/11.
Deportation orders for failing to appear in court exceed deportation orders from cases that were tried by 306 percent.
46 percent of all unaccompanied children disappeared from U.S. immigration courts from 2013 through 2017.
49 percent of unaccompanied children failed to appear in U.S. immigration courts in 2017.

Introduction

U.S. immigration courts recently released their numbers to Congress for fiscal year 2017. Hoped-for improvements are largely absent and problems that have defined the courts since their beginning persist. Most persistent of all is the failure of aliens to appear for their trials. These no-shows remain high, with 43 percent of all those free before trial — 41,302 aliens out of 95,342 — disappearing from court in 2017.¹ More to the point, these numbers add up.

Failures to Appear in Court

American immigration courts consistently have the highest failure to appear (FTA) rates of any state or federal courts in the country.²From 1996 through 2017, 37 percent of all aliens free pending trial disappeared. From the 2,680,598 foreign nationals that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released on their own recognizance, 1,320,000, received deportation orders, 75 percent of them (993,593) for failure to appear. Only 25 percent of this group — some 324,402 people altogether — actually tried their cases.³ This dynamic, first reported at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on June 17, 2010, eventually prompted heated denial by the Obama Justice Department⁴ but it is not solely a problem of Democrat administrations. Administrations of both parties have failed to effectively address it.⁵

Immigration trial courts issued three times more deportation orders for failure to appear in court than deportation orders for cases that were actually tried (993,593 ÷ 324,402) over the last 22 fiscal years. (See Figure 1.) On average, more than 45,000 people each year disappeared from court since 1996, making failures to appear the single greatest source of deportation orders in the immigration court system.⁶

Read the rest here.

Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board: ‘An Example of What Not to Do’: Where Immigration Law Is Enforced – Usually Not Enforced – by Political Appointees Granted the Power of Courts

January 17, 2019 By D.A. King

Originally published in Pew’s Stateline, the below is from the influential Governing Magazine” From our eight years of personal experience with the IERB, we will have plenty to add soon, but a “parody of a Kangaroo Court” is a good start.

An Example of What Not to Do’: The State Where Immigration Law Is Enforced by Political Appointees Granted the Power of Courts

BY STATELINE | JANUARY 4, 2019 AT 7:14 AM

Over the past few years, statehouses around the country have tried to rein in cities deemed too friendly to undocumented immigrants. But Georgia is the only state that’s created an independent board with one specific mission: Punishing cities that aren’t doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration.

Typically, that responsibility falls to state attorneys general. But in Georgia, residents can file a complaint against any city or county they judge to be breaking state immigration law.

Until a recent case against the small liberal town of Decatur, though, all but one of the complaints had come from one private citizen, an avowed anti-illegal immigration activist who’s made this his life’s calling.

Then the lieutenant governor, Republican Casey Cagle, filed a complaint accusing Decatur of violating state immigration law last year as he was running for governor. And on Facebook, he threatened to yank its state funding.

“Liberal politicians in the City of Decatur are trying to put the interests of criminal illegal aliens ahead of our safety — and I will not allow it!” Cagle wrote. (He did not respond to repeated requests from Stateline for comment.)

Few locals have heard of it, but Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board was created seven years ago, when the state passed one of the nation’s strictest immigration laws. Trying to keep track of the legal comings and goings of the IERB, as the board is known, can be dizzying.

Most of its members are not attorneys or immigration experts. All are volunteers — and all are political appointees, which in this red state, makes it a majority Republican board.

And while technically not a court, the board has been given many of the powers of a court: It investigates alleged wrongdoing, subpoenas witnesses and hears testimony.

The board has the power to recommend sanctions against municipalities found to be in the wrong — and ultimately, withhold millions in state funding from them as punishment.

So far, though, it has levied just one lasting fine, for $1,000 against Atlanta. A handful of small cities, though, have been forced to spend time and money defending themselves against accusations.

Two of the immigration board members refused to step down years after their terms ended, and did so only in 2018, when they were sued by a Decatur resident and accused of violating Georgia law.

“The Georgia board is an example of what not to do, rather than a model for something effective,” said Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, a national research and advocacy group that favors limited immigration to the United States.

“It’s troubling,” Vaughan said, “to have that authority go to a politically appointed group that lacks expertise in the subject matter.”

The city of Decatur has filed two lawsuits against the board, saying it has violated public meetings and public records laws; the Georgia First Amendment Foundation and the Southern Poverty Law Center joined one of the suits in December. (Under James Balli’s tenure as chair, he has made efforts to make the board more transparent, including releasing records to a reporter.)

Balli, said it is just complying with state immigration law in its work, and until that law is changed, it’ll continue with its charge.

The 2011 law the board is focused on, HB 87, permits law enforcement officers to stop anyone they deem to be “suspicious” and ask for their papers. The law also requires cities and counties, and many businesses, to use E-Verify to ensure workers are in the country legally; and punishes those who use fake identification to get work.

“The goal is compliance, not punishment,” Balli said.

“We’re not anti-immigration,” Balli said, adding that his grandmother was an immigrant from Mexico. “We don’t want that to be the picture of this board.”

Atlanta’s Hippie Cousin

Decatur’s been described as a speck of blue in a sea of red, and that is true — up to a point. There have always been specks of blue in Georgia, and the state is increasingly trending purple. In November, Democrat Stacey Abrams narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in the race for governor.

But Decatur, as the Atlanta Journal-Constitution puts it, is “renowned as a bastion of Southern liberalism.” It’s Atlanta’s hippie cousin — population 23,800 — 4 square miles of bungalows, yoga studios and farm-to-table fare. In 2016, 86 percent of voters here cast their lot with Hillary Clinton.

Both Decatur and its next-door neighbor Atlanta issued directives in 2017 ordering local police not to detain immigrants, barring a court order. Decatur doesn’t even have a jail — and has few immigrants.

But for the past year, it is Decatur, not Atlanta, that has been in battle with the state, fighting accusations that it is a sanctuary city.

And even though the IERB has yet to yank state funding in any of the cases it’s heard, Decatur officials say they worry the city could lose millions in funding if the board tried to take action.

‘Kangaroo Court’

Many critics of the board, who fall on both sides of the immigration battle, have said it should be disbanded.

“It’s a court that operates in very strange, mostly nontransparent ways and yet has a tremendous amount of power,” said Naomi Tsu, who oversees the legal and advocacy work on behalf of immigrants in the Deep South for the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. The center has profiled the IERB on its “Hatewatch” blog.

Then there’s Marietta, Georgia, resident D.A. King, who’s filed 20 of the 22 complaints that have come before the board. He called the IERB a “parody of a kangaroo court.”

King, a Detroit native, describes himself as a nationalist “along the lines of a George Washington,” but says that he’s not a white supremacist. Nor is he against legal immigration. “My adopted sister is from Korea,” he said.

“I’m trying to educate people about immigration. It’s about the law and what’s good for America and Americans.” Read the rest of the report here.

Opinion: Kangaroo Court? Georgia’s Immigration Enforcement Review Board (IERB) calls a special meeting with agenda to be determined : It’s via telephone and if you want to hear it, you must go to downtown Atlanta and through security

January 1, 2019 By D.A. King

Email received from Audits and Accounts, December 31, 2018 at 3:38 PM:

Good Afternoon,

The Immigration Enforcement Review Board has scheduled a Special Called Meeting for Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 10:00. The members will be holding this meeting via conference call. A conference call line will be set up in Room 1-151 at the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts if you wish to hear the meeting in person. The address for the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts is listed on the agenda. The building is located at the corner of Trinity Avenue and Washington Street. Please enter the building on the Trinity Avenue side. You will need to go through security and show a valid ID to enter the building. I have attached a tentative agenda, but will resend.

Thank you,

Carol Schwinne

Carol G. Schwinne| DirectorAdministrative Division

Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts

270 Washington Street, S.W., Suite 1-156

Atlanta, GA 30334

Office: 404.463-2670 | schwinne@audits.ga. gov

audits.ga.gov

mail.audits.ga.gov made the following annotations on 12/31/18:

NOTICE: This e-mail (including attachments) may contain information that is confidential and legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that you have received this document in error and that any review, dissemination, distribution or copying of this message is strictly prohibited. If you have received this in error, please notify us immediately and delete the message.

Thank you for your cooperation.

***Note: More on the IERB here and here.

Biden regime intends to bypass immigration judges for asylum decisions at the border

September 8, 2021 By D.A. King

“Bypassing immigration judges will crater the southern border – an unimaginable invitation to enter the United States illegally”

The Hill

BY MAY DAVIS, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/04/21

Imagine a store owner has a major shoplifting problem. The problem keeps getting worse because the court system is so backlogged that shoplifters rarely face consequences. Imagine, then, the store owner thinking, “I could allow everyone to take whatever they want, and I wouldn’t have anymore ‘shoplifting.’” Technically that is one way to go. Of course, the store owner goes bankrupt. And before you think what a dumb idea, this “solution” is what the Biden administration just proposed regarding illegal border entry.

On Aug. 20, the administration proposed an enormous immigration loophole that will exacerbate illegal border crossings. Right now, immigrants who cross illegally are required to be turned around — but an alien can avoid deportation by claiming “asylum.” To gain asylum, the applicant must prove that he is a refugee: unable to live in his home country because of “a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” Only 9 to 15 percent of applicants end up meeting this standard (and many of those are from China and Venezuela). Indeed, mostso-called asylum seekers at the border don’t even bother to file for asylum because, once in the country, they face little chance of deportation.

The whole process takes too long. After a migrant crosses the border and claims asylum, an “asylum officer” determines whether the applicant is likely to qualify as a refugee. But asylum officers are not good at this. They approve more than 80 percent of the people they interview as having a “credible fear” of persecution. I’ve sat in on these interviews. The alien says: ‘I have a fear of my government because I disagree with my government’s politics.’ There’s no evidence, there’s no contrary story. So, even though only 15 percent of those claiming asylum end up qualifying legally as refugees, more than 80 percent of them clear the initial hurdle and are allowed into the country.

Once past the initial hurdle, an alien is released from custody and sent on his way to apply for full asylum through an “immigration judge.” For the few aliens who show up, it’s a court-like process. The alien, with an attorney, gives his story. The government gives any facts to the contrary. This process is absurdly backlogged. More than 600,000 applications for asylum are currently pending before immigration judges, meaning many aliens wait years before they are granted (or, most commonly, denied) full asylum status. Full asylum status allows immigrants to later apply for permanent resident status, with all the freedoms (travel, work) that accompany it.

To clean up the backlog, the administration has proposed letting asylum officers consider the full asylum claim. And the asylum officers would do this without an adversarial proceeding. What does this mean? If an alien shows up to the border and claims asylum, the alien will be given legal status and work authorization, without rigorous review.

That is an unimaginable invitation to enter the United States illegally.

The proposal comes with additional eyebrow raisers. For example, although border crossers are required to be detained through their initial credible fear hearings, the proposed rule would skirt that requirement by granting “parole” into the U.S. where detention is “impracticable.” The rule acknowledges that many people won’t show up to their credible fear hearing. As another example, the rule treats the credible fear hearing as an application for work authorization, despite the fact that this will transfer jobs away from U.S. workers.

Thus, the rule treats a problem — too many ‘asylum seekers’ who aren’t legitimate — by ushering everyone in more quickly.

The better solution is to…

Please read the rest here.

Letter to Georgia Piedmont Technical College President Dr. Tavarez Holston – Re: Georgia driving and ID credentials used as validation of ‘lawful presence’ #DACA

August 20, 2021 By D.A. King

“Georgia issues drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Illegal aliens do not have ‘lawful presence.’”

20 August 2021

Dr. Tavarez Holston
President – Georgia Piedmont Technical College

495 North Indian Creek Drive
Clarkston, GA 30021

Re: Your use of Georgia driving and ID credentials as validation of ‘lawful presence’ for instate tuition purposes.

Dr. Holston,

It is my educated opinion that there exists a serious flaw in your system for allowing students to validate ‘lawful presence’ for purposes of receiving instate tuition. I intend to see this apparent breach of security and compliance corrected and that any student who is not eligible for instate tuition and is currently paying that rate is charged the out-of-state scale. I assume this will require an audit of your past records.

On your ‘new student’ page at the school’s website you have a section on ‘Provide Verification of Lawful Presence in the United States’ that clearly allows students to present a Georgia drivers license and/or a ID card as “validation” of lawful presence:

“Effective January 1, 2012, all students applying for in-state tuition must provide validation of lawful presence in the United States. The following documents will serve as proof of lawful presence in the United States and documentation will be required before you are eligible for consideration of in-state tuition:

A current Driver’s License issued by the State of Georgia after January 1, 2008
A current ID issued by the State of Georgia after January 1, 2008…”

Georgia issues drivers licenses to illegal aliens. Illegal aliens do not have ‘lawful presence.’

As one example, reports from DDS tell us more than 20,000 illegal aliens who are recipients of the illegal DACA program have been issued these driving and ID credentials. States are fully within their rights to issue drivers licenses and ID Cards to whomever they choose, but these documents in no way demonstrate, validate, prove or indicate ‘lawful presence.’

As someone who has worked on the illegal immigration crisis in the Georgia Capitol since 2004, I am appalled but not surprised to see this “validation” practice in a taxpayer-funded college.

I am sending this letter electronically so as to more efficiently provide your office with needed information for your education.

Directed only at the aforementioned DACA recipients, here are some quotes from other educated sources, which I hope will expand on my claim. To be clear: Deferred action on deportation does indeed make an illegal alien eligible for a Georgia driving and or ID credential. It does not in any way bestow or validate ‘lawful presence.’

* The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against DACA recipient student’s claims of ‘lawful presence’ in Georgia in 2019. On page 26 of the March 2019 11th Circuit opinion the court wrote: “As explained above, appellants are not lawfully present in the United States.”

* “As DACA recipients, they simply were given a reprieve from potential removal; that does not mean they are in any way ‘lawfully present under the (INA) act.” (11^th circuit court in the same opinion as above).

* “We have continuously and clearly taken the position in ongoing legal cases that DACA does not confer legal status…” Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr to WABE News, July, 2017.

* “Illegal immigrants who are granted permission to stay in the country under an Obama administration policy that was announced in June will be eligible for drivers’ licenses in Georgia the state’s attorney general wrote in a letter to the governor.” The Associated Press (writer Kate Brumback) 2012, via the Augusta Chronicle.

In the interest of space and time I will limit my citations to the above for the present time.

It is my contention that if your institution has awarded instate tuition rates to DACA recipients because they were deemed “lawfully present,” you are acting in conflict with state law. I urge you to remove the instructions to students cited above and to adjust your policy and correct any incorrect tuition rates now being granted.

I trust you will regard this heads up as the well-intentioned effort from a concerned taxpayer it is meant to be. I respectfully assure you we will follow up on this very disturbing matter. Please call on me if I can be of any further assistance.

I would be grateful for a reply.

Sincerely,

D.A. King

President, the Dustin Inman Society – for the board

Marietta, GA. 30066

Cc: Greg Dozier

Commissioner, Technical College System of Georgia

Associated Press: 210,000 Illegal aliens ‘encountered’ by Border Patrol in July – not including “got aways”

August 3, 2021 By D.A. King

Center for Immigration Studies

The “Biden Effect

By Todd Bensman on August 3, 2021

In the physics of illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border, the long, sweltering days of June and July usually bring traffic to a cyclical ebb. But this June — and now July — the number of immigrants who have entered illegally has apparently defied all such physics.

For the sixth consecutive month since President Joe Biden took office and followed through on campaign promises to dismantle his predecessor’s deterrence-based policies, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection reached 210,000 in July, the Associated Press reported Monday. The outlet cited a court filing by David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Based on past trends, the vast majority of those encountered were likely illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol.

Each day of July, authorities encountered an average of 6,770 people, he said. Families and unaccompanied alien minors drove much of the influx, but so did single adult “runners”, who have strained Border Patrol resources as agents struggle to push them back into Mexico again and again. Over and above the 210,000 aliens CBP encountered, an additional 37,000 illegal immigrants reportedly evaded Border Patrol entirely, likely a significant undercount.

The epicenter of the ongoing border crisis is the Rio Grande Valley region of South Texas. For perspective, agents stopped 51,149 illegal immigrants there in May, 59,380 in June — and 78,000 last month, Shahoulian explained.

July’s 200,000-plus encounters exceeded the monthly total of 188,829 immigrants encountered in June, a number that until July was the largest in a single month in 21 years. That would bring the number of CBP encounters just thus far this fiscal year, which ends September 30, to an overpowering 1.3 million. U.S.-Mexico border apprehensions last reached the million mark in 2006.

The July numbers, once finalized and released in the next couple of weeks, will show that the border crisis is going from record high to record high in an upward climb into a red-zone crisis that will defy any control, short of a radical about-face by the Biden administration. Few signs point to any such policy reversal, although the White House has tentatively begun long-haul deportations to Central America aboard ICE jets.

Border Patrol and CBP facilities, meanwhile, are overrun in the crisis’s Texas epicenter, as are hundreds of border communities that have rarely experienced anything like the steadily worsening chaos of wandering immigrants; high-speed car chases; crime; fear of Covid; and widespread insecurity.

All of this can be traced directly to the Democratic primary campaigns of late 2019 and early 2020 that led to Biden’s nomination and election.

As I first reported from Tapachula, Mexico, in January 2020, the crisis started its run-up to July’s record when aspiring immigrants in Central America and beyond, unable to advance through Trump’s border restrictions, witnessed every Democratic candidate (including Biden) promise, during internationally televised primary debates, to welcome in all illegal entrants, stop interior removals, end Trump’s deportation and asylum policies, grant amnesty to everyone illegally present, and even provide free health care.

Immigrants who began flooding into southern Mexico despite Trump’s tough turn-back policies told me that they were coming to wait out what most American polls indicated were the final months of Trump.

Aspiring immigrants like these drove a sharp rise in border apprehensions even in that summer of 2020, after Biden became the nominee and most national polls were pointing to his probable victory. Border Patrol apprehensions, a good indicator of total traffic, had been averaging between 30,000 and 40,000 a month before then, but headed over 50,000 in August 2020 and then over 70,000 in the fall, as the election approached.

This “Biden Effect” was easy to predict based on the statements of the immigrants themselves, who were saying out loud that they could not resist the promise of the coming Democratic border policies. Even a Department of Homeland Security national threat assessment, released in October 2020, predicted the current mass illegal immigration crisis at the southern border…read the rest here.

Will Georgia’s Brian Kemp sign bills to dismantle legal immigration verification?

April 15, 2021 By D.A. King

Tom Homan, Former Acting Director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) urges Georgians to contact Gov. Brian Kemp, Feb, 2020.
Photo: Courtesy FetchYourNews.com

Part 1

Kemp voted for the verification system as state senator

Topic may be worthy of consideration at upcoming Republican conventions

The governor can sign, veto or take no action. Legislation becomes law if he does nothing. May 10 is final day in process.

Pro-enforcement Georgians are watching to see if Gov. Brian Kemp signs several Republican bills that apparently quietly begin to dismantle the system that verifies lawful presence of applicants for public benefits. Examples are HB 395, HB 268 and HB 34 .

The Georgia Chamber of Commerce pushed these measures with letters requesting support placed on legislators’ Chamber desks. Two of those letters are posted on the Dustin Inman Society website.

State law implemented in 2006 was an effort to prevent illegal aliens from accessing public benefits. The goal was to make Georgia less hospitable to illegal immigration. Professional licenses are public benefits under that law. When he was state senator the governor voted for the legislation that created the verification mandate.

Georgia code (OCGA 50-36-1) requires that an applicant for public benefits swear on a notarized affidavit that he is either a U.S. citizen or a “lawfully present” and eligible foreign national. The applicant is required to present verifiable document to prove that eligibility. The foreign national’s ‘lawful presence’ is then verified using a federal database known as ‘SAVE.’

The legislation in question puts Georgia in interstate “compacts” that essentially require reciprocity in licensing and issuance procedures. “Interstate compacts are contracts that are negotiated between states. The US Supreme Court has held that the term “compact” should be understood to refer to a “contract” according to the Library of Congress.

Georgia would be joining compacts that honor the professional license of covered occupations for people who relocate from one participating state to another. If another state in the compact has issued a professional license to a resident for one of the covered professions the idea is to issue a license for the same job here without most of the current processing if that person migrates to Georgia.

The bills include provisions for quicker licensing for spouses of active duty military personnel.

If Kemp signs the bills new law will eliminate the step of verifying the “lawful presence” of the covered applicant. The abbreviated licensing process would result in quicker participation in the workforce – and a more hospitable experience for illegal aliens.

The Georgia Chamber says this will make Georgia “a better state for business.”

Including the Speaker’s office and the Senate Majority Leader, the Dustin Inman Society alerted individual legislators in both the House and senate about the result of the bills becoming law. We also asked several state senators for citation of line numbers in the legislation containing language that would dispute our analysis of these bills. The sole response came from Senator Kay Kirkpatrick (R- Marietta) who replied, “…these bills are important to the military and passed the Senate unanimously. Compact language cannot be changed.” We are grateful to Sen. Kirkpatrick.

It appears the legislative choice was between compliance with the dictates of the business lobby or the preservation of procedures put in place to make Georgia less attractive to illegal immigration. The business lobby won out. Again.

Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than is Arizona, according to the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security.

Absence of media coverage or Republican resistance

We note the past press attention and the brutal fight to implement the verification law in question and the unsurprising absence of liberal media coverage on the decision to further the process of dismantling the law.

Between the three bills, there was only one “no” vote in the House and Senate. It came from Rep Matt Dollar (R- Marietta) who voted against HB 34.

We repeat: then-Senator and Public Safety Committee Chairman Brian Kemp voted in favor of the 2006 ‘Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act’ (SB529) that put the verification of lawful presence for public benefits in place (senate vote # 1037).

“Georgians are “fed up” with illegal immigration,” Kemp told the AJC newspaper then. They still are. But as Governor, Kemp is conspicuously silent on the entire crisis.

As can be seen by a recent letter written by an angry retired federal immigration agent, and the Dustin Inman Society’s Brian Kemp page, most conservatives are not willing to overlook that silence.

The phone number at Gov. Kemp’s Capitol office is 404-656-1776

This story continues here.

Liberal AJC still hawking fake news on HB 120 – omits “Opportunity Tuition…”

March 12, 2021 By D.A. King

Newspaper continues to push rejected illegal alien-friendly legislation

The liberal AJC is still trying to sell the now all-but-dead HB 120 scam. The morning after Rep Kasey Carpenter’s “instate tuition” bill formally expired due to an absence of Rules Committee attention, AJC reporter Greg Bluestein lamented the GOP had lost a chance to win over more immigrants and Latino voters. A real mensch, Bluestein is always very concerned about the Republican’s well being.

In today’s ‘Capitol Recap’. AJC Premium Editor Jim Denery did a rerun of the Bluestein goop. Update: The AJC also printed the same “news” in the Sunday edition.

AJC Enterprise editor Jim Denery. Photo: AJC.

Neither of them seem to understand or care that Kasey Carpenter is a shameless huckster. Neither of them seem to understand simple immigration law and neither seem to be able to process news of federal court decisions reported in their own newspaper.

We have lost count of the number of news outlets that falsely reported that “DACA recipients” were the target of Carpenter’s first two versions of HB 120 on instate tuition and that “DACA” was part of the bill language. Triple dog dare: Show us the numbers of the lines that contain “DACA.”

The reality, easily verified by actually reading those bills, is that DACA was never mentioned in the language. We think the various reporters swallowed Carpenter’s carnival barker, verbal presentation of the bill without reading the legislation. Either that or as often happens with the agenda-driven Atlanta Journal Constitution, staff and management were in on the hustle.

This writer pointed this “DACA” discrepancy out to House legislators in committee.

So did a retired federal immigration agent in a letter to legislators.

I also pointed out that the liberal AJC has reported the 11^th circuit appellate court has ruled that illegal aliens with DACA are illegal aliens. How much “lawful presence” do they have? Zero.

Carpenter finally did actually insert “DACA” language into his Orwellian, ‘Hail Mary’ latest version. In addition to the existing instate and out-of-state tuition fees, he also invented a new proposed tier of tuition rates: “Opportunity Tuition” – for illegal aliens who would be known as “Opportunity Students.”

It wasn’t “instate tuition” at all. Carpenter should feel cheated. He concocted this goofy Newspeak wording but the AJC ignored his work.

Americans and legal immigrants from most other states would not be allowed to pay the lower “Opportunity Tuition” rates. Only illegal aliens who landed in Georgia before 2013 (*or who move in with parents who say they were here in 2013) could get that special deal. At least until the next time these liberals couldn’t bear the “unfairness” of borders and immigration laws. Then it would be back to the Gold Dome to change that 2013 date to 2021 or whatever year they decided represented “justice.”

Georgia is home to more illegal aliens than green card holders according to the anti-enforcement Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.

The danger to pro-enforcement Georgians of the AJC’s constant hard sell is that most Georgia legislators know more about Martian trigonometry than they do about immigration. In large part we blame this on reading and believing the AJC.

I left a voicemail for Denery late Friday afternoon. I don’t expect a return call and I don’t expect the AJC correction I asked his editors to run.

We created factual info (but with verification) on HB 120 here and here and here and here .

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Updated 11:42 March 13 – corrected title on editor Jim Denery.

Updated 10:15 AM March 14 – addition of info on GBPI.

*Updated 6:04 PM March 14 – added detail of illegal aliens moving in with parents.

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