Immigration Politics Georgia

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D.A. King

What would a 40% pay raise for H-2A farm labor cost a typical family for fresh fruits and vegetables?

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“How much would it cost to give farmworkers a significant raise in pay, even if it was paid for entirely by consumers? The answer is, not that much. About the price of a couple of 12-packs of beer, a large pizza, or a nice bottle of wine.”

  • Related reading: It’s not 1859. Let’s raise the pay for farmworkers here legally.

A 40% increase in pay would cost a typical family just $25 per household annually

Oct. 2020

“So, what would it cost to raise the wages of farmworkers? One of the few big wage increases for farmworkers occurred after the Bracero guestworker program ended in 1964. Under the rules of the program, Mexican Braceros were guaranteed a minimum wage of $1.40 an hour at a time when U.S. farmworkers were not covered by the minimum wage. Some farmworkers who picked table grapes were paid $1.40 an hour while working alongside Braceros in 1964, and then were offered $1.25 in 1965, prompting a strike. César Chávez became the leader of the strike and won a 40% wage increase in the first United Farm Workers table grape contract in 1966, raising grape workers’ wages to $1.75 an hour.

What would happen if there were a similar 40% wage increase today and the entire wage increase were passed on to consumers? The average hourly earnings of U.S. field and livestock workers were $14 an hour in 2019; a 40% increase would raise their wages to $19.60 an hour.

For a typical household or consumer unit, a 40% increase in farm labor costs translates into a 4% increase in the retail price of fresh fruits and vegetables (0.30 farm share of retail prices x 0.33 farm labor share of farm revenue = 10%; if farm labor costs rise 40%, retail spending rises 4%). If average farmworker earnings rose by 40%, and the increase were passed on entirely to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables for a typical household would rise by $25 per year (4% of $615 = $24.60).”

We hope you will read the entire post from the Economic Policy Institute.

Rep. Mark Green: DHS Chief Mayorkas Has Imported 5 Million Illegal Aliens — Outpacing Annual U.S. Births

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Breitbart News

Jan 10, 2024

“…a boon for big business.”

Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has brought five million illegal aliens to the United States in three years, a foreign population that outpaces the nation’s annual births, Rep. Mark Green (R-TN) says.

Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, opened impeachment hearings against Mayorkas on Wednesday. In his opening statements, Green detailed Mayorkas’s expansive Catch and Release network, in which the DHS briefly processes a reported 85 percent of illegal aliens before releasing them into American communities

“Multiple sources confirmed Secretary Mayorkas admitted that release rates of illegal aliens are currently around 85 percent,” Green said:

All told, DHS numbers indicate that well over three million inadmissible aliens have been released into our country on Secretary Mayorkas’s watch. Factor in the 1.8 million known gotaways, and that’s roughly the population of the state of South Carolina. [Emphasis added]

The figure suggests that Mayorkas has released more illegal aliens into American communities from 2021 through 2023 than the number of babies born annually in the U.S., which is fewer than four million.

The majority of these illegal aliens, released via parole, will end up securing work permits to hold American jobs — a boon for big business, Wall Street, and real estate investors looking to keep wages low by inflating the labor market, add as many residents to the population to drive up housing demand, and increase the supply of consumers to whom they can sell products… the rest here.

 

Martha Zoller should stop digging – but does allow that “anybody whose child or is killed because of a person who’s an illegal immigrant, that is a wrong thing to do”

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Republican radio show host Martha Zoller says illegal immigration has increased so much that Brian Kemp “had to change his tactics” and abandon his campaign promises on “criminal illegals” and ending sanctuary cities.
“Enforcing the law should not be partisan.”
The below is from the Martha Zoller radio show, Jan. 18, 2024. Transcript by Rev.com. My cost $12.00 and about 1.5 hours of my time.
Martha Zoller on air: In response to a text Martha read from a listener noting that Gov Brian Kemp has not honored his 2018 campaign promises on illegal immigration and asking if she ever has D.A. King on her show:
 Zoller quickly starts with “I know D.A. King very well… he is the only person I have blocked on Twitter…”
Transcript from recording, still on D.A. King

“…Uh, and I’ve done it because he is unreasonable in his points of view. Um, I’ve worked with him on many issues related to Dustin Inman Society. I helped him raise money. I’ve been involved with it. And because I believe that Governor Kemp… First of all, you can’t assume every Hispanic person you see is an illegal immigrant. And that if they don’t speak English well, that they’re illegal. Okay, that’s- that’s unfair, that’s prejudiced. It’s not racist, it’s prejudiced, you’re, you have a prejudice against this person, okay. But what I will say is, um, we have pretty tough laws as it relates to illegal immigration and- and the governor has helped with the National Guard, he’s done all kinds of things with Governor Greg Abbott as far as the border crisis is concerned. Yes, you’re right, he hasn’t been “rounding up illegal immigrants” like he said in his primary ad. And I didn’t like that ad.

Screenshot, Brian Kemp 2018 TV campaign ad.

I was one of those people that, um, was seeing… I got to see those ads early and I picked the Jake one. I loved it. Where he was sitting on the porch by one of Jake Dateman’s daughter, I loved that. I thought it had a great sense of humor. And then the other one I liked was him taking a chainsaw to regulation. I didn’t like the- the pickup truck one, but that’s the one they went through. And I just believe the situation of, if you can’t look at the situation on the border and see that the s- that the game has changed, and that we’re gonna need different tactics to deal with it, then I can’t really talk to you about it. But, um, we’re gonna take a break and when we come back we’ll take you up to the top of the hour. I will look up Kayla Hamilton and, uh, try to be a little more knowledgeable about that. We’ll be back.*

  • Related: Dear Davos elites: Please tell your witch doctor to cast a spell GA. Gov. Brian Kemp while he is there?

Martha Zoller on air:

… first. Now, I looked up the Kayla Hamilton case. This happened in July of 2022. Uh, she was, um, autistic woman who was killed by an MS-13 gang member, um, and, um, you know, there, you know, is… She sent messages to President Biden, and look, anybody… Dustin Inman, anybody whose child or is killed because of a person who’s an illegal immigrant, that is a wrong thing to do. That is the, the wrong thing. Um, that is somebody that shouldn’t be in this country, so that person should still be safe and sound. So we should work hard against that, and that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

We have got to secure the border, number one. You can join us on the phones at 770-535-2911, and I believe that we can do it. You know, I believe that we can deal with all of these things, and we can… we showed that we can do it during the Trump administration and, to some degree, during the, the Obama administration. The Obama… Obama was very tough on immigration. He deported more people every year. He, um… He didn’t do all this, “Come one, come all,” kind of stuff. He was very interesting because in front of his crowds, he would say one thing, but how he implemented the law was very different. And I’m sure that had to do, to some degree, with the fact that he had people that were legal immigrants in his life, and when you talk to people who were legal immigrants, who came here legally, they are very hard-line as it comes to the border situation.

But then you had Donald Trump come in, and he did the remain in Mexico. And he did a number of things, and he got the number of children, especially, in custody down to less than 500. And the sad thing about that was that those were people that they couldn’t find their families or their families didn’t want them. That’s really hard to imagine. Um, now we’re up to s- … of children in custody, and the reason why just whole separating kids from their parents, the reason why children… by and large, is they don’t have documentation they belong to that adult, and there is some rel- … reason to believe there might be something going on that’s… that could be bad for the child, either sex trafficking, labor trafficking, sut- …

We don’t just separate children from their parents, and we’ve got to stop making this a partisan issue because Republicans go in office, and we… we’re, we’re hard-line about it. Democrats come in, and we soften up. And then we go back and forth and back an- … Enforcing the law should not be partisan. Enforcing the law should be what we all do and that… what we all support, or we do what Governor Deal did when he was a congressman. You enforce the law, or you… if you don’t think the law fits anymore, then you change law. And that’s what you do. So I appreciate the [inaudible 00:03:12] from people, um, that related to this. You’ve got to really be… got to get on the same page as far as illegal immigration goes.

Um… in Cleveland said, “I’m so sick of democrats referring to our country as democracy. Thomas Jefferson had to say about democracies, ‘A democracy is nothing more than [inaudible 00:03:32] over 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 40.’ They are a constitutional republic.” That’s Don from Cl- Cleveland. We… representative republic. We are a consti-

 

Dear Davos elites: Please tell your witch doctor to cast a spell on GA. Gov. Brian Kemp while he is there?

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Ga. Gov. Brain Kemp.

 

Yo, Davos! While he is over there, could you please have your witch doctor put a spell on Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp that would make him honor his oath of office and his 2018 campaign promises by enforcing our state laws against sanctuary cities? We want that to be the “Georgia way.” It’s worth a try!

We now have sanctuary counties.  BTW: Quanto costa?

Screenshot, Brian Kemp TV campaign ad, 2018.

 

A Chris Carr page

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Chris Carr, Attorney General for Georgia. Photo: Law.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We take an educated “Never Chris Carr” view.

 

GEORGIA POLITICAL HISTORY SHOULD BE REMEMBERED

Updates on this page began on August 14, 2024 and will continue while I round up the earlier posts from three websites starting in 2007.

  • 2023 – Nine Republican states have filed in federal court to shut down the illegal DACA program – GA not participating (Here).

 

  • 2023 – Twenty GOP states are challenging Biden’s illegal border parole hustle in a Texas federal court – GA is not one of them (Here).

 

  • 2023 – 25 GOP-Led States Ask SCOTUS to Restore Prohibition on Encouraging Illegal Immigration – GA Stands Back, Again (Here) Update: Note SCOTUS reversed the lower court decision. The suit was successful.

 

  • 2024 – 15 states sue to block Biden’s effort to make illegal aliens with the illegal DACA status get ObamaCare – GA absent from the list. (Here).

 

  • 2013 – Pro-enforcement immigration expert blacklisted by U.S. Senator’s Cheif of Staff (Here)

 

  • 2016 –  “Chris Carr was appointed by Governor Deal in 2013 to as Commissioner of the Department of Economic Development (GDEcD), the state agency charged with helping to create jobs and generate investment in Georgia” (ACCG) “I am also uncomfortable with the concept that any foreign consul or Georgia Commissioner of Economic Development would be given authority to appoint an official to be the arbiter of the validity of a foreign driver’s license, as SB 320 seems to read.” Then Gwinnett County Sheriff Butch Conway opposing SB 320 in a Feb. 2016 letter to the GA Senate Public Safety committee.

 

  • SB 320 was one of the most outrageous bills of the 2016 sessio0n under the Gold Dome. It was the result of Commissioner Chris Carr’s obedience to the special business interests led by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce. I urge readers to see the SB 320 file HERE. The measure died a well deserved death after we sounded the alarm and got law enforcement officials involved, including retired Border Patrol Agents – but not before passing out of the Senate Public Safety Committee, Then Senator Tyler Harper, Chairman.

 

This page is a project in progress.

 

Illegal immigrant kids with tuberculosis infections released into 44 states

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“Tuberculosis isn’t the only disease that’s challenging.”

By Stephen Dinan – The Washington Times – Tuesday, July 18, 2023

The government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrant children with latent tuberculosis infections into American communities without assurances of treatment.

Nearly 2,500 children with latent infections were released into 44 states over the past year, according to a court-ordered report on how the Health and Human Services Department is treating the children.

About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children.

The government is releasing thousands of illegal immigrant children with latent tuberculosis infections into American communities without assurances of treatment.

Nearly 2,500 children with latent infections were released into 44 states over the past year, according to a court-ordered report on how the Health and Human Services Department is treating the children.

About 126,000 total were released, indicating an infection rate of 1 in 50 migrant children.

The Times reached out to HHS for this report.

The children in the department’s custody, known in government-speak as unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, are a particularly tricky population.

Under the law, Homeland Security must discharge most children quickly and send them to HHS. The department holds the children in government-contracted shelters while searching for sponsors to take in the children caught at the border without parents.

The system is fraught with problems, including crowded shelters and struggles to find capable and conscientious sponsors. In thousands of cases, the government quickly loses track of the children.

That makes the government’s release of children with latent infections all the more complicated. Treatment requires knowing where the children are and having sponsors willing to follow through on the lengthy course of care.

Tuberculosis isn’t the only disease that’s challenging.

The government had to create protocols to handle chlamydia and gonorrhea, according to the court report, written by Aurora Miranda-Maese, the monitor ordered by the court to keep tabs on how the government is treating children in its custody.

Ms. Miranda-Maese identified tuberculosis as one challenge. Because the government wants to rush the children out of custody, authorities usually don’t feel they have the time to begin treatment.

“Minors are not routinely treated for [latent tuberculosis infection] while in [resettlement] care because the average length of stay is typically shorter than the time required to complete treatment, and because there could be negative effects from discontinuing … treatment before completion, such as developing drug-resistant TB,” Ms. Miranda-Maese wrote.

She said the government relies on a reporting system through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to alert local health authorities.

Virginia’s experience suggests the follow-through rate for sponsors to obtain the needed treatment is low.

Virginia’s health department said it focuses on connecting local health officials with sponsors who take in children younger than 5 at high risk of latent infections progressing to active tuberculosis and juveniles who might be infected with HIV.

The CDC, which runs the notification portal, didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Times.

UACs do get routine dental care and reproductive care, including pregnancy tests, and are given information about emergency contraceptives. The government will also facilitate abortions, including making “all reasonable efforts to secure a legal abortion” for girls in states where the procedure is restricted…

Read the entire report here at the Washington Times site.

 

The liberal AJC must have a new “don’t tell” policy on illegal aliens

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The liberal AJC has apparently moved to be even more obvious in its agenda to blur the line between legal and illegal aliens. In the past, they would use terms like “undocumented” and “unauthorized” to describe illegal aliens if it became necessary to separate legal from illegal. Apparently there is a new policy from Andrew Morse et al.

In a recent story about the unsavory poultry bosses hiring black market labor to process chickens and a worker being injured on the job in that occupation the story contains no mention of the immigration status of object of main character/victim/hero of the story.

“Georgia man got hurt at his poultry job – then dismissed.” Sub headline “For immigrant poultry workers, gaining access to the workers’ compensation system can be littered with obstacles.”

To detect and demonstrate any stealth editing, I did a screenshot of the entire report.

  • Bonus read: “The ultimate goal of any White House policy ought to be a North American economic and political alliance similar in scope and ambition to the European Union” 

 

Illegal aliens on an oversight committee? Georgia’s pending ‘school choice’ bill needs more work SB 233

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Georgia House Chamber – photo, AJC.

 

“The bill defines “parents” as “a biological parent, legal guardian, custodian, or other person with legal authority to act on behalf of a student.”

It took several years of work from pro-enforcement advocates, but Georgia’s pending “school choice” bill, SB 233 (LC 49 1473S) excludes illegal alien students. See lines 82 & 83. Because it is intentionally cryptic, we posted an easy to understand explanation elsewhere for curious readers.

School choice is a solid conservative idea if done responsibly – but the current version still doesn’t fit that description. Not for the first time, we note that SB 233 contains no exclusion for illegal alien “parents.” This writer predicts this easily remedied fact will be a significant problem for bill sponsors and Gov. Kemp when trusting GOP voters are educated on the details of the legislation.

Ga. Gov. Brain Kemp.

The bill defines “parents” (on lines 37 & 38) as “a biological parent, legal guardian, custodian, or other person with legal authority to act on behalf of a student.” It makes the parent the applicant for the student to access the taxpayer funded “Promise Scholarship” benefit (see line 105).

Federal statistics reveal that over 300,000 illegal “migrants” entered the U.S last month (Dec. 2023) – more than the population of Savannah, Marietta and Warner Robins combined. Legislators ignore this reality at their political peril.

Hardworking Georgians will likely not take kindly to a GOP-pushed law that allows any illegals to apply for a discretionary taxpayer-funded benefit – including private school tuition.

  • Related: Estimates are that 400,000 illegal aliens called Georgia home in 2018

The same taxpayers may have a strong objection to a law that names any illegally present “parent” as the “recognized recipient” of state funds for private school tuition as laid out in lines 126-129: “Any account funds directed to a participating school or service provider are so directed on behalf of the participating student’s parent, the recognized recipient of such participating student’s account funds, and wholly as a result of the genuine and independent private choice of the parent.”

More, from lines 208-211: “The commission shall develop a system for parents to direct account funds to participating schools and service providers by electronic funds transfer, automated clearing-house transfer, or another system that the commission finds to be commercially viable, cost-effective, and easy for parents of participating students to use.”

S. Greg Dolezal (R- Alpharetta), lead sponsor, SB 233.

Lines 211- 214 create a scenario in which the state of Georgia could easily be in the position of sending tax dollars directly to illegal alien “parents” to reimburse them for out-of-pocket expenses and/or “certain qualified education expenses.”

It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that most conservative voters aren’t going to sit quietly while a law is put in place that would allow illegal aliens to serve on a school choice oversight committee either. But SB 233 does exactly that. “Parents” would serve on a parental review committee that would oversee eligible expenses for school choice benefits – see lines 238-240: “To assist in the determination of whether certain expenses meet the requirements to be considered a qualified education expense under this chapter, a parent review committee shall be established.”

And this from lines & 253-254: “The commission may request the (parent review) committee to determine whether an expenditure of account funds from an account qualifies as a qualified education expense under this chapter.”

Rep. Todd Jones (R- Cumming) House sponsor, SB 233.

More on parents’ participation: “(line 48) Qualified education expenses’ means any one or more of the following: … “Other expenses authorized by the State Board of Education or the commission; or Individual education expenses authorized by a majority of the parent review committee provided for in Code Section 20-2B-6 (lines 64-66).”

There are several commonsense solutions to all this. It seems that the simplest is to insert language into the bill that designates the “Promise Scholarship” school choice benefit as a “state grant.” That should require the applicant – the “parent” – to complete the “verification of lawful presence” process that is already in OCGA 50-36-1. Shorter: It would exclude illegal alien parents – if the law was enforced.

It is noteworthy that several inquiries have reportedly already been made to the Attorney General’s office asking if the school choice scholarship would be a state grant in the bill as is. I understand that the AG has informed more than one state legislator that the question would not be answered on a pending bill.

  • A version of the above oped was originally posted on the subscription outlet James Magazine Online on January 5, 2024.

D.A. King is president of the Dustin Inman Society and proprietor of ImmigrationPoliticsGA.com

Nearly Half of Illegal Aliens Arrested in U.S. in 2023 Had Multiple Criminal Charges, Convictions

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January 3, 2024

As a result of the Biden administration’s reckless open border policies the federal agency charged with enforcing immigration laws inside the United States is getting slammed and discloses in its latest annual report that enforcement arrests nearly doubled in a year in which thousands of criminals were apprehended including dozens of known or suspected terrorists. In fiscal year 2023, which ended in September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 170,590 illegal immigrants inside the country, almost half of them with criminal records.

The criminal aliens had an average of four charges and convictions each, including more than 33,209 charges or convictions for assault, 7,520 for weapons offenses, 1,713 for homicide-related crimes and 1,615 for kidnapping. Removals also included 3,406 known or suspected gang members, 139 known or suspected terrorists, seven human rights violators, and 108 foreign fugitives wanted by their government for crimes including homicide, rape, terrorism, and kidnapping.

Among the most pervasive criminal offenses were Driving Under the Influence (DUI) and possession of serious drugs. Assault was also quite common among the undocumented perpetrators arrested last year and so were weapons offenses, sexual assault, and burglary. Thousands of the arrested migrants stole vehicles, were charged and/or convicted of fraudulent activities, robbery, forgery and property damage. More than 1,000 committed homicide and kidnapping and other types of threats not specified but considered serious enough by the government to be included in the year-end figures. “At-large arrests grew as broader migration trends contributed to an increase in unlawful entries to the Southwest border, driven by factors such as violence, food scarcity, severe poverty, unemployment, corruption, climate change, the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and dire economic conditions outside the United States,” the ICE report states.

The law enforcement agency with a staff of around 20,000 also conducted more than 200,000 domestic transfers of illegal immigrants last year and managed a record number of migrants under a controversial Biden administration catch-and-release policy known as Parole Plus Alternative to Detention (Parole+ATD) that freed over a million illegal aliens in the U.S. in a year, supposedly tracking them with technology and other tools. ICE Health Service Corps also spent a whopping $352 million to provide medical, dental, and mental health services for illegal immigrants detained in facilities throughout the nation, according to figures included in the document. “Those in ICE custody speak dozens of languages, including rare indigenous dialects, and the population includes individuals with a wide range of health statuses and unique physical and mental healthcare requirements — including some who receive comprehensive medical care for the first time after they are booked into detention,” the report says.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigaions (HSI) division conducted an unprecedented number of investigations last year and executed 14,000 “noncitizen apprehensions,” seized an astounding 1.2 million pounds of narcotics, confiscated $5 million in assets and property, identified 1,806 victims of child exploitation, helped 731 victims of human trafficking, seized $949 million in criminally derived assets and more than $148 million in virtual currency from criminal elements. In cases involving drug cartels—officially known as Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCO)—that smuggle humans, narcotics, and money, HSI seized 69 firearms, 14,182 rounds of ammunition, 4,846 pounds of illicit drugs, and over $383,446 in currency. In one program alone, known as Operation Blue Lotus, HSI partnered with Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the frontline Homeland Security agency, to seize more than 8,200 pounds of fentanyl.

The distressing figures in the new ICE report are hardly surprising considering that…. read the entire report here.