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I was right the first time and issued a correction/retraction in error.

As I repeatedly wrote and said, Biden’s illegally paroled aliens are indeed eligible for the Promise Scholarship in SB 233 – “school choice” bill.

Noodle it out for yourself below:

 

 

SB 233 LC 49 1473S

71  20-2B-3.

72  (a) A student shall qualify for a promise scholarship account under this chapter if:

73  (1) The student’s parent resides within Georgia and has been a Georgia resident for at

74  least one year; provided, however, that the one-year requirement shall not apply if the

75  student’s parent is an active duty military service member stationed in Georgia within the

76  previous year;

77  (2) The student is currently enrolled and has been continuously enrolled in a Georgia

78  public school for a period of time that includes at least two consecutive enrollment counts

79  conducted pursuant to Code Section 20-2-160.

80  (3) The student resides in the attendance zone of a public school that is included on the

81  list of public schools provided for in Code Section 20-2B-10;

82  (4) The student does not meet any of the ineligibility criteria provided for in

83  subsection (b) of Code Section 20-3-519.1;

 

 

20-3-519.1. Eligibility for scholarships or grants.

(a) A student is eligible for any scholarship or grant described in this part if the student:

(1) Meets residency requirements by:

(A)

(i) Being classified as a legal resident of Georgia as established by the program regulations promulgated by the Georgia Student Finance Commission which shall be based upon the in-state tuition policy of the board of regents and the in-state tuition guidelines set by the Technical College System of Georgia; and

(ii)

(I) If the student was classified as a legal resident of Georgia at the time of graduation from high school or from a home study program meeting the requirements of Code Section 20-2-690, then the student must have met the requirements set forth in division (i) of this subparagraph for a period of at least 12 months immediately prior to the first day of classes for which the scholarship or grant is to be awarded; or

(II) If the student was not classified as a legal resident at the time of graduation from high school or from a home study program meeting the requirements of Code Section 20-2-690, then the student must have met the requirements set forth in division (i) of this subparagraph for a period of at least 24 months immediately prior to the first day of classes for which the scholarship or grant is to be awarded; or

(B) Being classified as a legal resident of Georgia if such student is a member of the Georgia National Guard; a member of a reserve component of the armed forces of the United States located in Georgia; or an active duty military service member or the spouse or dependent child of an active duty military service member and the active duty military service member is stationed in Georgia or lists Georgia as his or her home of record; and

(2) Meets all applicable requirements of this part relating to the relevant scholarship or grant and applicable to the student.

(b) A student is ineligible for any scholarship or grant described in this part if the student:

(1) Is not a United States citizen or a permanent resident alien who meets the definition of an

eligible noncitizen under federal Title IV requirements;

(Title IV) Eligible Noncitizen See link on “eligible citizen” here.

A U.S. national (includes natives of American Samoa or Swains Island), U.S. permanent resident (who has an I-151, I-551 or I-551C [Permanent Resident Card]), or an individual who has an Arrival-Departure Record (I-94) from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) showing one of the following designations:

• “Refugee”
• “Asylum Granted”
• “Cuban-Haitian Entrant (Status Pending)”
• “Conditional Entrant” (valid only if issued before April 1, 1980)
• Victims of human trafficking, T-visa (T-2, T-3, or T-4, etc.) holder
• “Parolee” (You must be paroled into the United States for at least one year and you must be able to provide evidence from the USCIS that you are in the United States for other than a temporary purpose and that you intend to become a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.) 

If you meet the noncitizen criteria above, you are eligible to receive federal student aid.  If you are unsure of your eligibility, please check with your school’s financial aid office for more information.

 

The below column was originally posted on the National Review Online website on November 9, 2019. It is reposted here with permission. We are grateful to NRO and Mr. Krikorian.

NRO

The Southern Poverty Law Center: Part Karl, Part Groucho

 

D.A. King and the Dustin Inman Society are said to be the first to overcome dismissal hurdle

“The society is seeking $25,000 in donations to fund its legal effort against the SPLC. Supporters can contribute on GoFundMe.”

The Daily Signal

April 4, 2023

SPLC to Face the Music for ‘Hate Group’ Defamation as Lawsuit Clears Major Hurdle

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Southern Poverty Law Center routinely brands mainstream conservative and Christian organizations “hate groups,” placing them on a map with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan, but most lawsuits aiming to hold the SPLC accountable for this alleged defamation have failed.

On Friday, however, a federal judge denied the SPLC’s motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit, allowing the case to proceed.

The SPLC branded the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society an “anti-immigrant hate group” in February 2018 after the SPLC had previously stated in 2011 that it did not consider the society a “hate group.” The society, named after a 16-year-old Georgia boy killed in a 2000 car crash caused by an illegal immigrant, aims to combat illegal immigration.

“After telling the Associated Press in 2011 that we were not a ‘hate group,’ the SPLC changed their mind and made us an ‘anti-immigrant hate group’ within days of their registering as active lobbyists against pro-enforcement, immigration-related legislation here in the Georgia Capitol,” D.A. King, the society’s founder and president, told The Daily Signal in an emailed statement Tuesday.

King claimed that the SPLC’s “goal was clearly to paint us as the extremists and to marginalize us in the eyes of state lawmakers and the media. That effort was largely successful.”

• Related: The SPLC took in $140 million in donations for 2021 alone

As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it used to monitor the Ku Klux Klan—the Intelligence Project—and weaponized it against conservatives and Christians, branding them “hate groups” in an effort to raise money and demonize its ideological opponents. The SPLC has an endowment of more than $500 million and bank accounts in the Cayman Islands. Amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019 that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward, calling the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”

King’s lawsuit quotes Heidi Beirich—then-director of the Intelligence Project—who told The Associated Press in 2011 that the SPLC did not consider the society a “hate group,” but rather listed King as a “nativist.”

“His tactics have generally not been to get up in the face of actual immigrants and threaten them,” Beirich said. “Because he is fighting, working on his legislation through the political process, that is not something we can quibble with, whether we like the law or not.”

The lawsuit claims that the SPLC did not indicate that King or the Dustin Inman Society had changed their activities between 2011 and 2018—in fact, many of the statements and activities the SPLC cites as evidence that the society is a “hate group” date back to before 2011.

The lawsuit cites an SPLC definition for “anti-immigrant hate group” that dates back to 2020, which no longer appears on the SPLC website—although the center appears not to have adopted a new definition:

Anti-immigrant hate groups are the most extreme of the hundreds of nativist groups that have proliferated since the late 1990s, when anti-immigration xenophobia began to rise to levels not seen in the United States since the 1920s. Most white hate groups are also anti-immigrant, but anti-immigrant hate groups single out that population with dehumanizing and demeaning rhetoric. Although many groups legitimately criticize American immigration policies, anti-immigrant hate groups go much further by pushing racist propaganda and ideas about non-white immigrants.

While the SPLC brands the society an “anti-immigrant hate group,” it does not point to any specific evidence that King or the society “maligned an entire class of people” or fit the definition cited above. “Further, a cursory review of [Plaintiff] DIS’s website would have revealed that the Board of Advisors of [Plaintiff] DIS is a diverse group of Americans with a variety of racial and immigrant backgrounds,” the lawsuit alleges.

Inger Eberhart, a member of the society’s board and its director of communications, is a black woman; Everette Robinson and Catherine Davis are also black; Mary Grabar is a legal immigrant from Slovenia (then part of Yugoslavia); Maria Litland is a legal immigrant who appears on the Austrian Society of America website; and Sabine Durden-Coulter immigrated legally from Germany. Durden-Coulter lost her son in a 2012 car crash caused by an illegal immigrant (with no connection to the crash that killed Dustin Inman).

While the SPLC claimed not to have any knowledge of the society’s board in legal filings, the SPLC’s article on the society notes its “eight-member board of advisors.”… the article continues here at the Daily Signal.

 

House Education committee 8:00 AM meeting, March 21, 2023 Left: Rep Todd Jones, (R) Sen. Greg Dolezal in 8:00 AM House Education committee hearing.

Why do you think Sen Dolezal didn’t tell the committee and the world about the illegal immigration component of his bill?

Eligible students must be U.S. citizens or green card holders. Why doesn’t the bill have the same requirement for the “parents?” We’ll tell you in another post.

• Related: A line-by-line look at the role of parents in the proposed new state “Promise Scholarship” grant 

__

Sen. Greg Dolezal (R- Cumming) Lead sponsor, SB 233 “school choice” – presenting the bill as passed by the senate to the House Education committee. Partial transcript. This begins after start of presentation and stops well before the end.

“Um, I thought I would start, Mr. Chairman, the same way I started in the subcommittee yesterday, which is simply to talk about this bill from a high level, what this bill does, who it does it for, how it will function, and what it is that we’re doing.

Senate Bill 233 is the Georgia Promise Scholarship Act, and from… At a high level, it takes the state funding for students who are currently enrolled in public school, it allows their parents to redirect those funds to an educational outcome, and a pathway of their choice.

That can be homeschool, virtual school, private school, co-ops, and as the education industry continues to innovate, hopefully we’ll continue to see further opportunities for parents to pursue excellent education outcomes for their children as we move into the future.

So, in the colloquial terms, as we’ve heard these… This term bantered about, it’s a money follows the child program. Mr. Chairman, I think it’s important to just talk through a high level of how schools are funded in the state of Georgia.

You have three buckets of funding, federal funding, state funding, and then the local funding, the local funding comes from the tax digest. The state funding is appropriated on a per capita basis, as you know, and it is designed to cover the marginal costs of adding a student to a system, so therefor the state funding for every school system in the state of Georgia fluctuates as the head count fluctuates, which is almost guaranteed to be some fluctuation year over year as you have [inaudible 00:01:36] student that move through the system.

The local funding, which comes from the local tax digest is designed to cover the fixed cost. That’s your building costs, and other hard costs that tend to be more static in nature, and don’t fluctuate as much via head count.

That funding is obviously based on the tax digest, and not at all tied to head count. What the bill, as it passed the Senate will do, it was… It will allow students to take $6,000, which is slightly less than the average that the state spends per student, uh, in the K through 12 public education system, and allow them to pursue one of those opportunities.

–>Who is eligible for the program? Like I mentioned, the students who are currently enrolled in public school, or those entering public school for the first time, and then the students who were attending a school that would be deemed to be in the bottom 25%, so the bottom quartile of schools in the state of Georgia *(actually, lines 71 & 72 create the requirement that the student be a U.S. citizen or Lawful Permanent Resident (green card holder) – also found on lines 82 & 83 in the latest version of the bill).

• Update, March 22, 2023 6:20 AM: The Republican-majority House Education committee passed the latest version of SB 233 out on an unaccountable voice vote yesterday.

How is the funding spent? If you’re familiar with FSA programs, or other things that are administered by a third party, this would be very similar. These, uh… The state finance commissioner would stand up a third party administrator, and the, the funds would flow through that, that third party…”

end of transcript.

 

 

 

• “Workforce EXCELeration:” – Another proposed new state-funded benefit – illegal aliens included – Republican Sen. Jason Anavitarte lead sponsor.

*According to Sen Anavitarte, SB 112 would “…expand educational opportunities to Georgians which would in turn, create more jobs across the state.”

*We note that federal law prohibits employment of illegal aliens. 

*Only one Republican voted “NO” on the bill in the senate.

• There is a companion bill in the House, HB 313

 

_____

Explainer, the short version : The GA state Senate has passed a bill (SB 112) that creates a new Adult Education pilot program aimed at “Workforce EXCELeration” (get it?) that sends ‘the undiploma-ed’ Georgia residents aged twenty-one and over to the state technical college system for classes that result in a high school diploma.

The bill says existing state law that prohibit this goal may be waived – federal laws too. They may plan on using that clause to attempt to ‘waive’ OCGA 50-36-1 or 8 USC 1324a.

If there is an exclusion for illegal aliens, we don’t see it. You may want to ask your state senator to direct you to the line number that contains that exclusion. I sent an email to my own state senator, Dr. Kay Kirkpatrick,  asking that question.

Her response to me:

“Don’t see it. Better talk to Senator Anavitarte because he’ll present it on House side. I can mention it to him too.”

The bill is pushed by lead sponsor, Senator Jason Anivitarte (R – Dallas). You can see the bill’s other sponsors here. SB 112 was passed out of the senate Economic Development and Tourism Committee, Sen. Brandon Beach, Chairman.

• Related: Former Dem candidate and board member on anti-enforcement immigration lobby group wins GOP primary for Georgia state senate — Jason Anavitarte

The video of the twelve-ish minute committee hearing is here, (see 2/13/23). It’s the first bill heard. The bill passed committee unanimously and has been passed by the full senate. Only one Republican voted against the bill.

Vote record here.  And below.

_______

 *Related: The Georgia Chamber of Commerce is pushing this bill.

From SB 112:

 Establish High School Diplomas for Adult Learners Program

”…relating to vocational, technical, and adult education, so as to provide for a pilot program whereby qualifying private nonprofit entities provide instruction and other services for eligible students 21 years of age and older to attain a high school diploma; to provide for program requirements; to provide for waivers and variances; …”

(Line 28) “It is the intent of the Georgia General Assembly that by empowering Georgians to obtain their high school diplomas and obtain industry recognized certifications, they can excel in the workforce and improve the life trajectory for themselves and their families.”

“Chapter 4 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated, relating to vocational, technical, and adult education, is amended by adding a new article to read as follows…”

___

More details

To be an eligible student, an individual shall: “Reside in this state; be 21 years of age or older; and have not attained a high school diploma.”

 The Technical College System of Georgia is authorized to establish a pilot program to allow eligible students to qualify for enrollment in the High School Diploma Program for Adult Learners. Students would be awarded a high school diploma upon completion. The goal is to judge the feasibility of implementing a state-funded program for individuals residing in this state who are 21 years of age or older and who have not attained a high school diploma to enroll and participate in a program.

There would be no cost to the participating students. We see no provision that excludes illegal aliens – who are prohibited by state law from accessing Adult Education and by federal law from employment…even if the senate goal is “Workforce EXCELeration.”

The TCSG would be authorized to provide funds appropriated by the General Assembly for the implementation of the pilot program to private nonprofit entities to instruction to the “adult learners.”

The “pilot program” would run for six years. Two years after Brian Kemp is out of the Governor’s office.

The bill contains language that allows the TCSG and the State Board of Education to “waive or provide variances to state laws, rules, regulations, policies, and procedures…” that may be necessary to meet the measure’s goals. Ditto for federal laws that get in the way.