“Along with ending “sanctuary city” policies, readers may remember that Kemp pledged to crack down on “criminal illegals” when he ran for governor in 2018. He didn’t.”
For someone who has been fighting illegal immigration in Georgia for twenty years, the endless news stories coming out of Florida regarding Gov DeSantis’ “toughest state illegal immigration law in the nation” crackdown on that organized crime is both familiar and sadly entertaining. It seems that the vast corporate-funded, anti-enforcement media lobby is crazed over the promise of future enforcement.
Headline after headline screams that “the undocumented” are leaving Florida out of fear.
“Migrant Workers Flee Florida as New Immigration Law Takes Effect” from the July 3 edition of the Wall St. Journal is but one example.
In a statement, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the new Florida provisions could prompt “discrimination and racial profiling, and give rise to hostile environments, intimidation” and (wait for it)…”hate crimes.”
“Criminalization is not the way to resolve the phenomenon of undocumented migration,” the Mexican government said, describing the new measures as driven by xenophobia and white nationalism.” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador urged U.S. Latino voters to reject DeSantis, accusing the politician of trying to win votes at the expense of illegal aliens (he may have said “migrants,”…but “tomato” – “tomahto”).
This entire scenario is well-known to this writer because I recall when Georgia was passing “the toughest state illegal immigration law in the nation…” – multiple times. In 2006 GOP legislators passed the thirteen-page SB 529, “Georgia Security & Immigration Compliance Act.” Then-Gov Sonny Perdue signed it into law and was reelected the same year.
To get started the bill had to pass out of the Senate Public Safety Committee where a state Senator named Brian Kemp was the tough-talking Republican chairman.
Kemp told the liberal Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper then that “many Georgians are “fed up” with illegal immigration.” He was a candidate for Agriculture Commissioner at the time.
In 2011 Gold Dome Republicans put in place the “Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011” – HB 87. Twenty-three sections of enforcement promises in twenty-seven pages. Today, Georgia is home to more illegals that Arizona.
In both above years a different Mexican president offered up the same race-baiting goop attacking our Georgia legislation we are now hearing about Florida’s.
Each time we saw the same panicked news stories we now see from Florida courtesy of the outraged liberal media.
The head of metro-Atlanta’s rabidly anti-enforcement “Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights” (GLAHR), Mexican immigrant Adelina Nicholls, recently told the AJC that she fears another move towards enforcement promises here. “It wouldn’t surprise me if some provisions of the law or even the whole thing was introduced at the next legislative session here in the state of Georgia,” she said.
Good one. Nichols must be having a little fun with the AJC reporter. She has nothing to fear here. The Republicans who run the state legislature are going in the other direction. Examples? HB 136, a simple, short bill that would merely require a quarterly, public count of the number of illegal aliens in the state prison system and reveal their crimes is stuck in the Republican-led House committee process.
In February all but one of the Republicans in the state senate voted to provide taxpayer-funded Adult Education to illegal aliens. Pushed by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, there is an endless effort to provide a greatly reduced taxpayer-financed instate tuition opportunity to illegal aliens that is not available to Americans who live in other states.
Much if not most of the laws already put in place here are treated as optional by the people elected to enforcement them. Kemp is allowed to be silent on illegal immigration in Georgia by dutiful and obedient dollar-first GOP voters who would rather silently watch their countrymen be harmed by criminal illegal aliens than risk accusations of being “anti-Kemp.” It’s not just the Rule of Law that is on sale.
Along with ending “sanctuary city” policies, readers may remember that Kemp pledged to crack down on “criminal illegals” when he ran for governor in 2018. He didn’t.
- Related: Sanctuary Georgia: Another law that is ignored on “criminal illegals”
The illegal aliens flowing out of Florida are reminders that even the threat of enforcement results in their outward migration. Where will they go? Georgians should expect an influx of newly arrived illegals with a Florida accent.
A version of this column is published in the July 10, 2023 edition of The Islander newspaper in Glynn County, GA.
