Georgia Republicans Draft Legal Giveaways to Illegals

YUMA, ARIZONA - DECEMBER 10: A relieved Venezuelan immigrant speaks with his wife on a vid
John Moore/Getty Images
Neil Munro

Republican legislators in Georgia are trying to dodge debate over the rising cheap-labor migration into their state — but they also are drafting bills that would steer more illegal migrants into the jobs and homes needed by young Georgians.

“Those of us who are in the [Georgia] Capitol for the last 18 years know that the big business lobby run by the Georgia Chamber of Commerce does not want any discussion about the hidden costs of black-market labor,” said D.A. King, founder of the Dustin Inman Society, which opposes illegal migration.

“Most legislators under Georgia’s gold-domed capitol would rather have a root canal while sitting in a chair of broken glass than discuss black-market labor and illegal migration in Georgia,” King told Breitbart News.

The state is home to at least 400,000 illegal migrants and roughly 800,000 legal migrants, according to a 2020 estimate by a pro-migration group. Companies also ship in foreign workers, often illegally, to take low-wage, shorter-term jobs that would otherwise provide family wages to Georgians. In 2020, for example, then-GOP Rep. Doug Collins stopped an illegal scheme to import Korean construction workers for a battery factory in Jackson County.

The stealthy push for more migration into Georgia is just one of many state-level campaign efforts to get around the GOP’s voter-enforced opposition to President Joe Biden’s planned amnesties and migration expansions. The state campaigns hope to extract more migrant workers, consumers, and renters from poor countries for use in the U.S. economy. In Illinois, for example, the Chicago Sun-Times reported January 26 about plans to expand cheap healthcare aid to migrants:

[Angelica] Garcia, 51, of West Chicago, is among those pushing for Illinois to expand a health care program to more [illegal] immigrants like herself. Garcia, who volunteers at the cultural hub Casa Michoacan in suburban West Chicago, was among a group of … advocates Wednesday who detailed the economic and health care reforms they support.

Last year, Illinois expanded a Medicaid-like program that provides health insurance coverage to [illegal] immigrants who are 55 and older, the Associated Press reported. Garcia said she doesn’t qualify for that program because of her age. She and others want the program to expand to include other [illegal] immigrants like herself.

In New York City, advocates have passed a law allowing illegals to vote. In California, advocates have passed laws that provide taxpayer-funded healthcare to illegals. In Virginia, advocates want to start putting illegals on public healthcare programs  — but that will likely be blocked by elected Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin. In Texas, the GOP-led government is working to block migrants that are being welcomed by Biden’s federal agencies.

In Georgia, the HB 999 bill is a school-choice bill that would quietly provide state K-12 education funds to illegal migrants.

Advocates are rushing to pass the bill during the state’s legislature 40-day session, which ends April 4.

The HB 999 bill would send $6,000 per child into a “consumer-directed account” for private-school tuition, allowing many parents to keep their kids out of the federal K-12 pro-diversity schools. But the bill has no requirement excluding illegal immigrants. The bill is sponsored by GOP Reps. Wes Cantrell (Ga-22), Kasey Carpenter (Ga-4), Heath Clark (Ga-147), and several Democratic legislators, according to an article on King’s website, immigrationpoliticsga.com.

The bill was pushed January 28 by radio host Eric Erickson as a GOP outreach to non-white voters:

Jeb Bush’s education reforms … included robust school reforms and school choice initiatives … and [so] black families and Hispanic families shifted towards the Republican Party in the polling. So pretty big deal, and it’s insane for the GOP nationwide not to realize [if] you give parents the choice — particularly now in the the coronavirus situation —  … you give parents essentially an entitlement and then dare the Democrats to take it back. The latest state to advance this is the state of Georgia. House Bill 999 — Wes Cantrell, state representative — put has put together, get this, pay attention to this, a bipartisan, multiracial coalition. Black and white, male and female, Democratic Republican.

Erickson — who opposed Donald Trump in 2016 — invited King to comment on the bill. King said:

A lot of people will support “school choice.” Most people here in Georgia are not going to support the contents of the bill that allow direct payments from the state to accounts set up for illegal alien students, to be distributed by illegal alien parents, who are also given an opportunity to have oversight into compliance with this law. So it needs a lot of tweaks.

“I suspect through the committee process, they will work those particular issues out,” Erickson replied. “I’m fairly certain the Republicans aren’t going to fund illegal aliens going into private school, but it’s one of those issues they’re gonna have to process.”

Many polls show that many blacks, legal immigrants, and Latinos oppose illegal labor migration.

The second bill, HB 120, would allow roughly 20,000 illegal-migrant youths and adults to get in-state tuition rates — or a $12,000 break — when attending college, places needed by young Georgians. The bill is also backed by Cantrell.

The HB 120 bill is backed by the state’s Chamber of Commerce and by FWD.us, the D.C.-based pro-amnesty advocacy group formed by wealthy coastal investors. The FWD.us investors stand to gain from any inflow of foreign consumers, renters, and workers — and so FWD.us urges its allies to avoid any mention of migration’s pocketbook costs to ordinary Americans.

Georgia officials echo the cheap-labor message. Without the tuition break, “we’re basically losing a potential workforce,” Jeremy Williams, Gainesville City Schools superintendent, told the Gainsville Times on January 7.

The HB 120 bill was backed in early January by a top Republican in the State Senate, President Pro Tempore Butch Miller. “If we want these young people to be productive members of our society and contribute, then we’re going to have to educate them and not put them at a disadvantage,” he told the Gainsville Times on January 7.

“If [the debate] was all private, all this would pass,” King noted.

A third bill, HB 932, would allow fast-track access to in-state tuition for foreign migrants delivered to Georgia by Biden’s fast-expanding refugee and parole programs.

The bill, according to King, “would allow refugees, foreigners here on Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) and Afghans on ‘humanitarian parole’ to be excluded from the current state law and [University System of Georgia] policy that says newly arrived college students must be Georgia residents for 12 months before they can access the much lower in-state tuition rate in Georgia’s public colleges and tech schools.”

Cantrell is also backing the bill, said King. “This is his last year [in the legislature], so he’s got nothing to lose by exposing his very, very liberal views on all things immigration,” he said.

However, Rep. Jan Jones (GA-47), who serves as Speaker Pro Tempore, the second-highest position in the Georgia House, recently withdrew her sponsorship of the HB 932 bill amid public protest.

The state’s establishment media does not want to talk about the pocketbook costs of migration. Those costs include declining wages for Americans, reduced technology investment in Americans’ workplaces, spiking housing costs for American families, and a massive shift of wealth from rural areas to major cities, including Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco.

In his campaign to replace Gov. Kemp, former Sen. David Perdue also downplays any debate over legal and illegal migration. The state’s farmers are a critical bloc in the state GOP, so even Trump also ignored the issue when he endorsed Perdue.

Kemp ran on the immigration issue in 2018 but has done nothing on the issue since he was elected. Kemp’s office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News.

The Kemp campaign’s description of the 2018 ad says:

“Track and Deport” highlights conservative businessman Brian Kemp’s record on fighting – and winning – against the Obama Justice Department and left wing groups attempting to undermine Georgia’s elections. The thirty second spot also re-iterates Kemp’s commitment to securing the border, defunding sanctuary cities, and tracking criminal aliens for immediate deportation.

“Governor Kemp has been defiant in his refusal even to mention, much less carry out, his campaign promise on criminal illegals,” King noted.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.

In December, for example, the Department of Justice unveiled charges in a massive “modern-day slavery” scheme that sneaked cheap labor into Georgia’s rural economy. The legally-imported, short-term foreign workers allowed the investor-owned farm companies to minimize the payrolls and to cheat American workers out of wages that would have been spent in local communities.

Migration curbs Americans’ productivity, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

For many years, a wide variety of polls has shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based,  bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.