Republican legislators in Georgia may get a chance to vote for some control over — and transparency into — the chaotic flood of President Joe Biden’s illegal migrants into their state.
“Clearly, there is no control of the issue,” said Republican Rep. Jesse Petrea (R-Savannnah), whose draft bill can be voted through the House if it first gets through the House’s rule committee by Monday.
House Bill 136 “is a very simple public safety bill,” he told Breitbart News. “It requires the Department of Corrections to post quarterly on their official website the number of criminal illegals in our Georgia correctional system.”
The critical hurdle is getting approval from the 32-member committee chaired by Rep. Richard Smith (R-Columbus). The committee decides which bills are allowed onto the floor for a vote.
People hold up signs as they protest the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) and the recent detentions of illegal immigrants in Washington, DC on July 16, 2018. (ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
“I’ve got to get on and off the House floor and I’ve got to do it by Monday, and I think I can,” Petrea said. “My chances [for passage] in the Senate would be very good,” he said.
However, a similar bill “was stopped in the Republican rules committee of the House in 2019,” said D.A. King, the founder of the New Dustin Inman Society, which seeks to track and reduce the smuggling of illegal migrants into Georgia.
He told Breitbart News:
The resistance from the [GOP] establishment comes from the fact that this bill will create hard, accurate, and official numbers on at least one monetary cost of illegal immigration in Georgia — that being the cost of prison and incarceration.
We have learned in committee that there are about 1,500 criminal aliens in the prison system with ICE detainers [confirmatiom of illegal status by the federal agency]. But we know there are more criminal aliens because, obviously, all criminal aliens in the system do not have ICE detainers. I personally think it could be as high as another third.
We also learned that the cost of prison confinement is $73 per day. If you do the math on the $73 per day times the 1,500 ICE detainers, you come up with about $40 million a year that taxpayers are paying for the incarceration of these undocumented [and undeported] workers. That number will obviously go up.
“The Democrats will vote against this …. [they] holler ‘Racism!’ and ‘Anti-immigrant!’” whenever the bill comes up for discussion, King said
Petrea responded:
Most of the illegal immigrants in our country — even though they’re here illegally — are honest and hardworking people … But when we don’t control illegal immigration, we are going to wind up with some folks who are not good people … who are here to prey upon our families.
“We’re talking about people who illegally came here, and then after illegally coming here, committed a violent or a sexual crime on our people,” he said. Opponents “want to deny that or they want to pretend it isn’t so — knowing it is — and I think that’s inappropriate,” he said.
The opposition is “quite frankly shameful,” he said, adding, “Let’s debate the issue on the facts … we have a subset [of migrants] that are violent criminals.”
“We’re terribly limited with what we can do to control illegal immigration,” said Petrea. “It is a duty of the federal government and is one that you and I know they are failing to do … I believe what we can do is to publicize the information about the degree to which this affects our lives.”
“Representative Petrea deserves praise for his tenacity,” said King. Currently, “it is impossible for us to fully appreciate the [full cost of migration] of human lives and misery in Georgia.”
The national polls are pressuring national GOP legislators to curb illegal migration.
By a factor of more than two to one, Americans agree companies “should raise wages and try harder to recruit Americans even if it causes the prices of their products to rise,” said a July 2022 poll by YouGov.com.
Just 28 percent of registered voters believe immigration has been positive for their local economy, according to an August 12-15 survey of 2,025 registered voters conducted for a pro-migration advocacy group. Only 38 percent say immigration is good for the United States, the poll added.
Migration in Georgia
Business groups want more migrants because it provides them with an alternative source of workers, plus many additional renters and customers.
For example, the Georgia Chamber’s “Global Talent Initiative” claims, “Through strategic, targeted efforts, we can increase the number of skilled workers in our state. this will lead to better jobs, increased economic mobility, and a more prosperous state.”
The inflow of new workers is good for business owners — but it is also bad for ordinary Americans. For example, any flood of foreign workers tends to cut local wages, spike housing costs, and burden communities. Migration also pushes more Americans out of jobs and towards drug addiction and homelessness.
Many business advocates claim there is a shortage of workers in Georgia, despite the state’s huge and growing population of illegal migrants. There are also many Georgians who are not working: the federal reserve says that only 62 percent of working-age Georgians even hold jobs amid the mass inflow of cheap foreign workers. That percentage is sharply down from 68 percent in June 2008, ensuring more poverty and welfare costs.
Despite claims of a labor shortage, wages are also falling in many Georgia districts amid rising inflation, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Also, Georgia companies are free to hire workers from other employers with the promise of more money or better conditions.
Most migrants prefer to live in big cities in the major states, such as New York City and Los Angeles. That skewed flow of migrants into the major population centers minimizes the free-market pressure on investors and companies to hire Georgians for jobs at worksites in the many poor towns outside Atlanta.
