Immigration Under the Gold DomeDenis O'Hayer
Web Editor: Michael King
1/30/2006
www.11alive.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=75403With nearly a quarter of this year's state legislative session already over, state lawmakers are still struggling with an issue voters want them to tackle -- illegal immigration.
North Cobb High eleventh grader Cesar Pastrana bluntly told U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson border patrols look to him like a hunt.
“Some of my family and my friends are illegal immigrants in this country, and from what I've seen on TV, some of them are being shot,” Pastrana said. “A pretty harsh way to keep them from coming in.”
(uh, huh......I wonder if he wants to point out any SPECIFIC examples of illegals being shot?)Political lobbyist Bay Buchanan told her fellow conservatives that efforts to stop illegal immigration are not harsh enough.
“We believe in the rule of law in this country, and we don't have it now. And it's impacting our families, our communities, our education, our health care,” Buchanan said.State lawmakers have proposed at least 15 measures, from denying illegal immigrants any state benefits, to restricting access to higher education.
But Republican leaders haven't decided which bills to move.The volume of bills is one GOP problem. A more important factor is that Republicans themselves disagree on the major questions.
Buchanan says that employers who don’t check the status of workers should be punished -- something House speaker Glenn Richardson strongly opposes.
“No, I’m not going to just saddle an employer and say it's the employer's fault. It’s a societal problem. We're going to have to decide how we proceed,” Richardson said.
“You put a couple of executives behind bars, and I'll guarantee you -- it'll take care of the problem real fast,” Buchanan said.
The larger question is whether any stat action will solve the complex problem.
President Bush has proposed a guest worker program to address the problem. But some of his fellow Republicans insist that the program amounts to amnesty for people who have entered the country illegally.