Perdue stated:
"It's our responsibility to ensure that our famous Georgia hospitality is not abused, that our taxpayers are not taken advantage of and that our citizens are protected.
The new law puts the impetus on employers to verify the legal status of job applicants and new employees, and requires police notification of criminal activity by illegals.
The GSICA further limits commercial services to illegals and imposes new fines and prison terms for related offenses. These are all common sense steps taken to enforce the immigration laws that are already on the books, while helping to curtail further problems by asserting these new controls.
Interestingly, the Mexican government weighed in today condeming the new law. According to the BBC (I can't for the life of me imagine why I didn't see any coverage of Mexico's response in the US media):
Presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar said the legislation discriminated against Mexicans and that diplomats would monitor how it was applied.Let's talk about that for a moment. The Mexican government might want to do a little research into their own laws before they start attempting to re-write ours. The Center for Security Policyhas some interesting reading material available outlining Mexico's very own polcies regarding illegal immigration. Here's a little sample: Article 9 of the Mexican constitution specifies
"only citizens of the Republic may take part in the political affairs of the country."Article 33 takes it a bit further
"Foreigners may not in any way participate in the political affairs of the country."So much for sneaking over and protesting THEIR laws.
The Mexican constitution further denies basic property rights and equal employment rights while also disallowing them from public or military service. Foreign nationals are even prevented from becoming members of the clergy.
Perhaps most interesting of all is another tidbit from Article 33
"The Federal Executive shall have the exclusive power to compel any foreigner whose remaining he may deem inexpedient to abandon the national territory immediately and without the necessity of previous legal action."Let's just forget the new crackdown on illegal immigration. Why bother writing a new set of laws or even enforcing our existing ones. Let's just adopt Mexico's immigration policy; it seems to cover all the bases pretty well. Sadly, if we tried similar measures here, the first cries of racism would come before the ink dried on the bill.
Technorati Tags:
Immigration, Illegal immigrants, immigration reform, protest, mexico, border, immigration policy, politics, Georgia
