When is an immigration law not an immigration law? When Georgia has it, apparently

[thatcrazycajun]

By now, most of you fellow US readers blessed enough to live in politically saner states than Your Humble Correspondent will have heard all about our barmy state legislators' effort to ape Arizona in enacting a new law designed to do what they insist the federal government can't or won't, namely banish the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants (or "illegal aliens," for those whom I know will demand the more pejorative formulation—you know who you are) allegedly clogging our hospitals, schools and factories and sucking up money, services and jobs rightfully belonging to citizens and legal aliens.

You will also no doubt have heard about the calamity now befalling our state's agricultural industry due to this misbegotten law. If not, hearken: For decades Georgia growers of fruits and veggies have been heavily dependent on migrant laborers, most of whom are of Hispanic ethnicity and some of whom are illegals. Most of said laborers have decided to exit or avoid Georgia entirely this picking season because of HB 87. As a result, this year's crops of our world-famous Vidalia onions, not to mention the peaches for which the state is nicknamed and just about every other kind of produce normally harvested in large crops this time of year, is being left to rot in the fields unpicked because nobody else will do this back-breaking, sun-stroking labor for the miserly wages the growers want to pay. (ADDENDUM, 10:51 PM: Thanks to an old pal of mine, Keith Marshall, you can read more detail about the problem here.)

Anyhow, a reader of our local fish-wrapper great metropolitan newspaper wrote a letter thereto which appears in today's edition (scroll down here to see it) insisting that HB 87, contrary to the statements of those opposed to it (whose number, if you haven't by now already guessed, most certainly includes YHC), is not an "immigration law," but "a new law trying to deal with illegal immigrants in the state." He writes that since the law does not in any way alter existing immigration statutes of the state or federal governments, but rather makes explicit the authority of sub-federal law enforcement officers to enforce them, it cannot rightly be called an "immigration law" or even an "anti-immigration law," and anyone so calling it is distorting the actual meaning of the law. For reference, the full text of the legislation in question can be read here.

Now, this may sound like an utterly meaningless distinction to you, as it did to me at first. But I got to thinking about it as the day wore on, and I decided my right-leaning fellow newsprint junkie may have a valid point, however flimsy his logic may be. So I decided to solicit opinion from all of y'all (that's Southern-speak for "crowdsource"). Does this sound like a legit argument to you, or is it a steaming load of meadow-muffins? Discuss.

Comments

[robin-june.livejournal.com]

What part of that legislation that I could slog through seemed to me to be an Anti-Employment bill: If you want to hire someone, contract with someone, or simply give someone a lift in your car, you have to fill out this incredible quantity of red tape, and rely on a database (E-Verify) that is reputed to exclude citizens unfairly.

Nobody without a >10-person Human Resources department at their disposal is going to be inclined to hire a Homo sapiens. Dogs and robots. Yeah, dogs and robots are looking like better new hires; they have a much lower "activation energy," to borrow a term from enzyme kinetics and biophysics.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

Interview with Paul Bridges, republican mayor of Uvalda, a small Georgia town in an agricultural region. He's in thorough opposition to the law for both compassionate and practical reasons.

I don't have the foggiest about whether it makes sense to say it really an immigration law. It seems to me that it's an anti-immigrant law.

Part of the interview is that legal immigrants (there are many families which include citizens, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants) are leaving the state because they don't think it's going to be worth living there when the law goes into effect. Crops are rotting in the ground.

Harvesting is skilled work, so trying to substitute random poor people or prisoners isn't going to work.

[lemmozine.livejournal.com]

Steaming. Definitely steaming.

Georgia crops

[infrogmation.livejournal.com]

Gee, shouldn't the Republicans be pushing for the "free market" solution to the problem they've created, ie, improving wages and working conditions until enough locals find picking the crops an attractive job?

Re: Georgia crops

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

But Bullwinkle, that would NEVER work! [/rocketjsquirrel]...The GOP's idea of a "free market solution" involves the business owners making as much as they can get... and paying workers as little as they can get away with. Actually paying a living wage and improving conditions costs them money,donchaknow.