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October 18, 2005
I heard Georgia State Senator Chip
Rogers (R-District 21) from over in Cherokee County speak about his
Senate Bill 170 last night. My friends, this bill makes a whole lot of sense to me. He is trying to stop this hemorrhaging of Georgia
taxpayers' money that is going to the aid and succor of immigrants who are in this country and this state illegally. His bill is quite simple really: It says that people must show proof of legal Georgia
residency to access state benefits. The bill does not affect who attends our public schools
nor does it affect care for somebody who has a bonafide health emergency and presents at one of our hospital emergency departments. Those perks are made available to everyone through federal mandate. And, you wouldn't think this has to be clarified, but the bill also establishes that anybody who is an illegal alien in this country cannot be considered a legal resident of Georgia.
Hello? SB170 also provides for the reporting of folks who cannot prove they are legal immigrants to the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security. You can view the bill at
http://www.legis.state.ga.us/legis/2005_06/fulltext/sb170.htm
If this common sense bill passes our legislature in January, we will effectively pull the rug out from one-half of the equation that is seriously overburdening the social safety net that we have in place for our own legal citizens of Georgia. Illegal immigrants are flocking to Georgia for two reasons: employment (with no questions asked) and our free social services, such as schools and medical care. If we can redirect this important workforce to enter this country through legal channels, we will ALL be much better off. For one thing, we taxpayers won't feel ripped off as we certainly do now.
In my opinion, employers in America are eventually going to be
forced to bite the bullet and hire only legal immigrants for the labor-intensive jobs, such as in the building trades, landscaping, housekeeping, restaurant, and chicken processing industries. Public
outcry will finally demand they comply. Taxpayers ought to be heartily sick of subsidizing the bottom line of these prosperous private businesses that use and exploit this cheap immigrant labor and leave us holding the bag for their workers' healthcare and other benefits that they access from the taxpayer trough. Let's hope it will not take more hospitals collapsing under the indigent load to get the public's
attention. Between 1995 and 2002, sixteen hospitals in Georgia have closed, which were located in the following counties: two in DeKalb, two in Fulton, two in Rabun, Chatooga, Catoosa, Ware, Carroll, Richmond, Clarke, Bibb, Dooly, Hancock, and Douglas. Tattnall Memorial Hospital in Tattnall County closed in April of 2000, but was able to reopen in October of 2000, under new ownership.
Gwinnett County is particularly over-burdened by indigent workers. The Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce is loaded with members whose businesses use this huge Hispanic labor pool, both legal and illegal. Overall, they are not anxious to increase their costs by providing an upgraded wage for their undocumented workers or healthcare benefits for them. When somebody gets injured on the job or sick, they go to the hospital emergency room and we take care of them for free. Of course, we all know - THERE IS NO FREE. Somebody pays. Hospitals shoulder much of this financial load themselves, unless they are a heavily
taxpayer-supported institution like Grady Hospital in Atlanta. Our hospitals in Gwinnett do not fall into that category. Our hospitals take the indigent load right on the chin.
It's not that the illegal immigrant labor force doesn't have any money. Seventeen Billion dollars in remittances was sent home to Mexico last year. That is seventeen Billion dollars that was removed from the American economy; it can be tracked through wire transfer records. Mexico received more money from remittances than from any other source of national revenue. It is no wonder that the Mexican government is encouraging its citizens to more to America any way they can. We are propping up the Mexican economy in large measure.
According to Senator Rogers, the direct costs to us from
our illegal alien population fall into the following buckets:
1. Basic Medical Care - usually at the Emergency Room, even when it is not an emergency.
2. Maternity care, delivery expenses, long-term maternity
care.
3. Education for K-12 to Illegal Aliens.
4. Education for K-12 to children of Illegal Aliens.
5. Additional education programs, including limited English proficiency.
6. Subsidized tuition for Illegal Aliens given in-state tuition.
7. Low-income housing subsidies.
8. State welfare assistance.
9. Incarceration.
10. Investigation, prosecution, translation and interpreter assistance, judicial management, parole costs.
11. Costs of crime on society.
12. Law enforcement personnel costs, jail facility
construction costs, misplaced resources.
13. Increased insurance rates to cover accidents and
criminal activity caused by Illegal Aliens.
14. Remittances sent abroad that would normally be spent locally and benefits lost through the multiplier effect.
15. Traffic congestion.
16. Environmental impact.
17. Infrastructure costs.
Here's an anecdote for you: In Gwinnett, our 9-1-1 call center, as well as multiple other county departments, subscribe to a language line interpretation service that is provided by AT&T. The cost for this service varies per minute, depending upon the language needed. Spanish is $2.20 per minute, Russian is $2.40 per
minute, Bosnian is $2.60 per minute, and so on. It
allows anyone who can't speak English to complete their call. You can guess that a good bit of this usage is for Spanish
speakers. In the Police account, for instance, that percentage of the minutes in Spanish is 95 percent. The average monthly cost to Gwinnett County for the language line in the Police account is $16,000. There are three other accounts: Fire, Courts, and Sheriff.
These account for far less usage of the language
line. Gwinnett County pays an average of $18,000 per
month for all four accounts combined for the
language line.
This whole illegal immigration issue as we have it now is a recipe for disaster and Senator Rogers is to be applauded for trying to take some steps to deal with it. We citizens all know by now that the illegal immigration issue is a third rail for our elected officials. Nobody wants to touch it for fear of instant political death. Most of our politicians are so concerned with being "politically correct" that they retreat into stony silence on this thorny subject. I submit
that instant political death might occur if our legislators DON'T deal with this issue! I'm certainly sick of it. It is just common sense to acknowledge that here in Georgia we do not have infinite
resources to go around - no state does. We cannot successfully cover all of the illegal aliens who want to
tap in to our flow of benefits. We must serve our legal residents of Georgia first. That is a pretty simple concept. We can begin to unravel this immigration mess from that starting point. The huge waits to legally enter this country need to be addressed.
What to do with workers already here? Senator Chip
Rogers's bill is just a starting point, but long overdue.
Let's help Senator Rogers plug the gaping Georgia state benefits gusher and then move on to require employers to hire only legal residents of this country. If we accomplish this
two- pronged goal, we'll see the illegal immigrants going elsewhere very quickly and taking their horrendous diseases, prolific childbearing, and rising crime statistics with them.
Senator Rogers can be reached at 404-463-1378 or ChipRogers21@comcast.net if you would like to contact him regarding SB170.
Thanks for reading. Hope all is well.
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