8/1 – Imagine 2050 – Georgia Anti-Immigrant Activist Tied to White Nationalism | IMAGINE 2050

Georgia Anti-Immigrant Activist Tied to White Nationalism | IMAGINE 2050.

Posted on Monday, August 1st, 2011 at 8:20 am. Written by Catharine Debelle

Donald Arthur “D.A.” King is the founder and leader of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society. Dustin Inman was a 16-year-old boy who was killed when an alleged undocumented immigrant crashed into the back of the Inman family car in 2000).

King has described the United States as a country “being invaded and colonized,” and its “way of life” destroyed with the “Hispandering” of his state.

A long-time proponent and supporter of all anti-immigrant legislation to come out of Georgia in the last several years, King and his group focus entirely on opposing immigration to the United States, particularly by Latinos. He began by promoting section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which authorizes the Federal Government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies under the supervision of ICE.

Prior to his elegant transition into mainstream media, King maintained an active partnership with VDare, a website that receives financial aid from the Tanton network. VDare publishes racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-immigrant articles. In one blog entry, he discussed his experience at a March for Dignity, comprised of, in King’s words, “mostly Hispanic demonstrators.” He wrote, “I got the sense that I had left the country of my birth and been transported to some Mexican village, completely taken over by an angry, barely restrained mob….My first act on a safe return home was to take a shower.”

In September 2006, King attempted to distance himself from VDare by requesting that his name be removed from the editorial collective, as long as they kept an archive of his past posts.

Unfortunately his attempts to gain a wider audience seem to be working. In October 2007, a National Public Radio segment described King as “a grassroots activist.” Later that year, King was introduced as a guest on CNN’s Headline News as an “anti-illegal immigration activist” and a “columnist for the Marietta Journal.”  In fact, records indicate that twelve mainstream newspapers have printed King’s articles.  Most notably, The Washington Times, which neutrally describes the Dustin Inman Society as “a Georgia-based coalition of citizens with the goal of educating the public on the consequences of illegal immigration.”

But his acceptance into mainstream media should not deceive us.

In  April 2007, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, when speaking at a Newton County (Georgia) Republican Party meeting, he told attendees that undocumented immigrants are “not here to mow your lawn – they’re here to blow up your buildings and kill your children, and you, and me.”

Most recently, King declared that he “helped write H.B. 87.”

“I am very proud of our final product and that we were able to dispel the fabrications put out by the various anti-enforcement factions during the committee process.” H.B. 87 was signed into law on May 13, 2011, and took legal effect at the beginning of July. HB 87 grants authority to law enforcement to request identification of anyone they deem “suspicious.” It also makes it illegal for any person to “harbor” an undocumented immigrant. The state of Georgia is currently involved in a lawsuit brought on by ACLU and other organizations on accusations of racial profiling and other civil rights violations supported by HB 87.

“We looked at the points of contention on local law enforcement and enforcement in the Arizona law and adjusted accordingly,” said King.

In April, President Obama criticized H.B. 87. “It is a mistake for states to try to do this piecemeal,” he said during a WSB-TV interview. “We can’t have 50 different immigration laws around the country. Arizona tried this, and a federal court already struck them down.” What is needed is true immigration reform on both the local, state and federals level to encourage uniform and just policies.

As a country we cannot continue to use old quotas of race or nationality as the basis of our immigration laws. Immigration legislation like the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which passed at the height of the Civil Rights movement, made significant inroads as far as leveling the immigration playing field. Let’s not allow people like D.A. King to retract important Civil Rights pillars in this nation.

8/1 – ajc.com – State lists IDs needed to comply with immigration law | ajc.com

State lists IDs needed to comply with immigration law  | ajc.com.

6:02 p.m. Monday, August 1, 2011

By Jeremy Redmon

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

State officials moved closer this week toward enforcing a wide-ranging part of Georgia’s new law targeting illegal immigration that will affect anyone seeking public benefits.

Related

• PDF: Immigration verifiable documents

On Monday, the state Attorney General’s Office published a two-page list of identification documents that must be used to get benefits and services in Georgia.

The list includes U.S. and foreign passports; U.S. military identification cards; state-issued driver’s licenses and identification cards; tribal identification cards; and federally issued permanent resident cards.

Starting Jan. 1, state and local government agencies must start requiring people who apply for benefits — such as food stamps, Medicaid, housing assistance and business and gaming licenses — to provide at least one of these “secure and verifiable” documents.

Rep. Matt Ramsey, a Peachtree City Republican who based his law on a similar measure in Colorado, said it is aimed at curbing illegal immigration in Georgia and saving taxpayer dollars. An estimate by the Pew Hispanic Center puts the number of illegal immigrants in Georgia at 425,000, the seventh-highest total among the states. Ramsey and others complain illegal immigrants are burdening taxpayer-funded resources in Georgia.

“Certainly, no reasonable Georgian can support allowing illegal aliens who have escaped capture and inspection at our borders access to our shrinking public benefits or access to our government buildings where sensitive material is kept,” said Inger Eberhart, a board member with the Dustin Inman Society, which advocates enforcement of U.S. immigration and employment laws.

Critics of the law say countless U.S. citizens and noncitizens who are entitled to public benefits in Georgia lack such identifying documents, including low-income people and victims of human trafficking. Officials, under the law, will be prohibited from accepting documents not on the list for “any official purpose.”

Civil and immigrant rights groups are suing in federal court to block this part of the law. They argue it is pre-empted by federal law, which governs the rules for verifying eligibility for federally funded food stamps and certain subsidized housing.

Meanwhile, opponents of the measure complain this is one of several far-reaching provisions in Georgia’s new immigration enforcement law that can apply to U.S. citizens and noncitizens.

Omar Jadwat, staff counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the law attempts to “create a system where everyone has to carry ID on them all the time. And that is really not the way our country works and it is not the way I think most people expect to have to live their lives.”

Under another provision in Georgia’s law, for example, any Georgia adult who uses a fake ID to get a job could go to prison for 15 years and pay a fine of $250,000. The new offense, called aggravated identity fraud, went into effect July 1. It applies to everyone, not just illegal immigrants.

On Monday, the Attorney General’s office intentionally left certain forms of ID off the list of acceptable documents, including consular matriculation cards. Under Georgia’s new law, those and similar ID cards issued by foreign governments will not be accepted regardless of the person’s immigration status. Critics say those documents can be easily forged. Immigrant rights activists argue such cards are accepted internationally.

Government officials who “knowingly” violate this law can face up to 12 months in prison and up to $1,000 in fines. This part of the law, however, does not apply to some groups of people, including those reporting crimes, police investigating crimes and people providing services to infants and children.

Organizations representing Georgia’s city and county governments said Monday they will be training officials in September on how to comply with the law. Among the topics they will cover is recognizing the acceptable forms of ID, including the more uncommon ones.

“We are going to have to train the county staff as to what is on that list and what those documents look like… because they are not going to know a lot of those documents,” said Clint Mueller, the legislative director for the Association County Commissioners of Georgia. “Just looking at it, there are several things on there I don’t recognize and I wouldn’t know one if I saw it.”