Lawyers say immigration law hurts state’s economy | Athens Banner Herald Mobile.
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State and federal immigration laws are making it hard for international companies to do business in Georgia, a panel of legal experts said Saturday at the University of Georgia.
“We literally have companies saying ‘I don’t want to do business in this
state,’ ” Atlanta immigration lawyer Sharon Cook Poorak said.
A UGA law school symposium Saturday included a discussion on the impact of House Bill 87, the new state immigration law that is among the most strict in the nation.
The law affects not only migrant farm workers in South Georgia, but also millionaire European CEOs who want to do business in the U.S., panelists said.
“Georgia is really shooting themselves in the foot right now, to pass these laws that hurt us economically,” Poorak said.
She noted that the state’s unemployment rate is still above 10 percent since the law took effect in July, so jobs held by illegal immigrants aren’t being filled by Americans.
It’s impossible for unskilled workers like dishwashers to immigrate legally because they can’t get visas, said another immigration lawyer, Teri Simmons.
And visas for skilled workers like scientists are hard to get, she said.
“America has one of the toughest, strictest immigration systems in the entire world,” Simmons said.
In addition to discouraging corporations from coming to Georgia, apartments are sitting vacant and small businesses are closing up shop, immigration lawyer Carolina Antonini said.
Her clients are reluctant to go to the hospital if they’re sick or call the police if they’re victims of crime because they fear being deported, she said.
“We’re seeing people flee the state, whole families flee the state,” Antonini said.
Vidalia onion farmers are suffering from a labor shortage because of the law, Toombs County Solicitor Paul Threlkeld said.
“We’ve built an economy on the backs of these folks, and no one wants to treat them like second-class citizens,” he said.
State Sen. Jack Murphy, R-Cumming, said he understands why people come to the U.S. illegally.
“If I could make $10 an hour rather than $10 a week, believe me, I’d come across the border and do the same thing,” he said.
But since the federal government won’t reform its immigration program to allow more workers into the country legally, the state had to act, Murphy said.
Simply asking for identification, “I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” he said.
Threlkeld said he’s glad a federal judge has halted enforcement of some of the laws provisions, such as one empowering police to check the immigration status of people they pull over or arrest, while he rules on the law’s constitutionality.
Toombs County doesn’t have the resources to enforce the law, he said.
Neither do many cities, which will be required to verify employees’, public works contractors’ and business owners’ immigration status, said Rusi Patel, counsel for the Georgia Municipal Association.
The law may be thrown out because it conflicts with federal law, said Neil Kinkopf, a Georgia State University constitutional law professor and advisor to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
State and local police can only enforce federal law if the attorney general certifies them to do so, but HB 87 allows them to enforce immigration law without any training or oversight from the federal government, he said.
GIRRC - Georgia Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition 
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