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After weeks of heated debate, a bill cracking down on illegal immigrants and the companies that hire them moved one step closer to a vote in the state Senate on Tuesday. The Senate committee considering the plan voted 6-2 to recommend it be passed by the full Senate. The panel’s roughly 30 minutes of discussion on the plan _ which would deny some state benefits to undocumented adults and use the tax code to penalize employers with illegals on their payrolls _ was in sharp contrast to a pair of hours-long hearings held during the past two weeks.

‘I think everyone’s concerns were heard,’ said Sen. Chip Rogers, R-Woodstock, the plan’s sponsor. ‘We’ve bent over backward to alleviate some of those concerns.’

The bill also requires jailers to verify the people they arrest are in the country legally, sets up ‘human trafficking’ penalties that mirror federal law and toughens penalties for people who sell false documents to illegal immigrants.

Supporters of the plan say it will make Georgia safer by removing illegal residents with arrest warrants or deportation orders against them and free up state services now being used improperly by illegals.

Critics call the plan unconstitutional, saying it unfairly targets members of Georgia’s foreign-born communities drawn to the state by industries that rely on their labor.

Sen. Sam Zamarripa, D-Atlanta, the Senate’s lone Hispanic member, worked with Rogers on crafting the bill’s final version. He said it has been improved, eliminating provisions that would have denied services to children of illegal immigrants and barred those children from attending Georgia colleges and universities.

But he still opposes the plan.

‘I still maintain this is a federal issue,’ Zamarripa said. ‘We cannot be a substitute for the failure of a national policy.’

Estimates on the number of illegal immigrants in the state and nation vary widely. A recent study by the nonpartisan Georgia Budget and Policy Institute estimated that there are between 228,000 and 250,000 illegal immigrants in Georgia.

With approval from the Senate Public Safety and Homeland Security Committee, the bill now awaits action from the Senate Rules committee, which decides which bills appear on the Senate floor for a vote.

No date has been set for that panel to consider the bill.

2/28/2006
The Associated Press – ATLANTA

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