ATLANTA (AP) — A Georgia House bill intended to fix unintended consequences of a 2011 state crackdown on illegal immigration appears to have stalled in a Senate committee in favor of a more limited Senate version.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Dustin Hightower, R-Carrollton, was on the agenda Wednesday for a Senate committee. But committee Chairman Sen. Jesse Stone, R-Waynesboro, declined to bring it up for discussion or a vote. Instead he held a vote on a slightly amended version of the Senate bill. Members of the committee said the House and Senate bills would likely end up in a conference committee to sort out the differences.
Both bills aim to address complaints from several state agencies that the 2011 law was creating extra work and delays in processing public benefits, including professional licenses.
In addition to resolving those complaints, the House bill also adds several items to the list of public benefits that people in the country illegally are not eligible for. The list includes grants, homestead exemptions, public and assisted housing, and retirement benefits.
The version that passed the House also added driver’s licenses to that list, which could have effectively denied Georgia driver’s licenses to young people who were brought here illegally as children and who have been granted temporary permission to stay and work here under an Obama administration initiative. But that was taken out of the version of Hightower’s bill that the Senate committee had been expected to vote on because it would have violated the federal Real ID Act by allowing copies rather than originals of identification documents, Hightower said.
Hightower’s bill also excludes foreign passports from the list of “secure and verifiable” documents that people are required to present for official dealings with state or local government unless the passports are accompanied by federal documentation proving their legal presence. That would exclude illegal immigrants from being able to get a marriage license or access water and sewage services in the state.
The version Hightower had planned to present Wednesday would have excluded utilities, but not marriage licenses, from the transactions that require secure and verifiable documents, so illegal immigrants would be able to access utilities.
The House bill also says all state or local governments or public agencies must use a federal work authorization program to verify the employment eligibility of new employees and that they require the same of their contractors. Currently, the smallest agencies, ones with only one employee, are exempt from that requirement. The bill also says verification for contractors is needed only for contracts for which the labor or services is $2,500 or more.
The amended Senate bill that the committee voted to approve Wednesday raises that amount to $25,000, meaning public agencies wouldn’t have to require their contractors to use a the work authorization program unless the contract was worth more than that. It also doesn’t add any items to the list of public benefits and doesn’t include the provision excluding foreign passports without federal immigration documentation from the list of secure and verifiable documents.
Hightower, who had come to the committee with an amended version of his bill, appeared confused that he would not be presenting his bill and answering questions from senators. But he said after the committee meeting that he is confident many parts of his bill will make it into the final version when the House and Senate bills are combined.
