Illegal Immigration Turning Georgia Democrat
By Joe Guzzardi
All eyes are on Georgia, and the Jan. 5, special U.S. Senate election. On Dec. 5, President Trump will travel to Georgia to campaign for GOP incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler. Perdue and Loeffler face off against, respectively, Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
President Trump will be flying into the maelstrom that is Georgia politics. Rumors abound about dirty voter rolls, ballot harvesting, rigged Dominion Voting Systems servers and illegal alien voters during the November presidential race that gave the edge to former Vice President Joe Biden. In Georgia and other major cities indifferent to election integrity, election fraud is easy to pull off. Georgia Department of Driver’s Services issues licenses and official ID cards to unlawfully present aliens that are similar to the ones given citizens, and are often presented as evidence of voting eligibility. Many in the Republican Party anticipate more of the same illegal interference in the special election.
With the future of U.S. Senate control at stake, Georgia could be decided by the four candidates’ immigration stances. Since Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp appointed businesswoman Loeffler to the Senate to replace retiring Johnny Isakson, she has aligned herself with President Trump on immigration. Loeffler’s Senate voting record is solidly America First, especially on bills that would reduce illegal immigrants’ presence in the labor market, of key importance to Georgia’s unemployed and underemployed citizens. Warnock supports higher immigration levels, and less enforcement.
Although Perdue cosponsored the 2017 RAISE Act that would mandate E-Verify and slowly reduce legal immigration, he’s since drifted away from his America First commitment. Ossoff wants to grant amnesty to illegal immigrants, as well as weaken Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security. Warnock supports cashless bail that would put potentially violent criminals back on the street. The platforms of Ossoff and Warnock are bad news for concerned Georgians who should, for public safety reasons if no other, prefer Perdue.
Since 1992, Democrats have lost all eight runoffs including two for U.S. Senate seats. But, in part because of lax immigration enforcement, Georgia has drifted to the blue. Migration Policy Institute research found that Georgia is home to more illegal immigrants than lawful permanent residents.
As alarming evidence of Georgia’s leftward shift, Republicans lost two sheriff jobs to Democrats who have vowed to end cooperative agreements with ICE. The Cobb County winner has said he wants to suspend all ICE dealings. The Gwinnett County winner will cancel the county’s 287 (g) agreement that allows its deputies to initiate the deportation process for removable aliens booked into local jails. For Gwinnett Country, the consequences could be devastating. This year, Gwinnett ranks third among U.S. counties in migrants flagged for deportation. The vast majority of those deportees come from 287 (g) implementation. The winning sheriffs decided that 287 (g) had no meaningful purpose, since, in their view, many illegal immigrants committed only minor offenses. In effect, eliminating 287 (g) creates a sanctuary county. The new sheriffs know, but don’t care, that federal law requires the removal of illegal aliens.
In his Washington Times op-ed, Georgia immigration law enforcement advocate and Dustin Inman Society founder D.A. King wrote that Cobb and Gwinnett were once solidly Republican, but demographics have turned the counties blue. Gwinnett’s demographic change is reflected in its previous voting patterns. Today, 25 percent of its residents are foreign-born; in 1980 less than 2 percent were foreign nationals. Mitt Romney won Gwinnett by almost 10 points in 2012. But just four years later in 2016, the shift began. Hillary Clinton won Gwinnett, and Democrat Stacey Abrams trounced Brian Kemp in Gwinnett in the 2018 gubernatorial election by a walloping 14-point margin.
TargetSmart, a Democratic-managed voter analysis firm, found that between 2016 and 2020, Georgia’s Hispanic voters in the presidential election increased 72 percent, while traditional voter involvement decreased. Contemplating the two runoffs, a representative from the Abrams-founded New Georgia Project said, “Demographics is the fire,” a grim assessment that Perdue confirmed to CNN. Perdue projected that, because of Georgia’s Democratic influx, he’ll need to win “twice the number of votes” than he did previously to win re-election. “The demographic moves against us,” Perdue said, “but we can still win this if we get out and make sure that all of our voters vote.”
Kemp is a complete immigration flame out. His 2018 campaign promised to get tough on illegal immigration, but he’s done little. Under his watch, Kemp has seen Georgia’s illegal immigrant population reach nearly 400,000, climb to seventh nationwide, and surpass Arizona’s total.
Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: the runoff results will determine the fate of Georgia, the Senate and the nation for decades. Warnock and Ossoff victories would give the Democrats Senate control which in turn would mean amnesty, defunded police departments and huge tax increases. January 5 is the last call for Georgians to stand up against the powerful America Last agenda that Warnock and Ossoff represent.
Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org