To: The Georgia State House, The Georgia State Senate, and Governor Brian Kemp
Repeal HB 87
We are better than this! Or at least we should be!
Georgia’s immigration law is a blunt instrument that is doing unnecessary harm to immigrants and native Georgians alike, making everyone poorer.
Not only does HB 87 create an environment of racial profiling whereby people of color are frequently stopped and questioned due to their "foreign" appearance, but every serious analyst who has looked at the issue of how HB 87 has affected Georgia has come to the conclusion that the unintended economic consequences greatly outweigh the supposed economic benefits of this law.
In 2011, HB 87 caused an estimated $140 million in agricultural losses as crops rotted in the fields. Prisoners, ill-equipped and unwilling to perform physically demanding agricultural work, were dispatched to the fields, but were unable to make up for the labor shortage. This problem continues today.
Many Georgians have concerns about the high cost of providing public services to illegal residents: schooling, medical care, law enforcement and other publicly funded services. But there are better ways to handle such problems than by chasing away needed workers and racially profiling and harassing not only undocumented immigrants, but many of our citizens who happen to be, in the opinion of a police officer, "foreign looking.".
Georgia’s immigration law is a blunt instrument that is doing unnecessary harm to immigrants and native Georgians alike, making everyone poorer.
Not only does HB 87 create an environment of racial profiling whereby people of color are frequently stopped and questioned due to their "foreign" appearance, but every serious analyst who has looked at the issue of how HB 87 has affected Georgia has come to the conclusion that the unintended economic consequences greatly outweigh the supposed economic benefits of this law.
In 2011, HB 87 caused an estimated $140 million in agricultural losses as crops rotted in the fields. Prisoners, ill-equipped and unwilling to perform physically demanding agricultural work, were dispatched to the fields, but were unable to make up for the labor shortage. This problem continues today.
Many Georgians have concerns about the high cost of providing public services to illegal residents: schooling, medical care, law enforcement and other publicly funded services. But there are better ways to handle such problems than by chasing away needed workers and racially profiling and harassing not only undocumented immigrants, but many of our citizens who happen to be, in the opinion of a police officer, "foreign looking.".
Why is this important?
Georgia's HB 87, the anti-immigrant law passed in Georgia in 2011, seeks to falsely blame immigrants for problems they did not cause, damages our economy by preventing Georgia's agricultural and other industries from hiring the workers our economy needs, and promotes an environment of racial profiling in which Latinos, Asians, and other people of color are targeted and harassed because of their appearance.