Day 29: HB125, bill invalidating passports as ID passed the House. Aiming for the Senate next week.

Day 29: HB125, bill invalidating passports as ID passed the House. Aiming for the Senate next week.

Tuesday 03/05/2013. Twenty-Ninth day of the Georgia Legislative Session.

Among the most interesting, we had the “Keeping Families Together Tour”, in which we had the opportunity to visit the offices of US Rep. Rob Woodall and David Scott, US Senators Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson to urge them to support and immigration reform with a path to citizenship and to stop the destruction of families by massive deportations. Pics attached. This was a contrast for what happened on Monday on the floor of the House with the passage of HB125. I am going to quote the testimony of a fellow legislative advocate friend:

“Update HB 125- The Speaker just called up the bill. After a short and deceptive presentation by the author Rep. Dustin Hightower, the Speaker noted that there were a lot of questions from other House members. He cut them off, called a vote and the bill passed. It was 116-49 with 47 Democrats, 1 Republican and 1 Independent voting NO. A bill needs 91 to pass. Small consolation that 46 is the highest number of no votes on any of the bills yet today. But there should have been a lot more. Several people said they didn't want to vote for the anti-immigrant part of the bill but they were pressured to vote to correct the problem causing the Sec. of State the backlog problem. Well, why wasn't there a bill that only fixed the SOS problem? Because they wanted to sneak in the anti-immigrant stuff. Isn't that like blackmail? I urge everyone to do two things right now: to see how bad the bill was hijacked, read the details at http://musingsonimmigration.blogspot.com/ then watch the video of the bill being presented on the floor when it is available on the state website. The deception you will see is why people don't trust politicians. Next steps? We are going to be fighting this in the Senate. There probably will be a committee hearing in about a week. Watch for information about the fight to kill this bill in the Senate. You know we CAN!!”

While the country is finally working on a comprehensive immigration reform, Georgia still insists into look for sneaky ways to stop what is unstoppable. This visceral stubbornness not only talks horrors of Georgia and its political leadership, but makes even question its motives and sources of expertise at the moment to develop law.

HB125 has been referred to the Judiciary Non-Civil Committee in the Senate. Also, stay put for upcoming calls of action. For starters, the ACLU will focus its next For The People Lobby Day to this bill.