While republican congressional leaders across the country are portraying the immigration reform field hearings as useful for gathering various viewpoints about the issue, the hearing held in Gainesville at the U.S. courthouse on August 14 entitled, "Immigration: Economic Impact on American Workers and their Wages," was anything but balanced.

U.S. House of Representative Charlie Norwood (R-GA), acted as the chairperson, began the hearing with a disturbing story of a three-year-old Georgia girl who was raped by an illegal immigrant, and emphasizing that the borders must be "secured" and as such sealed by 36,000 to 48,000 National Guard troops.

Norwood sat at the judge's stand along with two other Georgia House Republicans – Tom Price and Nathan Deal.

Congresswoman Betty McCollum (D-MO) was the only House leader expressing more moderate positions on the issue of immigration reform. "I think this was a total miss-opportunity for the leadership," said McCollum of the predominantly one-sided discussion that ensued.

McCollum, appearing to be somewhat frustrated by the direction that the House leaders were guiding the discourse in, repeatedly said that the hearing was a "waste of time" and that congressional leaders should be discussing immigration reform in conference in Washington.

She also highlighted the decline in funding for combating illegal immigration and added, "We're building bridges to nowhere, if we're not funding to secure our borders."

Focus of the hearing

The discussion throughout the hearing focused on ridiculing and rejecting the U.S. Senate Hagel-Martinez Bill 2611, which provides for a guest worker program and would give illegal immigrants a path for legalization, or as they referred to it, an “amnesty.”

The speakers never once dissected the U.S. House bill and how it deals with the immigration problems the country is facing, and only complimented it. Norwood went so far as to assure the public, seated in the back of the room, that the Senate bill would not pass under any circumstances.

Testimonies

Leaders from various branches of government, institutions and organizations were brought in to provide the House leaders with information and viewpoints on the subject. Among the witnesses who spoke at the hearing was Republican Georgia State Sen. Chip Pearson; Gary Black, president of the Georgia Agribusiness Council; Dr. Jeffrey B. Wenger, assistant professor of public policy at the University of Georgia; D.A. King, president of the Dustin Inman Society; Terry Yellig, a lawyer representing the building and construction trades department, and Phil Kent, spokesman of Americans for Immigration Reform.

Black made it clear that foreign workers are vital to providing a work force in agriculture, but said that farmers often find the procedures for applying for work visas cumbersome and the bureaucracy difficult to deal with and that is why they do not seek legal ways of recruiting workers. Black said, "The U.S. unemployment rate is below the average of the last four decades, when the supply of American workers is exhausted, as it is in many parts of agriculture today, someone must step in to do these jobs that are not being filled."

However Black stressed that immigrant workers contracted under the guest worker program “must return” to their countries when their visa expires. “Future solutions for immigration policy must not include amnesty, or new or accelerated pathways to citizenship. We must establish an orderly documented procedure that identifies those that seek to enter for temporary work, pay taxes and return home,” said Black.

Most of the witnesses affirmed that American industry has a demand that attracts these workers, but speakers like D.A. King called attention to the true culprits behind the supply and demand economic relationship.

"(Americans) ask why employers are allowed to hire illegal labor in violation of existing laws, and why a nation that has put man on the moon, and built and maintained more than 46,000 miles of Interstate highways cannot use that same expertise to secure our borders and prevent illegal crossing into our country.”

Speakers like Kent, who used inflammatory language to describe the immigration crisis, riled audience members up. He said that after Hurricane Katrina, when President Bush gave reconstruction contracts to the lowest bidding company, 30,000 illegal immigrants flooded the Gulf Coast.

While King referred to a “climate of fear” that Americans have been kept under by employers who hire undocumented immigrants, the absence of illegal immigrants at the meeting or outside the courthouse building was noticeable.

One protestor, Ronnie Hall, a member of the Dustin Inman Society, was holding up signs across the street from the courthouse, as Homeland Security vehicles were parked visibly in front. He estimated that about 30-40 anti-illegal immigrant protestors were gathered there at one point.

Pat Cochran, a small business owner in the service industry from Forsyth County, said that she and her husband do not hire Hispanics because they don’t know how to verify if they are legal or not in the country.

Hispanics speak

The large courtroom was filled to capacity with audience members and the media and a small group of Latino citizens, among them Carlos Alcantar, a U.S. citizen but native of Mexico who has lived in Georgia for 23 years. Alcantar, a union leader from Peach County Georgia, said “(Americans) don’t really grasp what we Latinos are to this country.” Alcantar said that the hearings are “purely politics.”

Georgia State Senate candidate from Gainesville Arturo Corso was also another Latino who observed the hearings. “The problem is that the American people are being held hostage by extremes,” said Corso. He then noted that no non-partisan research group like the Pew Hispanic Center was invited to present unbiased information on the subject.

Not one Latino spoke at the hearing, but the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials (GALEO) held a press conference before the hearing to provide other speakers on the issue a platform to talk. Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of GALEO, brought some recent threats and propaganda from racist, anti-immigrant groups to the attention of the press.

The organization also provided facts and figures on the impact of immigration in Georgia and asked the question, “Where would Gainesville and Dalton be today without immigrants?”