Georgia’s Immigration Bill Needs a New Deal

Matthew M. House, J.D.

With the philosophical rants and heated rhetoric over Georgia’s anti-illegal immigration bill that won Gov. Nathan Deal’s approval May 13, can compassion, common sense, and rule of law be bedfellows?

Former President Jimmy Carter, who governed Georgia, now campaigns globally for the integration of those ideals. A prominent Georgia official loyal to the opposite political party once lauded Carter because the former president “worked to make the Federal Government more competent and compassionate and more responsive to the American people.”

The Georgia politician volunteering that praise was Nathan Deal. Last Friday, the same man signed the nation’s harshest anti-immigration bill into law.

You do not have to condone unlawful immigration – and I certainly do not – to support financial prudence: more taxpayers and fewer depending on social services. You need not excuse lawbreaking adults to be compassionate to the young people who, as toddlers, were carried through fields and across rivers, unable to object.

Make no mistake about it: I oppose illegal immigration and support all humane and lawful border patrol and immigration laws. We cannot afford additional illegal immigrants. The United States finds itself struggling even to meet the needs of citizens and legal residents. Build a fence if the public so wishes. Deport those who came illegally as adults. If it’s cost-effective and sensible, do it today.

But America protects the vulnerable. Under Georgia criminal law, parents commit first-degree cruelty to children by willfully depriving them of “necessary sustenance to the extent that the child's health or well-being is jeopardized.” Through their parents’ intentionally unlawful actions, undocumented children lack the legal status to survive in the United States and have no real ties elsewhere, a fate far crueler than most that the drafters of the child abuse statutes probably envisioned.

Even if teenagers who arrived as children later recognized that their presence violated the law, they could not leave the United States without written consent from the same parents who brought them here illegally. Children gain the right to correct that wrongdoing only after their families have no further obligation to them. Therefore, allowing undocumented teens and young adults to work and attend college so as not to suffer because of their mothers’ and fathers’ actions is compassionate and wise, for their benefit and ours.

The employed pay for the unemployed, whether they are citizens or aliens. It is inhumane to deport, let starve, or make homeless those powerless to overrule their parents’ choices. The best alternative is to let those children work and get an education. When more pay taxes, fewer dip into the public purse.

I agree with many provisions of the Georgia bill, as long as they are amended to apply only to those who came as adults. Their children had no legal capacity to agree to enter the United States and now have no connections to the native land they left nearly a lifetime ago.

Georgians who back the recent bill should remember that a majority of Americans chided President Gerald Ford in 1974 for pardoning former President Richard Nixon, though voters today generally agree with Ford’s decision. As Vice President Dick Cheney generously eulogized Ford 32 years later, “It is far from the worst fate for a man to be remembered for his capacity to forgive.”

Governor Deal, please tell the Georgia Legislature to do for the state government what Carter did for the federal government. Revamp the bill to make it more compassionate, competent, and responsive to Georgians’ needs. Be a brave visionary whom your constituents will hail when they one day eulogize you.


Matthew M. House, J.D. is a divorce and family mediator in private practice in Portland, Oregon. Mr. House frequently provides commentary related to family and juvenile law for television, radio, and print media throughout the United States and is currently a recurring contributor to several. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree, magna cum laude, from the University of Oregon, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Idaho College of Law.

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