Georgia House Bill 87
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Georgia House Bill 87 (official title: Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act of 2011; abbreviated HB 87) is an anti-
illegal immigration Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwar ...
act passed by the
Georgia General Assembly The Georgia General Assembly is the state legislature of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is bicameral, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. Each of the General Assembly's 236 members serve two-year terms and are directly ...
on April 14, 2011, and signed into law by Georgia governor Nathan Deal on May 13, 2011. It took effect on July 1 of that year. The law was authored by Peachtree City Republican state representative Matt Ramsey, and was partly based on Arizona's SB 1070 bill that had passed the previous year.


Sponsors

In the Georgia House of Representatives, HB 87 was co-sponsored by Matt Ramsey,
Rich Golick Richard Marshall "Rich" Golick (born September 18, 1966, in Honolulu, Hawaii) is former a member of the Georgia House of Representatives in the U.S. state of Georgia. Golick is a Republican, and represented District 40, which encompassed parts o ...
, Katie M. Dempsey, Rick Austin,
Stephen Allison Stephen Allison (born March 29, 1971) is the former representative for the 8th District of the Georgia House of Representatives. He is a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a practicing attorney in Blairsville, Georgia. Stephen Alli ...
, and
Ed Lindsey Edward Harman "Ed" Lindsey, Jr. (born December 5, 1958) is an attorney and former member of the Georgia House of Representatives. He represented the 54th district which covered parts of Fulton County, and the Republican Party. Lindsey served a ...
. In the Georgia State Senate, it was sponsored by
Bill Hamrick William "Bill" Grady Hamrick III (born October 6, 1964) is the Georgia Statewide Business Court Judge. Judge Hamrick was appointed by Governor Brian Kemp on August 3, 2022 and confirmed by the Georgia Legislature on September 14, 2022 to be the S ...
.


Provisions

HB 87 requires businesses in Georgia with more than 10 employees to use E-Verify to verify that prospective employees are eligible to work in the United States legally. The bill allows police in the state to attempt to determine the immigration status of some suspects. It also makes the intentional transportation of undocumented immigrants while a crime is being committed punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 and a prison sentence of up to a year. In addition, it punishes undocumented workers convicted of using fake identification to gain employment with up to 15 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine.


Similarity to Arizona's SB 1070

Commentators noted that HB 87 was similar to other anti-illegal immigration laws that had recently been passed in other U.S. states, such as Arizona SB 1070. Some of HB 87's critics dubbed it a "copycat" of SB 1070, a claim that
PolitiFact PolitiFact.com is an American nonprofit project operated by the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Florida, with offices there and in Washington, D.C. It began in 2007 as a project of the ''Tampa Bay Times'' (then the ''St. Petersburg Times'' ...
rated "half true" because, although the two laws are similar, the authors of HB 87 tried to address concerns about the constitutionality of such legislation. For instance, HB 87 merely ''allows'' police to check the immigration status of suspects, whereas SB 1070 ''required'' them to do so.


Reactions

When HB 87 was signed into law, it was widely described as one of the toughest such laws in the country. Multiple organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), also publicly raised the possibility of suing Georgia over the law. The bill was also criticized by the leaders of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and the
Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
. The government of Mexico also criticized Deal for signing the bill into law, saying in a statement that "The legislators and state executive ignored the many contributions of the immigrant community to the economy and society of Georgia." Some critics, including
Azadeh N. Shahshahani Azadeh N. Shahshahani is an American human rights attorney based in Atlanta. She is legal and advocacy director for Project South. She previously served as president of the National Lawyers Guild and director of the National Security/Immigrants' ...
and
Wade Henderson Wade J. Henderson (born April 22, 1948) is an African-American advocate, community leader and governmental activist. He has served as president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR) and counsel to the Leadership Conferen ...
, criticized the bill on the basis that it would invite racial profiling of
Latino Latino or Latinos most often refers to: * Latino (demonym), a term used in the United States for people with cultural ties to Latin America * Hispanic and Latino Americans in the United States * The people or cultures of Latin America; ** Latin A ...
s and other people of color. Other critics also criticized the law because they thought it would adversely effect trust in the police among immigrants. Supporters of the bill generally argued that it would benefit Georgia taxpayers by reducing the economic burdens associated with providing for undocumented immigrants in the state. Support for the bill came from conservative groups that support strict immigration laws, including
Americans for Immigration Control Americans for Immigration Control is an American activist group that opposes illegal immigration to the United States. Based in Monterey, Virginia, it advocates for increasing funding to the United States Border Patrol, introducing punishments for ...
, whose spokesman, Phil Kent, said that the bill was about protecting taxpayers from the costs of illegal immigration. Kent told CNN that "We just want to make sure that people are welcome here and that they come here legally. And then we can cut back on the illegal immigration." The bill was also supported by
Mark Krikorian Mark Krikorian has been the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, an anti-immigration think-tank in Washington, D. C., since 1995. Krikorian is a regular contributor to the conservative publication ''National Re ...
of the Center for Immigration Studies, who said that in passing it, Georgia "...seems to have addressed the top-priority matters a state can deal with," and by Catherine Davis, legislative director for the Network of Politically Active Christians, who told the ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' that the bill "will stop unscrupulous behavior."


Effects

HB 87 has since been criticized for allegedly having a negative impact on Georgia's economy, especially in the agricultural sector, because it decreased the number of undocumented workers who were available to work on farms in Georgia. A 2011 University of Georgia study showed that after the law, Georgia experienced a
labor shortage In economics, a shortage or excess demand is a situation in which the demand for a product or service exceeds its supply in a market. It is the opposite of an excess supply ( surplus). Definitions In a perfect market (one that matches a sim ...
of over 5,000 farm workers, which resulted in $140 million in crop losses. Similarly, according to the 2012 Georgia Ag Forecast, Georgia experienced an agricultural labor shortage of almost 50% after HB 87 was passed. An ''
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ''The Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the only major daily newspaper in the metropolitan area of Atlanta, Georgia. It is the flagship publication of Cox Enterprises. The ''Atlanta Journal-Constitution'' is the result of the merger between ...
'' survey, also conducted in 2011, estimated that farmers in Georgia would be short by about 11,000 workers during the upcoming season. When Jason Carter was running for governor of Georgia in the 2014 election, he criticized Deal for signing the law, saying that it had resulted in an "economic disaster" for the state and noting that he had voted against it in the state legislature. Deal responded that Georgians believed it was important to enforce the law, and that the bill had served to remind the federal government how important it was to address the issue of undocumented immigration. Some researchers have also expressed concern that the law may adversely affect public health among Hispanic immigrants in Georgia. For instance, a 2013 study found that visits to the pediatric emergency department among Hispanics in Georgia decreased after the law was implemented, while the acuity of these visits tended to increase; in contrast, no other group in Georgia saw these trends during the same time period.


Protests

Prior to Governor Deal signing HB 87 into law, numerous protesters gathered outside his office at the
Georgia State Capitol The Georgia State Capitol is an architecturally and historically significant building in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The building has been named a National Historic Landmark which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. As t ...
, and the group Southerners on New Ground called for a
boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...
of the state if the bill was enacted. On July 2, 2011, a rally took place outside the State Capitol to protest the law; the size of the crowd was estimated at between 8,000 and 14,000.


Legal challenges

On June 2, 2011, the ACLU, the SPLC, the Asian Law Caucus, and the
National Immigration Law Center The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) is a center in the United States that "engages in policy analysis, litigation, education and advocacy, to achieve hevision" of "a society in which all people—regardless of race, gender, immigration or ec ...
filed a lawsuit challenging HB 87, arguing that it was preempted by federal law and was unconstitutional. In March 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit issued a permanent injunction which blocked multiple provisions of the law, including section 7, which made it illegal to transport or harbor undocumented immigrants while they were committing another crime.


References

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External links


Bill
on the website of the Georgia General Assembly Georgia (U.S. state) statutes 2011 in American law 2011 in Georgia (U.S. state) United States immigration law Immigration legislation