SPECIAL REPORT - Georgia, meet your future
By Kung Li What happens when the country's largest Legislative Black Caucus comes face to face with nine thousand immigrants -- many of them declaring themselves as undocumented -- chanting aqui estamos, y no nos vamos! (we are here, and we're not leaving!)? Love. Or a mad crush, at least. It happened last Thursday on the steps outside the Georgia Capitol, as Republican lawmakers inside moved two Arizona-style anti-immigrant bills through the legislative process. HB87 and SB40 are Georgia's versions of Arizona's HB1070, the racial profiling law that is on appeal after being found unconstitutional by a federal district court. That HB1070 has cost the Grand Canyon state $217 million in lost conventions and tourism without ever having been implemented has not deterred Georgia's Republican legislators from copycatting. Nor have pleas from the powerful agriculture industry, which relies on low-wage immigrant labor to turn a profit. Georgia's...