I intend to introduce a House Resolution in the coming General Assembly session that would allow Georgia voters to decide on a 2024 ballot question asking if the Constitution should be amended to codify the current statute requirement that Georgia peace officers must be U.S. citizens.
Joining the states of California and Colorado and other locales, recent news reports from Illinois explain that Democrats there passed a law that allows foreigners to be certified as law enforcement officers. Yes, you heard that right. As of last week, it is not necessary to be an American to be a cop in Illinois.
It gets much worse. This new law also allows foreigners who are in the U.S. illegally to enforce American laws.
In an apparent attempt to confuse the issue, media reports are quick to inform us that the Illinois law conditions eligibility on work authorization by the federal government. The hoped-for effect is that trusting Americans will assume that illegal aliens would not be eligible to be cops in Illinois. You are supposed to believe that a federally-issued Employment Authorization Document known as an “EAD” (a work permit) somehow grants legal immigration status.
It doesn’t. It is imperative that all Georgians understand this.
For example, virtually all recipients of former President Barack Obama’s DACA program have been awarded a work permit. But, according to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) DACA recipients do not have legal status. And in March of 2019 the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit found that illegal aliens with DACA status are nevertheless illegal aliens. From the opinion: “As DACA recipients, they simply were given a reprieve from potential removal; that does not mean they are in any way ‘lawfully present’ under the (Immigration and Nationality) Act.”
Illegal aliens with DACA status are covered under the Democrat laws establishing new eligibility for enforcing American laws. Moreover, there are valid concerns that Biden’s “asylum seekers” could be eligible to be peace officers in Illinois and other states as well.
I am quite confident that the overwhelming majority of Georgians agree that the possibility of any foreign nationals arresting Americans in Georgia is absurd and intolerable. I believe a Constitutional Amendment would serve as a common sense, preventative measure of that possibility.
While I am not yet an expert on the details involved in federal law surrounding states granting illegal aliens permission to access firearms and law enforcement authority over Americans, I do know that Georgia has the right and the power to decide for ourselves that here, only Americans can be peace officers.
There is a growing amount of information available to help with understanding this issue. l hope my fellow legislators and the public will take the time to become familiar with some of those details and recommend initial reading: “Can Aliens Who Are in the United States Illegally Become Cops? New Illinois Law Says, Why Not?”
I refuse to believe that the Democrats can illegally open the borders, flood America with illegals and then turn them into cops while most Georgians remain silent.
The simple goal is to ensure that only U.S. citizens can be peace officers in Georgia. We should do what we can now to avoid seeing a future Georgia law that could be even worse than what the Democrats have done in Colorado, California, and Illinois.
State Rep. Jesse Petrea represents House District 166 which includes much of Chatham and Bryan counties.
