Georgia’s Anti-Immigrant Politics Reflect Deep South Sea Change

Is Georgia becoming the new Arizona?

An immigration bill that parrots Arizona’s infamous sb1070 is making news in that state. Even while the Arizona law has been successfully challenged in federal court and a US Supreme Court showdown is likely and looming, folks in Georgia seem to want their slice of the spotlight.

A recent Atlanta Business Chronicle article laid the political landscape across the Deep South now that Latinos have become an important an integral part of the population.

The Hispanic population has nearly doubled over the past decade in Republican-dominated states including: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, according to an analysis of the most recent U.S. Census figures by the Pew Hispanic Center.

For those states a political change is in the offing. 23 percent of Georgia’s Latino population is eligible to vote, compared to 41 percent of the general Latino population in the United States. That only means that in the next ten yeas, with the population becoming older, with population growth by migration, and with voter registration initiatives, that percentage will be significantly larger.  So yes, the Deep South will experience a political sea change, starting now.

So it’s not surprising that the rhetoric has heated.

The governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, is expected to sign a bill that apes Arizona’s controversial SB1070. That Georgia law, HB87, is supported by the Ku Klux Klan. No surprise.

Recently a group out of Philadelphia, called “The Diversity Projekt,” made its presence known on Atlanta’s highways by stringing banners on bridges that read: “KKK Supports HB87. Gov. Deal, Do You?” The banners were removed within hours, but not before they made local headlines.

HB87 supporters were aghast. Not all people who favor the law are members of the KKK, they say.

Again the Atlanta Business Chronicle:

The primary sponsor of the illegal immigration crackdown, Rep. Matt Ramsey, R-Peachtree City, told the television station the banner campaign amounts to “more left-wing hysterics by extremists who can’t accept that most Georgians want the governor to sign it into law.”

If this is any indication, the next ten to twenty years will be pivotal for Latinos and for the old south status quo. Nothing less than the future of national politics is at stake.

Follow Victor Landa on Twitter: @vlanda