D.A. King has been an invaluable and dogged opponent of illegal immigration both in Georgia and nationwide for years, and his important work paid off again recently in the Peach State.
King filed a complaint with Georgia’s new Immigration Enforcement and Review Board against a misguided ordinance in Atlanta that allowed the city to recognize a Mexican ID card for city government transactions.
In 2004, Atlanta began recognizing the card, known as the matricula consular. It is issued by the Mexican government to Mexican citizens in other nations.
But U.S. citizens and legal immigrants who are conducting legitimate business with the city of Atlanta already have or are entitled to get valid state- or federally issued identification. So in Georgia and elsewhere, it is often illegal aliens who present the cards as identification. Georgia law, however, specifically forbids the use of the matricula consular as valid ID at any agency that handles public benefits.
That is perfectly appropriate, because it is not the place of any government in the United States — whether at the municipal, state or federal level — to confer the slightest legitimacy on illegal immigration. As such, Atlanta erred in recognizing the matricula consular for purposes of city government transactions the past eight years. While the city did not go as far as some other cities around the country in creating a sanctuary for illegal aliens, it was at a minimum encouraging the problem of illegal immigration.