Gary Black starts to see reason on HB 87

Jim Galloway quotes GA Ag. Commissioner Gary Black:

“One of the discussions we have to have is, do we want to have our food produced here or somewhere else? I don’t think Wal-Mart is going to cease to carry cucumbers. I think they’re going to get them somewhere,”

Also in Galloway's AJC column yesterday, Gary Black and the shifting debate over illegal immigration, Black won't back off HB 87, but admits it's the source of the problem:

The state agriculture commissioner is walking a fine line. “Let me be clear. My position from a standpoint of amnesty and pathways to citizenship has not changed one iota,” he said.

Nor has Black renounced HB 87. Rather, state efforts to enforce federal immigration laws — blocked as a consequence of lawsuits — have contributed to “a sea change” in Washington’s attitude, he said.

“Without HB 87 and some of the other proposals, I don’t know that we’d be having this discussion about changing the guest-worker program,” Black said.

Black seems to have organized some interesting timing of a report release by his department:

But another factor in the shifting of tides are the hard numbers rolling in. Georgia’s economy is poised to take a $391 million hit and shed about 3,260 jobs this year because of farm-labor shortages, according to a report released by the state’s agricultural industry — while Black was in Washington.

In the middle of the largest downturn Georgia has seen since the Great Depression, it is possible that some people are rethinking the wisdom of slapping around our largest industry.

Now there's a concept!

And who does HB 87 really benefit? CCA, which runs the ICE prison in Georgia.

We don't need a CCA private prison in Georgia. Spend those tax dollars on rehabilitation and education.

-jsq