Georgia Immigration Law (courtesy of ALEC) Trips Up Doctors And Nurses

[pampango]

Workers in the Georgia secretary of state's office have fallen behind on licensing applications for nurses.

Hundreds of health care workers in Georgia are losing their licenses to practice because of a problem created by a new immigration law in the state. The law requires everyone — no matter where they were born — to prove their citizenship or legal residency to renew their professional licenses.

Enactment of the law coincided with budget cuts that reduced the office staff by 40 percent. With too few state workers to process the extra paperwork, licenses for doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other health professionals are expiring. Lisa Durden with the secretary of state's office says renewing a license used to be a straightforward process and most applications whizzed through. Now, they crawl.

Hughes estimates about 1,300 doctors and other medical practitioners have lost their legal ability to work. Some didn't submit the required paperwork. Others are stuck in the backlog of applications that haven't been processed yet.

State officials say the new document requirements haven't uncovered any undocumented immigrants. Instead, officials say they hope the process itself may discourage people in the country illegally from trying to get licenses in the first place.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164950641/georgia-immigration-law-trips-up-doctors-and-nurses

Ahhh, the beauty of a republican-run state. Pass an ALEC-sponsored state immigration law, simultaneously cut the budget and staff of the office enforcing it, leading to forcing over a thousand doctors to stop practicing. And it succeeded in catching zero illegal immigrants.

Reminds one of the 'voter fraud' paranoia of republicans which led to disenfranchisement of voters in republican-run states without finding any cases of actual voter fraud. Republicans seem to operate on a 'fear of the other' basis most of the time.

[CurtEastPoint]

1. Georgia. Sigh... My state. Ruined by the GOP.

[tanyev]

2. Good luck finding a doctor to sew the nose back on that you cut off to spite your face.

[madrchsod]

3. they will find work somewhere else.

they can`t wait for the state of despair to get it`s act together.

[Laelth]

4. Georgia right behind North Carolina (in terms of turning Blue soon).

It can't come soon enough as far as I am concerned.

-Laelth

[struggle4progress]

5. omigosh! what a good idea! that's certainly what I wanted to know back when

I dislocated my shoulder: was the fuggin doctor born here in the US? was he a fuggin citizen? did the hospital hire him legally or did he sneak into the orthopedics unit illegally from mexico? cuz, y'know, he looked sorta hispanic, and also he had one of those hispanic-soundin names

unfortunately, I fuggin forgot to ask him where the fugg he was from, and whether he had his fuggin green card, cuz I was too busy fuggin hopin he would fuggin hurry up and reduce my fuggin shoulder dislocation, so I could fuggin get back to living a normal more-or-less painless life without holdin my fuggin arm out at some funny fuggin angle to keep the bones in my shoulder from grindin together

he did a good job too: a quick, clean, professional reduction, just like he knew what he was doin! and then I felt great

but now I'm thinkin I should have taken the time to say: Hey! Ya kinda look sorta hispanic, and ya got one of them hispanic-soundin names, so before ya fuggin touch my shoulder, I gotta know if yer a fuggin illegal wetback here! Where were ya born? Ya got yer green card?

it woulda hardly taken any time