Ga. Republican congressman attacks agency for protecting US jobs

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2011/08/10/ga-congressman-attacks-agency-for-protecting-us-jobs/

Writing in the Washington Post, Dana Milbank notes that U.S. Rep. Austin Scott, a freshman Republican from Georgia, has introduced his first bill, legislation that would abolish the Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal assistance to those too poor to pay attorney fees.

“Scott introduced the bill abolishing Legal Services exactly three days after it became public that Legal Services had won a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission determination that Georgia’s Hamilton Growers “engages in a pattern or practice of regularly denying work hours and assigning less favorable assignments to U.S. workers, in favor of H2-A guestworkers.” Hamilton also “engages in a pattern or practice of discharging U.S. workers and replacing them with H-2A guestworkers,” the EEOC determined.

Just to make things clear, Legal Services attorneys won a battle to protect American jobs for American workers in Scott’s congressional district. Hamilton Growers, the EEOC found, had been firing Scott’s constituents and replacing them with cheaper migrant workers, and that’s illegal.

The reaction by Scott, who campaigned against illegal immigration, was to try to abolish Legal Services. And he’s not alone. As I noted in a column back in March, U.S. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland, another conservative Georgia Republican, is also trying to abolish LSC, accusing it of filing frivolous lawsuits against Georgia farmers.

But as a senior staff attorney for Georgia Legal Services pointed out at the time, his group had filed 29 cases against Georgia growers, and had won financial judgments and settlements in 28 of those cases, totaling more than $2 million. They weren’t so frivolous after all. (Some of those cases, like the Hamilton Growers case, involved charges that farms were firing or refusing to hire Americans.)

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Milbank, noting that Scott enjoys strong Tea Party support, draws an interesting conclusion about that movement.

“It is fueled by populist anger, but it has been hijacked by plutocrats. Well-intentioned Tea Party foot soldiers demand that power be returned to the people, but then their clout is used to support tax cuts for millionaires. They rally for tougher immigration laws, but then their guy in Washington helps corporations to fire U.S. workers and hire foreign nationals.”

I can’t argue with that. Can you?

– Jay Bookman

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