Mayor of Uvalda, Georgia: conservative Republican who practices Christian teachings

Uvalda Mayor Paul Bridges calls the tough immigration law "unconscionable" and "un-Christian."  Interesting man -- a Southern conservative Republican who seems to have a conscience and actually practices the Christian teachings he professes. There are too few of his kind in our world.  Once an immigrant-hater, he had an epiphany one day.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/06/28/immigration.georgia.mayor/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

EXCERPT: Bridges is an unlikely soldier on the front lines of the nation's immigration debate. The 58-year-old native Southerner describes himself as a conservative Republican. For years, he knew little about immigrants but didn't lack strong opinions about them: "They were just low-class people," he recalls. "They weren't even able to speak English."

Bridges knew immigrants were a growing labor force on South Georgia's farms, but he never heard or saw them.

That changed one afternoon in 1999 when he was looking for lasagna ingredients at a Soperton grocery store.

A brown-skinned couple caught his eye. From the way they leaned toward each other, he knew they were deeply in love. Words tumbled from their mouths -- a series of sounds without meaning for Bridges. He listened anyway, wishing he could understand.

He spotted them walking outside the store, plastic grocery bags in hand. "Do ya'll wanna lift?" he asked. They looked at him quizzically, so he tried again, "Do ya'll wanna ride?"

The couple and another man piled into his car, pointing the way to their destination a few miles away: two rundown trailers in the middle of a cotton field. Bridges dropped them off and went home to make dinner.

But he couldn't get what he'd seen out of his mind. Nearly 30 people lived in the two trailers.

A few hours later, Bridges went back to the cotton field, carrying lasagna and his daughter's Spanish-English dictionary. It was the beginning of a whirlwind journey into a new world that would change his life.