Colorado lawmakers are looking to Georgia during their special legislative session as they craft laws that restrict access to government services for adult illegal immigrants and crack down on employers who hire them.
Georgia has some of the toughest anti-immigration legislation passed by any state. To date, these laws haven’t been tested in the courts, but it’s only a matter of time.
The Georgia Security and Immigration Compliance Act requires that adults seeking state-administered benefits prove they’re in the country legally. It also penalizes employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and mandates that companies with state contracts check the immigration status of employees.
If Colorado hopes to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, employers here must be held accountable. Illegal immigrants don’t come to this country for benefits. They are drawn here for the jobs – in particular, jobs that pay better wages than in other states.
The bills under consideration would require employers to verify the status of employees starting next year; one bill would prohibit businesses from claiming wages for “unauthorized aliens” as an expense for income-tax purposes. Other legislation seeks to ban state services to illegal immigrants, toughen penalties for human trafficking and require police to check the immigration status of people they arrest – all aspects of the Georgia law.
Georgia lawmakers acted in an effort to address the issue of scarce state resources. Here in Colorado, Gov. Bill Owens ordered an emergency call-up of the legislature after an initiative he favored was ruled off the November ballot by the state Supreme Court.
Lawmakers should be capable of dealing with the state’s immigration issue without going into a political panic or foisting the issue off on voters. Except for a possible TABOR question that voters would have to decide, legislators should weigh the proposals put before them and, as in Georgia, vote them up or down. It’s not at all clear that a ballot measure would be worthwhile. Republican Sen. Lew Entz on Friday commented that putting the issue on the ballot erodes the legislature’s authority. He’s right.
The immigration debate simmered here for months before the Colorado Supreme Court barred on a technicality a loosely worded (and loosely thought-out) ballot initiative that would have asked voters to deny non-emergency state services to people in the country illegally. Gov. Owens argued that by ruling the way it did, the court denied voters the right to debate the issue and vote on it, and then called the special session.
Lawmakers appear to have crafted some thoughtful bills that should be sent to the governor for a bipartisan solution to a multipartisan problem.
