After four days of sometimes tedious, sometimes angry debate, state lawmakers are struggling to come up with sensible legislation that will prohibit illegal immigrants from receiving government services in Colorado and penalize employers who hire them. And no wonder – immigration is a complicated problem, not the sort that is easily resolved in a campaign year.
As of late Sunday, the drift of the not-so-special session of the legislature was to set tougher standards for dealing with those dreaded illegals – for instance, setting penalties for people who show false documents and fining employers who knowingly dip into the shadow labor pool.
Who will fill the low-wage jobs taken by immigrant labor – at the ski resorts, in our fields, in Colorado’s cities? Well, no one at the state capitol seems to have a clue.
The legislature can play a constructive role in modernizing immigration policy if it can determine how to tighten local employment rules without choking off a valuable labor supply. Government services are a slippery slope. It’s not clear whether Colorado has the will or the authority to enforce many of the weekend proposals, for instance, tougher sanctions against employers. Federal law already requires that employers verify the status of prospective workers. The 1986 Immigration Act levies civil or criminal penalties for violations.
Many of the statehouse proposals involve prohibiting benefits already nixed by federal law – for example housing aid, food assistance and welfare benefits. Some Republicans want to go further, challenging benefits mandated by federal law, such as immunizations and short-term shelter. These are short-sighted objectives, more likely to weaken our state than to strengthen it. Rep. Matt Knoedler is worried that aliens might descend on his Lakewood district if they knew they were entitled to a free meal at soup kitchens, as stated under federal law.
This brief legislative session is a political opportunity for someone, The Republicans want the legislature to put an immigration measure onto the November ballot in order to stimulate a big conservative turnout. Democrats want to pass a measure that would take effect before November and short-circuit the GOP ballot strategy, showing voters what the legislature can achieve that Congress cannot. We hope both parties will take a deep breath and consider whether these proposals could harm rather than advance business interests in Colorado.
