Laws don’t enforce themselves, so state bureaucrats have been scrambling to write rules for implementing the immigration bills that lawmakers passed during the recent special session.
The key bills require that recipients of many state services and applicants for professional licenses attest in writing that they are legal residents and provide a state driving license or I.D. card, a military I.D. or a Native American tribal document. The new laws were intended to take effect Aug. 1, hence the hurry to finish the rulemaking.
Often denigrated as red tape, regulations actually are vital road maps for telling civil servants what steps to follow when actually working with clients.
Agencies worked through last week to polish new rules, and Gov. Bill Owens wisely held off signing three key bills until he’s told regulations are ready. (Although the effective date is Aug. 1, the state constitution gives Owens a little breathing room, until Aug. 9, to sign.)
Owens’ spokesman, Dan Hopkins, said the governor will review the situation today and, if the regulations are ready to go, will sign the bills.
We’re hoping the laws will be implemented smoothly, but it would be naive to think there won’t be problems.
Something undoubtedly was overlooked in the rush to write rules, and mistakes are inevitable until workers are trained and get used to new requirements.
Paradoxically, the most likely “victims” of the new laws aren’t illegal aliens but citizens and legal residents who don’t have proper I.D. As Denver homeless advocate John Parvensky notes, many elderly, people in institutions and homeless people don’t have driver’s licenses or the documents needed to get state I.D. It’s vital that the state Department of Revenue, which issues licenses and I.D. cards, ensures that citizens and legal residents aren’t wrongly denied the documents they need.
Of course, the mad rush wouldn’t have been necessary if lawmakers hadn’t been so fired up to look like they were doing something about immigration before the November election.
The new laws seem reasonable, but the issue could have been handled during a regular legislative session. More to the point, Congress must put policy above politics and pass national reform. Now that rulemaking would really be dramatic.
