Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez on Thursday said his demand for tough enforcement of immigration laws was a matter of his Catholic faith.
During a debate sponsored by a group of Catholic business executives, the congressman argued that lax handling of illegal immigrants creates a two-tiered society.
“By allowing that and avoiding strict adherence to our laws … what we create is an underclass, a permanent second class, and that’s not true to either Catholic belief or Christian belief,” Beauprez said.
Beauprez said his faith would prompt him to make illegal immigration one of his top three priority issues if elected governor. Education and health care were the other issues.
Democrat Bill Ritter said schools, health care and economic growth were his priorities. He dismissed Beauprez’s claims that he was too easy on illegal immigrants.
Ritter said Beauprez was isolating about 150 cases involving legal and illegal immigrants out of 38,000 handled by Ritter’s office during part of his tenure as Denver district attorney. “It’s not right,” Ritter said. “It isolates those cases.”
Ritter said prosecutors in his office accepted pleas with those immigrants – knocking down some drug, traffic and other charges to felony trespassing on agricultural land – for many reasons.
Often, the prosecutor thought the original charge wasn’t provable, Ritter said.
Throughout the hour-long debate – which included discussions of abortion, domestic partnerships, school vouchers and efforts to make it easier to sue institutions that harbored sex offenders – the candidates returned to immigration issues.
Beauprez criticized Ritter for supporting in-state college tuition rates for illegal immigrants. Ritter said the children of immigrants who receive publicly funded education should not be punished upon graduation from high school.
Both candidates said they oppose abortion, but Ritter said he would not use that position as a litmus test for selecting judges to state courts.
Beauprez said he would support vouchers that allow state tax dollars to be used by parents who send their children to private schools. Ritter opposes vouchers.
Both candidates said they would have vetoed legislation opening a window in the statute of limitations for filing civil lawsuits against institutions that employed and protected sex offenders from prosecution. The Colorado Catholic Conference fought such bills during this year’s legislative session.
Beauprez said he supports Amendment 43, the ballot initiative locking the definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman into the state constitution. Ritter opposes it.
Ritter said he supports Referendum I, which would recognize domestic partnerships between same-sex couples. Beauprez opposes it.
Staff writer Mark P. Couch can be reached at 303-954-1794 or mcouch@denverpost.com.
HEARD AT THE DEBATE
SCHOOL VOUCHERS
Beauprez: “I absolutely support vouchers. Look, are we putting our tax dollars forward to support a system or to support children? It ought to be about children.”
Ritter: “The fact of the matter is public education money in this state is still pretty thin, relative to other states. We’re 49th in the country in terms of our taxable income in what we spend on K-12 education.”
ON BEING “PRO-LIFE”
Beauprez: “I have earned a 100 percent voting record with the National Right to Life. I’m very proud of that.”
Ritter: “For me, being pro-life means being opposed to abortion. … I do believe the governor should have an agenda to reduce unintended pregnancies.”
ON THE INFLUENCE OF
RELIGION WHILE IN OFFICE
Beauprez: “This is apparently a real dilemma for some Catholics in public office. Some apparently try to be Catholic part time and secular part time. I can’t do that.
Ritter: “I think that it would be wrong for a governor to say because I have this position, even though it may be different from what the law is, I’m going to use it as a litmus test.”
