Immigration bill gets initial nod

Sen. Dave Schultheis tried again this session to require businesses in Colorado to verify the immigration status of new employees, and, for a third straight year, Schultheis watched his bill die in committee.

For the first time, however, the Colorado Springs Republican did get a watered-down measure through that requires the Department of Labor and Employment to inform business owners of the existence of a federal employee verification program without requiring that they use it.

After debate, this bill got preliminary approval from the Senate on Monday.

The success of SB39 demonstrates two factors about immigration legislation this year.

First, there appears to be no appetite for major change or new laws. And second, if a legislator is going to propose change, it better be incremental and virtually cost-free.

“I don’t think we ought to be judged by the number of particular bills we pass or the number of press conferences we hold or the amount of noise we make,” House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver, said when asked about the scarcity of immigration legislation passing this year. “What we’re trying to do is replace real sound-bite legislation with real solutions.”

During a special session in 2006, majority Democrats passed bills that they thought would deal with a rising population of illegal immigrants, requiring most notably that anyone seeking public benefits or a driver’s license prove they’re citizens.

Since then, however, legislative leaders have turned a cool eye to measures that would clamp down further on illegal aliens or make laws stricter.

This year, Democrats in committees have killed Republican bills that would have:

*Required Coloradans to show proof of citizenship when registering to vote;

*Required the arrest of anyone who is in the U.S. illegally and driving without a license;

*Created a crime of trespassing in the country by an illegal immigrant;

*Required employers to use the federally approved E-Verify system to weed out illegal aliens among new employees.

Though even one Republican senator questioned how much Schultheis’ toned-down verification bill could do, it still brought out critics during a committee hearing two weeks ago. A Colorado Ski Country USA official said the system wrongly identified people as illegal residents about 10 percent of the time and that even mentioning its existence in a state-sponsored e-newsletter could constitute a tacit endorsement of a questionable product.

Jim Shafer, Colorado state director for the Minuteman Defense Corps, said despite the Legislature’s unwillingness to move forward on bills, illegal immigration remains a major concern of many people in the state.

Schultheis said he hopes it becomes an election issue and conceded that he did not think major changes on immigration law would occur while Democrats remain in charge in the General Assembly.

“It’s hard to gain momentum when you’re being blocked everywhere you turn,” Schultheis said. “All you can do is keep doing what you’re doing.”

Romanoff countered, however, that rather than push new laws, legislators should enforce laws that are in place and push the federal government to reform its immigration system.

Two other bills aimed at illegal immigrants await hearings in the House and Senate appropriations committees, places where measures tend to die when they carry too large a price tag.

One of those bills would double the size of the Colorado State Patrol Immigration Enforcement Unit and cost $4 million; the other is a relatively low-cost proposal to let law-enforcement officers more easily detain drug dealers whom they suspect are in the country illegally.