GOP lawmakers call for audit amid e-mails suggesting illegal immigrants received state jobless aid
By Tim Hoover

Posted: 08/07/2010 01:00:00 AM MDT

Republicans are calling for a state audit after revelations that the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment stopped using a process to help verify that people receiving unemployment benefits aren't illegal immigrants.

The information came to light earlier this week when the Independence Institute, a libertarian-conservative think tank, published online a chain of e-mails in which several information technology staffers at the labor department questioned whether a directive shutting down a software program would violate House Bill 1023, a 2006 law meant to keep illegal immigrants from receiving public benefits.

"I would like to have it documented that the business (the labor department) understands work order 51662

'Discontinue Setting 8G issues when claim is not signed' would be a violation of HB 1023, the risks are understood and the business wants this work to continue to completion as soon as possible," the department's mainframe manager, James Yuhas, wrote.

"The business (the agency) understands the ramifications of the WO (work order) with respect to HB 1023," replied Mike Cullen, who was the director of the unemployment insurance program at the time.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis was among Republicans calling for a state audit of the affair.

"That state bureaucrats seem to have knowingly disabled a legally required system to prevent the payment of unemployment benefits to illegal immigrants is an outrage," McInnis said.

Gov. Bill Ritter, a Democrat not seeking re-election, is asking the department "to thoroughly review its unemployment benefits system to make sure that sufficient measures are in place to comply with Colorado and federal laws," said Myung Oak Kim, a spokeswoman for the governor.

Still, she said, "Based on the information we have now, we believe that the department is complying with state and federal law."

House Bill 1023 required that applicants for public benefits provide valid identification, such as a driver's license, and sign an affidavit stating they are U.S. citizens or lawfully present in the country. To enforce the law, the department set up a computer program to automatically deny unemployment benefits to people who had not signed and returned a form saying they were U.S. citizens or lawful residents.

The department's current executive director, Don Mares, said the agency suspended the automated process in early 2009 because it was flooded with unemployment claims, and agency staff was overwhelmed with processing the affidavit forms. That, combined with the fact that applicants for benefits did not always return forms within the required seven days, meant that many people eligible for benefits might be automatically cut off.

He said the agency also has to be mindful of federal law, which mandates that unemployment benefits be paid in a timely manner.

Department officials said that even before the 2006 law, it had procedures in place to check the immigration status of unemployment applicants who say they are not U.S. citizens. The agency verifies immigration status information with a system maintained by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

"We think we're therefore in compliance with the law and our federal requirements," Mares said.

State Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, said the agency's explanations sound good but aren't in harmony with the string of internal e-mails showing employees were worried about breaking the law.

"No one (in the e-mail chain) says 'Oh, no, we've got the law covered,' " Mitchell said.

http://www.denverpost.com/election2010/ci_15700501