Thread: Colorado leaders, businesses demand immigration reform

Colorado leaders, businesses demand immigration reform
By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated: 09/26/2008 12:41:11 AM MDT

Colorado employers, religious leaders and Gov. Bill Ritter converged at the statehouse in separate events Thursday with a message to the next president and Congress: Fix the nation's broken immigration system.

Federal action is essential, they say, to defuse mounting frustrations — from uproar over a fatal auto wreck involving an illegal immigrant to business demands for more foreign workers to fuel the economy.

"I know that a lot of issues are queued up" in Washington, Ritter said at the first of two gatherings. "Immigration has to be something that the federal government tackles in, I would think, the first year of the new administration."

Neither John McCain nor Barack Obama has made immigration reform a priority in the presidential campaign.

Colorado and national business leaders have launched a 60-second television ad airing this week in Denver and other Western cities — Phoenix, Albuquerque and Las Vegas.

The ad is expected to reach millions with a call for Congress to pass comprehensive immigration legislation. A national nonprofit, Mexicans and Americans Thinking Together, is coordinating the effort.

State lawmakers nationwide pass laws targeting illegal workers, yet "they don't have any way to bring (legal) workers across the border," said Mike Gilsdorf, chairman of Colorado Employers for Immigration Reform and chief executive of Arapahoe Acres Nursery Inc.

"In return" for federal action to bring enough foreign workers to fill advertised jobs that U.S. workers don't accept, "we'll agree to e-verify (the immigration status of) every person we hire. If we don't do that, I think we deserve a jail sentence," Gilsdorf said. "We don't want to hire illegals. But if we don't get the workers we need, we're in the corner. It's stupid for the U.S. government to put small business in that corner."

Some business groups, including the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, are noncommittal on whether employers should accept greater responsibility.

"We don't think employers should have to be ICE (federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents" in scrutinizing employees, said Kate Horle, the Denver chamber's spokeswoman.

Current federal law requires only a good-faith effort by employers to scan ID documents that often are forged.

Earlier Thursday, interfaith religious leaders, with Ritter, unveiled "Interfaith Pledge on Immigration" cards to be distributed in churches across Denver, where new census data show 18.7 percent of residents are foreign-born. Coloradans signing cards would "publicly reject the politics of division and isolation that fan anger and hate" and commit to "work toward just, workable and humane immigration reform."

Ritter, who attended only the meeting of religious leaders, favors increased cross-checking of federal immigration databases to make sure arrested illegal immigrants are deported.

He said a senior U.S. Department of Homeland Security official has agreed that Colorado-based federal immigration agents "will participate" in a new effort to identify law enforcement gaps.

More than 20 Colorado State Patrol troopers have been "deputized" to have access to federal databases, and increased access can be arranged by deputizing more, Ritter said.

Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_10561633

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