Thread: Compromise bill derails strategy in Colorado

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Compromise bill derails strategy
Pro-immigrant groups' future remains unclear

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News
July 15, 2006

The face of the pro-immigrant campaign is 100 percent Coloradan, with names like Federico Peña and Gary Hart. But much of the strategy and money has come from inside the Beltway.

Keep Colorado Safe, the group that led the fight against an effort to deny services to illegal immigrants, received money and guidance from the nation's fastest-growing union, a Latino advocacy group and a civil rights coalition - all based in Washington, D.C.

The reason: To make Colorado the national model in unifying grass-roots organizations to fight anti-illegal immigrant ballot initiatives.

But Keep Colorado Safe didn't get to launch its campaign because Initiative 55, sponsored by the anti-illegal immigration group Defend Colorado Now, unexpectedly died. And to thwart legislative efforts to send the measure to the ballot, Keep Colorado Safe chairman Peña agreed with opponents to push a compromise bill, which passed Monday. Two other immigration-related measures are on the ballot, though neither targets services for illegal immigrants.

Now, the future of Keep Colorado Safe and other pro-immigrant coalitions is unclear. And tensions that existed for months among local immigrant advocates are even greater now because of anger over the Peña compromise and the new laws.

Members of Keep Colorado Safe met Thursday but have not yet decided their next move. Partners in Washington, who have closely watched Colorado's immigration drama, continue to keep an eye and a hand in Keep Colorado Safe's decisions.

Among them are the Service Employees International Union and the National Council of La Raza, the country's largest Latino civil rights group. They had planned to make Colorado the poster child of how to fight the wave of anti-illegal immigration laws sweeping the nation. And they were prepared to spend heavily to make that happen.

SEIU and other national groups had participated in the 2004 fight against an anti-illegal immigrant ballot measure in Arizona. But they watched with disappointment as immigrant advocates launched separate campaigns and voters approved Proposition 200.

Colorado, they vowed, would be different.

The groups saw a great opportunity in the perceived flaws in Initiative 55, which would have denied services to illegal immigrants and allowed citizens to sue agencies that didn't comply.

Then the state Supreme Court disqualified the measure from the ballot on a technicality. An angry Gov. Bill Owens called a special session of the legislature. And lawmakers crafted what they call the toughest anti-illegal immigration laws in the country.

Keep Colorado Safe leaders say the laws are much more humane than Initiative 55. But many pro-immigrant groups see them as mean-spirited.

"It sends a message that Colorado is an unwelcoming state for everyone," said Devin Burghart of the Center for New Community, a Chicago-based group critical of Defend Colorado Now leaders.

That leaves Keep Colorado Safe and its partners facing the question: What now?

Old allies come together.

Keep Colorado Safe originally formed in 2004 to fight an Initiative 55 twin sponsored by U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Littleton.

The group included representatives from more than a dozen local organizations, including Colorado Progressive Coalition, Rights for All People, American Friends Service Committee and Padres Unidos. They were old allies, joining in 2002 to defeat the English-only measure Amendment 31.

The political consulting firm of Welchert & Britz challenged the Tancredo initiative in the state Supreme Court on behalf of Keep Colorado Safe. Tancredo won, but by the time the ruling was made his supporters ran out of time to collect signatures for the ballot.

Keep Colorado Safe resurfaced last year to oppose Initiative 55. And local leaders began asking Washington friends for help.

Catherine Han Montoya, a former local social service agency worker who campaigned against Amendment 31, was now working at the National Council of La Raza. She began a series of visits to Denver to work on the campaign against Initiative 55.

She also enlisted help from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund and the Center for New Community. The three groups had just begun a collaboration to help states fight anti-illegal immigrant ballot initiatives through a $1.1 million grant from Atlantic Philanthropies.

Atlantic Philanthropies, created in 1982 by Charles F. Feeney with his wealth from Duty Free Shoppers Group, Ltd., has given $3.4 billion in mostly anonymous grants across the world to civil rights and educational causes.

Recently, the charity has made seven grants to U.S. organizations working on the immigration issue, including $7 million to a national group behind the spring wave of immigrant rallies.

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights spent $15,000 of the Atlantic money toward a February poll commissioned by Keep Colorado Safe to gauge voter sentiment on immigration. More money, $400,000 by one count, was promised to counter Initiative 55.

But until now, the principal funding for Keep Colorado Safe has come from SEIU. Last month, a San Antonio-based group tied to SEIU gave $50,000 to Keep Colorado Safe.

In addition to pledging money, the national organizations tried to unify local immigrant advocacy groups, including the Colorado Grassroots Movement for Immigrant Justice and the Coalition for Human Dignity Beyond Borders. That effort snagged during the spring immigrant rallies, when some local groups focused instead on turning the immigration issue into a new civil rights movement.

Internal arguments at Keep Colorado Safe led to Welchert & Britz leaving the campaign and putting the books in the hands of the local SEIU political director.

In late May, the group enlisted Peña as chairman. Hart sits on the group's executive committee as does Mitch Ackerman, executive director of SEIU Local 105.

Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of SEIU, the 1.8 million member union with a huge contingent of immigrant members, has traveled frequently to Denver to work on the local campaign and said he does not expect that, or financial support, to stop.

Ackerman sees upsides and downsides to how the immigration issue played out here.

"It didn't turn out wonderful for us but I think there could have been a much worse consequence as well."

But some immigrant advocates are disillusioned about the special legislative session and the compromise made by Peña.

"It pains me and many people who work in the civil rights and human rights community to see the democratic majority brag about their work to cut off people from services," said Bill Vandenberg, co-executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition and an executive committee member of Keep Colorado Safe.

Vandenberg said he will focus on working with the Grassroots Movement for Immigrant Justice, rather than Keep Colorado Safe, to alter the political environment.

Fidel "Butch" Montoya, an immigrant activist, said "there's no reason to celebrate" the new laws and how Initiative 55 died.

"I'm hoping in the end the losers are going to be the politicians that played games during the special session."



kimm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2361

Among them are the Service Employees International Union and the National Council of La Raza, the country's largest Latino civil rights group. They had planned to make Colorado the poster child of how to fight the wave of anti-illegal immigration laws sweeping the nation. And they were prepared to spend heavily to make that happen

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Sure the National Council of La Raza can spend heavily since they receive millions of dollars in taxpayer grants from the Government and donations from big corporations. It really makes me mad to know that my hard earned tax dollars are being given to racist organizations like La Raza. This should not be allowed. As far as being a civil rights group, they are not.

As a Coloradon, I worked with Defend Colorado Now getting petition signatures.

I can say that I was a more than a little disappointed with the outcome of this legislation.

Unfortunately, DCN didn't have the heavy financial backing of the "opposition". All we had were "truly grassroots" people who wanted to stop our state from being overrun further.

It's obvious that just about everybody in politics is pretty much bought and paid for. He has has the most money wins!