By Senator Tom J. Wiens

During the Special Session in July, the "Corner Stone" of the Democrats Immigration Reform was HB 1023. The bill was a weak effort and a rush to "just get something done—so we can say we did it" on the part of the Democrat majority. It was undeserving of a YES VOTE on my part and I'd like you to know why.

The most egregious part of HB1023 isn't even in the Bill. It is the fact that this weak law took the place of Initiative 55, which was thrown off November's ballot by our democrat stacked, politically motivated, Supreme Court. "55" would have allowed the people of Colorado to speak loudly to all of the elected officials in the State on the issue of using taxpayer money for services to illegal aliens. "55" wasn't perfect, but it did allow the legislature to work during the next session to really get at the nuts and bolts of how the regulations would be properly applied. And best of all it was a Constitutional remedy. One only needs to observe the vote changing that took place on the Democrat side of the aisle over and over again during the special session to know that this is one thing that needs to be voted into our constitution so that legislators cannot play political games with this serious issue.

The Supreme Court took away the people's right to vote on a Constitutional Amendment and the Governor called us back into Special Session under the guise of restoring that right. Republican legislators felt strongly that this was our main mission. But the Governor acquiesced to the Democrat majority and broadened "The Call" so that they could avoid doing what the citizen expected us to do. The Democrats threw the citizens a "couple of bone" by sending two unimportant resolutions to the ballot, but refused to send them the important issue. The citizens deserved better.

HB 1020 asked voters whether or not to prohibit employers from getting a tax deduction for the wages they pay to illegal workers. All but 7 of our 100 legislators voted for this. Everyone in the capitol building knows this will pass overwhelmingly in November. But honestly, this bill will do very little to reform illegal immigration. Our own legislative staff wrote the following about this bill: In order for this bill to be effective "a company that is violating federal law by hiring illegal aliens would have to admit such a violation on their state income tax return. Effectively, a company that is already violating federal law would have no incentive to proclaim their guilt on their state income taxes. Therefore, staff believes that it is unlikely that the state will receive any additional revenue, except in cases where a company is audited and found guilty. However, this scenario is also fairly unlikely since the company would have to be found to have illegally employed "unauthorized aliens" and then be found to owe taxes as a result of the audit. In addition, if the alien showed the employer a valid identification card or license, even if the card was obtained illegally, the employer would have no liability." This may be a baby step toward employer sanctions, but certainly not major legislation. But since the Democrat majority would not send the real issue to the people for a vote, they sent this non-controversial imitation instead. The citizens deserved better.

The other referendum, HB 1022 is not an action on the part of the legislature, but a demand for the AG to sue the Federal Government. This is just what citizens complain about -- one government agency passing the buck to another without solving anything. Several other states have already spent the money to file similar suites and LOST. We too will spend the money if this passes and there is little hope for a different outcome. We will "make a statement" and that's about all. The citizens deserved better.

Let me repeat: The Supreme Court took away the people's right to vote on a Constitutional Amendment and we went into Special Session to restore that right. The Democrat Majority, accommodated by the Governor, failed miserably.

House Bill 1023 is touted as a tough bill on illegal immigration, yet when we asked the sponsor to name one service that would be denied to illegal aliens that is not already denied under federal law, they came up blank. It can even be argued that with the exceptions written into the bill and the fact it only applies to illegal immigrants over the age of 18, our law may now be weaker than federal law.

The bill requires applicants for services to sign an affidavit attesting to their legal status and to show a valid ID. BUT it only imposes misdemeanor penalties if the statement if false. Many of us argued passionately that this should be a felony, but were voted down by those who said we were just being mean-spirited. It is not mean-spirited to insist that our taxpayers deserve to have our laws enforced and that the penalties for defrauding the taxpayers to obtain benefits that they pay for should be stringent.

HB 1023 provides no penalties for any local jurisdiction that does not follow the new guidelines. Many of the services that need to be affected are administered at the local level. We have seen in the past that unless there is a fiscal consequence hanging over some local agencies, they simply chose to do what is expedient rather than what is required. In SB90 that passed during the regular session that ended the practice of "Sanctuary Cities," I made sure that if a local jurisdiction does not apply the new law that they will be ineligible for state grants. The Democrat sponsors of HB 1023 could have easily added a similar section to put some teeth into the law. But this bill is about "lip-service" not teeth.

HB 1023 contains a very problematic clause that allows local agencies to "adopt variations of the requirements" that may allow them to ignore the law if they can find "unique circumstances" or if they need "to improve efficiency." Yet it ends with the clause: "Except that the variation shall be no less stringent than the requirements of this section." This appears to remove the ability for local governments to do what the rest of the paragraph seems to give them permission to do. If there is no power given to local governments to relax their requirements, then why is this even in the bill? And if it supposed to grant authority to lessen the requirements then that is just bad policy--we can't have local agencies deciding which regulations they enforce and which ones they don't. Our attempts to get this paragraph taken out of the bill, or even to get an explanation as to why it was put in, were met by double talk and "political-ease." Call me "suspicious," but I simply don't trust that this paragraph is meaningless when the Democrats fought so hard to keep it in the bill. I consulted our legal staff and they too seemed baffled as to the meaning of this paragraph. If our lawyers can't understand it, then how will the government employees that are applying the regulations possibly understand it?

The real test of whether or not HB 1023 means anything at all will be it in the budgetary accounting during the next fiscal year. There was much discourse about how much the illegal immigrants cost the tax payers -- I believe it to be well over a billion dollars. This legislation should save the State money…big money. If we are successful in keeping illegal immigrants from getting State benefits, it stands to reason that there will be a big savings.

Now the test will come as to the real agenda of the Democrat majority and the government bureaucracy. Will they use this as yet another excuse to grow government? Already there is whining about the cost of implementing the law. Folks, this is not new regulation; we already had a law requiring everyone to show ID to get benefits. All we did in HB1023 was to specify what type ID will be accepted. How could that cost another dime? Presumably those without the proper ID won't even show up. It simply can't cost more to serve fewer applicants--UNLESS -- the agencies weren't following the existing law. HB1023 does require immigrant applicants to sign an affidavit that the ID documents are legitimate. Applicants already sign several papers, so we should simply add the affidavit to one of these -- at little or no additional cost. Now the agencies will have to tie into the federal data bank to verify the affidavits. Our fiscal note analysts figured the cost of a search at 20 cents.

BUT -- Mark my word, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to see an outcry from those local and state agencies that administer entitlement programs that we have increase their workload and now they need more money and more people.

The focus of reform should have been on making sure that the current state and federal laws are enforced. But we haven't witnessed any leadership from our current Governor over his entire tenure to move his administration toward such enforcement -- Not until the citizens took up the battle cry and got 50,000 signatures on petitions for Initiative 55.

We head over and over in the last two session of the Democrat lead legislature that it was really the Federal Governments problem and there was little any state could do. But that is just passing the buck and avoiding some real facts. The benefit programs, even those with federal money, we are trying to effect are administered at the state and local level. Beefing up the enforcement of current laws should have been the focus years ago before it became such a pressing problem that the people of Colorado felt the need to take the measure into their own hand and go forward with Initiative 55. I share their frustration. We have all heard of many of the problems the state agencies have had with implementing competent computer systems in other areas (i.e. CBMS) and we will watch closely to see if the bureaucracy is up this new task.

The test of whether or not any of the special session legislation will be clearly measurable in dollars and cents. The purpose of Initiative 55 was to stop taxpayer money from going to benefit illegal immigrants. If the bills passed during special session don't result in savings, they will not have served the purpose. The citizens deserve better.