Progress Now Action

The Colorado General Assembly has been in special session (or as it is offically known: the first extraordinary session of 2006) for 5 days. It is a good lesson in how not to make law.

The session is ostensibly to address the immigration problem in Colorado - only thing is, no one can articulate very well what the problem is. The Republicans have claimed that the state spends billions of dollars every year on services for illegal immigrants - but the Owens Administration, when pressed by the Joint Budget Committee to identify and quantify the costs, couldn't do it. They have no idea how much they spend on services, what those services are and whether or not the state can actually do anything constitutionally to limit the services. No kidding.

So, we have taken a reckless shotgun approach (the Cheney Strategy?) to legislating. 50 bills were introduced to be considered in a 5 day session. Bills were written on Wednesday, introduced on Thursday, heard in committee Thursday morning, on the floor Thursday night and sent to the Senate for the same treatment on Friday. This is really the worst possible kind of sausage.

Do we have an immigration problem? Sure we do. Our system is broken. It sustains a dangerous business of "Coyotes" along the country's southern border. The illegal immigration process can lead to extortion, slavery, and sometimes death. It's a process that lives in the shadows and the shadows are not kind.

Furthermore, our legal process for immigration is so onerous that few can navigate the red tape. It doesn't work.

But these are issues that need to be addressed by the Federal Government through treaty, agreement and sytemic change - not the states. And most certainly not states that don't even sit on our country's borders.

The Republicans claimed this was about policy, not politics. But recently, these claims have been exposed as a sham. They have been calling for a Constitutional amendment to limit services as long as we don't identify what services are going to be limited. They want to have the legislature do that next year. "The people need to have a voice" - they say. A voice in what?

A bill to articulate the specific services that are allowed and not allowed (HB 1023 sponsored by Andrew Romanoff and Joan Fitz-Gerald) has been attacked by the Republicans. Why? Well, because it's not going to a vote of the people. Recently, they said they would support it if we passed it and then put it on the ballot too. This exposed the real reason they wanted the session.

The Session's not to address services, it's not to address the problem, it is to put an anti-immigrant question on the ballot that will turn out more of their voters than the Democrats. Period.

Why else would you pass law and then put something on the ballot to ask if we should pass the law? Why would we legislate through the constitution when we already have language in statute?

The Session is an effort by the Republicans to hold a state sponsored press conference on illegal immigration. It makes a mockery of our system of deliberative democracy and is a shameful display of partisan posturing at the public trough.