Moving backward on immigration

The legislature’s passage this month of in-state college tuition for illegal immigrants who arrived in Colorado as children is a step backward that makes true immigration reform more difficult to achieve.

The tuition bill’s Colorado sponsors think they are advancing a Colorado version of the national “DREAM Act,” but in fact, the adoption of this law will hinder, not help, the search for a national solution to a difficult problem.

This is because the action will be interpreted as endorsing – because it implicitly relies on — President Obama’s illegal administrative amnesty, the “deferred action” program, which Obama implemented by executive fiat instead of waiting for Congress to act. Indeed, Obama acted in the face of Congress’s explicit rejection of the DREAM Act in December of 2011.

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When Colorado acts on its own on immigration matters, we give Congress one more excuse for not solving this problem. We do not need 50 state solutions for illegal immigration; we need one national solution. Didn’t we hear Democrats saying exactly that when Arizona passed immigration control legislation in 2010?

At the end of that historic 2006 special session in Colorado, a Republican governor, Bill Owens, was joined by a Democrat Speaker of the House, Andrew Romanoff, in applauding the work of the lawmakers. The Denver Post and other newspapers celebrated the bills passed by the special session as putting Colorado in the forefront of tough immigration enforcement.

Less than seven years later, the state’s Democrat leaders are busy dumping that 2006 legacy. They now favor awarding public benefits to illegal immigrants on humanitarian grounds.

The tuition legislation effectively repeals a section of the law enacted in the 2006 special session, HB-1023, which prohibits illegal immigrants – persons who cannot prove lawful status — from receiving any public benefit from any state agency. Obviously, in-state tuition is a public benefit, so the sponsors of the tuition bill had to admit that and include an exemption to override that prohibition.

The tuition bill’s advocates must hope that Obama’s temporary fix will be made permanent by the time the first group of college graduates start looking for jobs. But in reality, the likelihood of Congress finding an acceptable compromise on illegal immigration is not improved by unilateral actions by state legislatures.

Another important aspect of the bill has been totally ignored by sponsors and the news media alike. What is missing from the tuition bill is any type of sunset date for tuition eligibility. The tuition benefit will be available not only to current young residents of Colorado who have attended three years of high school but to future illegal alien arrivals as well. Lacking any sunset date, the bill adds new incentives for illegal immigrants to come to Colorado.

That omission is hardly accidental. Most congressional versions of the so-called DREAM Act had such a sunset date for eligibility so that it would not be an incentive for others to cross our borders to gain the benefit.

The fact that the Colorado tuition bill lacks that safeguard illustrates something important about the immigration reform debate: advocates for amnesty have no interest in establishing barriers to or disincentives for a continued flow of illegal immigrants into our country.

Without doubt, the vast majority of Coloradans have great sympathy for the plight of thousands of young people brought to this country illegally by their parents. The problem is that putting a Band-Aid on this one problem without fixing the larger problem of our porous borders only makes that larger problem worse.

Our federal government must secure our border, not to keep people out, but so we know exactly who is entering our country. The president and Congress must also fix our broken work visa and citizenship process. It is pathetic the time it takes and paperwork involved in applying for citizenship. I am a small business owner. I want to hire people here legally. Our government is hurting my business and many other Colorado businesses by holding this issue hostage for political gain.

After observing this debate over illegal immigration for several years, I believe one conclusion is inescapable. The only reason the larger problem remains unsolved is that amnesty proponents have no interest in stemming the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.

Clearly, Democrat leaders see illegal immigrants as future Democrat voters, so they prefer to extend public benefits, not prohibit them. This course of action erects new roadblocks to genuine immigration reform. Why? Because a nation that will not enforce its borders will not enforce any other immigration law either.

Renfroe, a Republican, represents Senate District 13, which encompasses northern and eastern Weld County, including the city of Greeley.