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This Speakout has not been edited.

By Fidel “Butch” Montoya and Flora Archuleta

With the Senate’s failure to resolve the immigration debate, enforcement-only proposals are sprouting up across the country. The Department of Homeland Security has announced new get-tough regulations. Cities and states are proposing local initiatives to deal with one of our countries most pressing issues.

One thing is clear: the majority of Americans want U.S. immigration policy changed. But will enforcement-only policies do the trick and at what cost?

A year ago, Colorado’s legislature in a special session passed some of the toughest immigration enforcement measures in the country. A year later we should take stock.

The effects of Colorado’s new enforcement environment on state industries have been well publicized. Immigrants, regardless of legal status, are fleeing the state for less hostile destinations where they will not be subject to racial profiling and fear.

With fewer immigrant workers, Colorado businesses are forced to adjust by downsizing production and cutting total jobs. This, in turn, negatively affects US citizen workers. A recent survey by the Colorado Employers for Immigration Reform found that, across industries, for every 2.6 immigrant workers lost one U.S. native will lose a job.

Just last week, Colorado lawmakers announced prospects for a recruiting office in Mexico to remedy the flight of immigrant workers. Such a proposal is a Band-Aid solution to what has become a gaping national wound.

Our state is not just losing money on falling productivity. Enforcing new laws is also expensive. HB 1023, touted as Colorado’s toughest new immigration law, is intended to keep undocumented immigrants from using Colorado’s tax dollars. This month local media reports the new law has cost Colorado state departments $2 million to enforce while saving the state nothing.

Of course, the costs of enforcement-only policies are much more than financial. While these costs are less quantifiable, they are infinitely more dear: equality and justice for all US residents.

HB 1023, intended as an immigration enforcement measure, has had the unsavory side-effect of preventing needy US citizens from accessing services. Many citizen Coloradans are unable to comply with new identification requirements and end up in dire circumstances because of it. Maureen Farrell of the Colorado Center on Law and Policy notes, “We have nothing to show that this law is doing what it was intended to do. The reality is that more citizens appear to be impacted than illegal immigrants.”

Equality and justice also seem far-fetched with Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducting raids in communities throughout Colorado. In the past eight months, families have been ripped apart, community members dragged to jail and children stranded in Greeley, Denver, Westminster, Monte Vista, Pueblo, and Dillon.

Fear is wide-spread. A teacher from Lafayette was recently asked by a student who knew of the raids, “Will my mom be deported?” She had to assure him that his mother, a US citizen of Latino descent, would not be.

Conditions in detention are also troubling, as those taken in after a raid are often deprived of humane treatment, not to mention basic due process. The U.S. Government Accountability Office issued a recent report on the detention center in Aurora, along with 16 others throughout the country. It found that detainees had difficulty making phone calls, including to legal assistance. The report also found sanitation issues with food preparation and rooms filled beyond capacity.

Stricter enforcement of immigration laws seems reasonable because the abundance of “law breakers” is obvious: 12 million undocumented living in the U.S. The truth, however, is that immigration law, as well as its enforcement, is out of sync with our country’s needs and those of immigrant workers and families. Enforcing the decades-long wait that most immigrants face in coming to this country legally is costing us dearly. Ripping people out of their homes and workplaces is as well.

We need new policies that allow immigrants to contribute to our economy, and to do so in safe and legal ways. We need new policies that don’t waste tax-payer money on redundant enforcement measures but dedicate our precious resources towards the real threats our country faces. Immigration is not one of them. The erosion of equality and justice for all Americans is.

Fidel “Butch” Montoya, a long-time community activist, is the coordinator of the Latino faith-based initiative H.S. Power and Light in Denver. Flora Archuleta is executive director of the San Luis Valley Immigrant Resource Center in Alamosa.

READER COMMENTS

I live in an apartment complex at the edge of Denver county, just on the edge of Denver and Araphoe counties.
This complex I live in has about 240 units in it.
Out of these 240 units I would say that about 150 of them are rented and inhabited by illegal Mexicans.
I have lived here for 20 mths. and I have never seen one ICE agent here, or for that matter, any police officer here arresting any of the illegal's.
These apartments are small one bedrooms and many of the illegal's have more that 3 or 4 people living in these apartments.
Less than 1/2 of them speak any English.
I thought Denver was one of the toughest cities in the Nation when it came to enforcing the laws about illegal's living here in the United States.

if you break the law coming here you will break more laws when you are here. i cant go to mexico without the proper paperwork.they do not permit people comin and going without documentation. why is so hard for some people to respect the laws of the united staes?

if you break the law coming here you will break more laws when you are here. i cant go to mexico without the proper paperwork.they do not permit people comin and going without documentation. why is so hard for some people to respect the lawa of the united staes?

Rev. Butch, I am satisfied with our existing immigration laws. I only wish Bush enforced them. I am bored to tears with the bleeding hearts who support "amnesty" for illegals. You would never know it from Uncle Obama's Cabin (Congressional Black Caucus-CBC-comical blacks in congress), and the likes of Hancock, Groff, Wedgeworth-less, T. Carroll, Marshall, Jones, etc., that criminal illegal Mexicans, Hindu-Indians (BILLARY, Ritter, Bill Gates, Skaggs, and Jordan's favorite illegals), and Europeans, are emotionally and financially raping the national black community.

Illegals steal jobs and government contracts from black folks. Illegal Hindus, by the design of the BILLARY posse, lowers salaries and benefits of America's "hi-tech" workers.

Criminal illegal Mexicans in N.E. Denver, actually register and vote. Consequently, blacks in this area have seen their votes "nullified" like something out of BOMBINGHAM, AL. The state's GOP, Owens, and US Sen. Shamnesty Salazar, devised this slick Texas-style redistricting in N.E. Denver, so blacks wouldn't have a voice in the disbursement of federal funds in the following cash-cows: T-REX, Fas Tracks, CBMS, and Fitzsimons redevelopment project. Meanwhile, the cabin has succumbed to Shamnesty's and the GOP "mushroom" effect.

The new USAG and FBI should investigate this voter fraud, where for the first time in decades, there are no blacks on RTD board of directors (13 whites and 2 Latinos). I still have my view that the '08' DNC Convention should be held at SuperMax, Canon City.

Where have you guys been living. The Colorado state has not gone after one business, not one business has been fined for hiring illegal aliens. You have TWO sanctuary cities (Denver and Boulder). There are 9 guest worker programs offered by this country for immigrants wanting to come here to work. The ACLU there name should be changed to the Illegal Civil Liberties Union, they only go after the states that are trying to get illegal aliens to go home and come here the right way. These people are forging documents, stealing identities, stealing benefits they are not entitled to , draining every states resources and yet it is the American Citizens that are so wrong and every illegal alien so right. The ACLU was designed to stand up for Ameircan Citizens that could not stand for themselves, illegal aliens are not citizens they ARE NOT ENTITLED TO THE SAME RIGHTS AS AMERICANS. I am so sick of you pro-illegal activists looking down on the American Citizens that do not want our country sold out to a low bidder or for 37.5 million illegal aliens to keep piggy backing on our tax dollars. The individual States are waking up and listening to the American Citizens and are acting, Thank God for them, because this Federal Government has shown its true colors to the American Citizens for what they really are.....SELL OUTS

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