Colorado Voters Mull Immigration, Economy Ahead of Caucus

JEFFREY BROWN: And I'm here in Denver at the edge of the Rocky Mountains where we've gathered six Coloradans with various political affiliations, occupations, and views on immigration and other issues.

Christy Rodriguez is a home educator in Greeley.

Mark Harris is a seed farmer in Grand Junction.

Grace Lopez-Ramirez is director of Mi Familia Vota, a nonpartisan group that works in the Hispanic community.

Dienne Powell is a self-employed worker who cleans homes and cares for the elderly in Idaho Springs.

Ken Buck is the district attorney of Weld County.

And Amy Hawkins is co-owner of a roofing business in Boulder.

And welcome to all of you.

Ken Buck, I'll start with you. In what ways is immigration a factor impacting the economy in your community?

KEN BUCK (R), District Attorney, Weld County: Well, really two ways. One, we've got a lot of identity theft in Greeley and lot of other crimes. And the victims of those crimes are impacted in a financial sense by being victims of crime.

We also have a very real impact on the tax base. We've got 15 percent of the jail population are illegal immigrants. It costs the county over a $1.5 million. We have a $32 million bad debt at the hospital, not all attributable to illegal immigrants, but, as you see a rise in illegal immigration, we've also seen a rise in that bad debt.

JEFFREY BROWN: Grace, immigration as a drag on resources? What do you see?

GRACE LOPEZ-RAMIREZ (D), Director, Mi Familia Vota: I really don't see that; in fact, I see the opposite.

I mean, I know that some people can say that immigrants, that undocumented immigrants take more than they put into the system, but I actually see it the opposite.

In fact, last year alone, undocumented immigrations provided between $7 million and $8 million to the Social Security fund, the national Social Security fund. And, you know, if you're thinking $7 billion to $8 billion a year, in 15 years, that's $100 billion going to Social Security that they'll never see.

And that doesn't even count, you know, the sales taxes, consumption taxes, real estate taxes that undocumented immigrants are still putting into, paying and contributing to the economy in those ways.

JEFFREY BROWN: Amy, how does this play out for a small business like yours?

AMY HAWKINS (R), Roofing Business Owner: I have seen it affect companies much more. There are not -- the construction industry, and I think many other sectors of labor-intensive work, are not any longer seen as a viable future for a lot of the youth of America. It's just not seen that...

JEFFREY BROWN: So a fact of life that you're relying more on immigrant labor?

AMY HAWKINS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you buy that? Or do you feel yourself competing with that labor?

DIENNE POWELL (D), Housekeeper/Elderly Caregiver: Oh, I feel that I compete, because I am on the lower end of the income structure situation in America. And I see, while I have never walked into a client's home and found an illegal immigrant who has taken my job, I do find that there will be periods when it's all I can do to find a job, because all of them are taken. And, yes, I would say I have been impacted that way, definitely.

MARK HARRIS (I), Seed Farmer: How it's impacted us directly is that, for about the last three or four years, we have noticed that it has been increasingly difficult to get enough summer help. And over the last couple of years, that got to be worse.

And how it affected us directly this year was, it's the first year since 1958 we did raise no seed crop in the Grand Valley in western Colorado.

JEFFREY BROWN: You mean the laws that Colorado passed within the last year or two had that impact?

MARK HARRIS: Yes, sir, began to make a climate to where labor was growing more scarce and risk was becoming more abundant.

JEFFREY BROWN: People were afraid to come work on the farm?

MARK HARRIS: Well, some of both. I think that, for better or for worse, all immigration activities that have taken place over the last few years are making it more difficult to come and go across the border.

JEFFREY BROWN: Go ahead.

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ (R), Home Educator: I have a question for Grace. How are these undocumented workers paying taxes? How is it that they're putting into the Social Security system if they're undocumented?

GRACE LOPEZ RAMIREZ: Well, they may be using a false Social Security number, but they may...

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ: So they are committing a crime?

GRACE LOPEZ RAMIREZ: Well, they may also -- and a big majority -- I'm not sure how many -- also would be using federal tax ID numbers. The bottom line is they are still paying into a system that they're not receiving anything from.

JEFFREY BROWN: Christy, let me ask you, though, because we started talking about this as an economic issue. You're suggesting that it's more than an economic issue, that there's cultural issues involved?

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ: I do believe that it is very much a cultural issue. I have been discriminated against by undocumented, non-English-speaking people more so than I ever have against any white person. This is because I don't speak Spanish.

And I don't -- I'm an American, and there's a division between American Hispanics and Mexican Hispanics. And I really take offense to Mexican activists or Hispanic activists that are Americans that try and put us all in the same pot and discriminate against me because I'm an English-speaking, patriotic American.

MARK HARRIS: The other perspective, we've felt, as we began to see the pressure build upon our friends and our neighbors, our employees, in many cases our customers, is that we began to grow increasingly uncomfortable with turning our backs on people who had, both figuratively and literally, been putting food on our table and the table of those of our customers for years.

And we hear, especially in any election year, politicians telling us that they're going to protect our rural family values. But when we're asked to do that, to forsake people who we have rewarded with a job for making the difficult trip north, to reward them with the lack of attention to come up with some sort of comprehensive immigration plan for reform just struck us as absolutely wrong.

DIENNE POWELL: They're the ones making the choice to do the illegal act, consequence -- and it's not -- if this were some little, fine detail that they were crossing over, we could have some leeway on it. But these folks are intentionally ignoring the laws of my country. They're intentionally breaking the laws of my country.

Ken, I'll start with you.

KEN BUCK: What I'd like to see next is I'd like to see some border enforcement. I'd like to see us shut down that border.

We can't -- you know, when a pipe breaks in your basement, you immediately go to turn off the water before you try to figure out how to repair the damage that's been done by the water in your basement.

And the first thing that we need to do is to stop illegal immigrants coming into this country. And then we need to have a rational discussion in this country about, how do we fix the problem of having 10 million, 12 million, how many ever illegal immigrants that are here?

JEFFREY BROWN: And are you hearing this in the campaign?

KEN BUCK: I am hearing it from some candidates. Frankly, I don't know -- you know, Mitt Romney, I am supporting Mitt Romney because I hear him say that he wants to see the border shut down.

I am not supporting John McCain. I think John McCain sold us out with his bill with Senator Kennedy, and I'm very disappointed in John McCain.

GRACE LOPEZ-RAMIREZ: The enforcement-only approach is really just a misery strategy, a misery solution, because, you know, you round up these workers, you affect the businesses, and many times the small businesses, by rounding up the workers.

You're separating families, and you're destroying communities. And that's not a solution. You know, that's a problem.

And so, for me, I would like to see a comprehensive immigration reform plan come out as soon as possible. Obviously, with this election year, it's not going to happen.

JEFFREY BROWN: Do you hear it on the campaign now among any candidates that you would support?

GRACE LOPEZ-RAMIREZ: I'm not hearing it. I'm not hearing it on either side enough. And I think that just people are trying to stay away from it as much as possible. I'm sure that their advisers are making sure that that's not, you know, at the top of their platform.

JEFFREY BROWN: Amy, what are you hearing? What do you want to hear?

AMY HAWKINS: And I hear from most candidates that some sort of secure border is important. I would like to hear how practically it's going to work.

So, for example, if Mitt Romney says, "We want to send all 12 million home," how are you going to do that? How exactly do you plan on finding them and sending them home?

Other candidates have suggested that you come forward, you register, you go home for 120 days, and you can re-register to come back in. It seems more logical, and I don't know which is right or wrong.

JEFFREY BROWN: Dienne, you identified yourself as a Democrat.

DIENNE POWELL: Yes. I'm not on either of your candidate's side, but I also am hearing nothing from the guys on my side, because all of the folks who have made any sort of reasonable comment and logical, you know, "This, this and this is what I will do if I were elected president," have all been marginalized and cut off the platform by corporate media.

So the three that are left, eh.

MARK HARRIS: As opposed to thinking McCain has failed us, he's on my short list, simply because I do applaud his attempt to work for, in the face of intense political pressure, to work for comprehensive immigration reform.

Also, if you look at the Web sites of Obama and Clinton at this point, they also espouse what looks pretty clearly like comprehensive immigration reform.

But all candidates who were much more for comprehensive immigration reform in the past have tempered that, just given the realities of a political situation. From an immigration perspective, those three candidates are still on my short list.

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ: I think that many of the proponents for illegal immigration are really promoting a slave-labor economy. I really don't believe that there are very many jobs that Americans won't do.

Now, they may not do them for slave wages. We need to be willing, as Americans, to take some tough strides. And, in my opinion, none of the candidates, none of the presidential candidates, Republicans or Democrats, are ready to take any kind of serious action in that respect.

JEFFREY BROWN: Why do you think that is? Why do you think they're reticent or not taking the strong approach that you think should be taken?

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ: I think a lot of big business want to continue with the slave-labor issue. And I think, as a politician, you're trying to get as many people to vote for you as you can. And it's a sticky thing, and nobody really has a solution.

JEFFREY BROWN: Amy, you wanted to jump in?

AMY HAWKINS: I did. I wanted to just flat-out disagree with the slave labor.

I know for a fact that minimum wage isn't even an issue in the construction industry. I know a company that put an ad in the paper this summer -- $30 an hour, no experience necessary -- and they got no response from it at all.

And I also know that companies such as ourselves, we have 401(k); we have health and dental for people; we have vacation pay; we have holiday pay; we have everything under the sun. We try to make ourselves, as do all the other companies within our organization, make ourselves a real professional place to work, actually.

CHRISTY RODRIGUEZ: Are you hiring illegal immigrants?

AMY HAWKINS: Am I hiring? No, I'm not hiring illegal immigrants. Is there an issue within our industry about immigrants? Yes, there is.

KEN BUCK: Amnesty to me is wrong, because it puts people that break the law ahead of the people that obey the law. And I think it's a very serious moral issue that we need to grapple with.

And I'm not sure I have the answer, but it just seems wrong to me to put the illegal immigrant ahead of the person that's done it the right way.