ProjectUSA
May 27, 2003
== TIME-OUT PROJECT ==
In a major victory for immigration
reductionists, Governor Bill Owens of Colorado
signed into law Friday a bill that bans
acceptance by state agencies and Colorado
municipalities of foreign-issued identification
and consular ID cards. The bill, known as the
"Secure and Verifiable Identity Document Act,"
prevents acceptance in Colorado of the matricula
consular, the Mexican illegal alien ID card.
Thus, Colorado becomes the first state in the
union to block the stated efforts of the Mexican
government to use the matricula consular as a
way to make an end run around Congress and
achieve a "bottom up" amnesty for the millions
of Mexican illegal aliens in the United States.
The bill goes into effect immediately. Now
Denver, for example, which began accepting the
cards after being lobbied by the city's Mexican
consulate (in violation of the Vienna
Convention), will have to find another way to
hand out public services to Mexican nationals
illegally residing in the United States...
A year ago, the matricula card looked
unstoppable. With seemingly no opposition,
cities, banks, and police departments across the
country were rushing to recognize the card. A
massive de facto amnesty looked inevitable,
despite the fact that a 2001 Gallup Poll showed
only 6 percent of Americans actually support a
blanket amnesty for illegal aliens. However, the
enactment of this law, which at one point in the
legislative process was declared dead, marks a
significant reverse for the Mexican government
and its collaborators in the United States.
Along with Governor Owens, those who fought
hard for the law deserve a public thank you --
especially the two original co-sponsors of the
bill, Senator John Andrews and Representative
Don Lee. Also fighting hard for the bill were
Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo, former
Colorado governor Dick Lamm, and Fred Elbel of
the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform.
Deserving special credit, and the support of
the 85 percent of Americans who believe illegal
immigration is a "serious problem," are the two
national groups that drafted the original bill:
Friends of Immigration Law Enforcement (FILE),
and NumbersUSA.
The new law is a serious setback for
ethnic-identity special interest groups like the
Ford Foundation-funded Mexican American Legal
Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF), which
recently issued an 18-page legal attack on FILE
and FILE's legal arguments against acceptance by
U.S. institutions of the matricula consular.
Immigration realists, long used to feeling
that commonsense immigration policies were a
lost cause, should savor this important victory.
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