Steve Quayle News Alerts

February 28, 2003
By Deborah Frazier, Rocky Mountain News

A record 12,183 illegal immigrants were arrested in Colorado, Wyoming and Utah last year - a 12-fold increase in three years.

"Even with the economy down, this is still the land of opportunity," said Tony Rouco, supervisory agent for the Denver office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Last year's total was a 32 percent jump over 2001 and most of the arrests - 9,747 - were in Colorado.

At least one Colorado congressman wants to stop the illegal immigration influx.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., will introduce a guest worker bill next month to fill unwanted jobs legally, boost border patrols with military personnel and send employers with repeat violations to prison.

"I want to dry up the demand as much as I want to dry up the supply," said Tancredo, Congress' leading opponent to illegal immigration.

Most of last year's INS arrests, 53 percent, started with an investigation of criminal activity - spouse abuse, drug trafficking, homicide or theft, Rouco said Thursday.

Most of the other arrests came through routine traffic stops by the State Patrol officers. Troopers enforcing traffic laws found up to 50 foreign nationals without immigration documents inside the vehicles they had stopped.

Most of those arrested were from Mexico and Central America and were headed for farm jobs in the Southeast or service work in the Northeast, he said.

"Those headed for Colorado either had friends who told them there were jobs or were recruited by industries - construction, agriculture and ski area restaurants and hotels," he said.

Rouco said that 94 people were prosecuted last year for smuggling undocumented workers into the country and three Denver-based asbestos removal firms were convicted of hiring illegal aliens, he said.

"One of the reasons that people come to this country is that they know they will find unscrupulous employers who will hire them," Rouco said.

There have been more INS arrests since 1999 because the agency put special teams in Brush, Grand Junction, Glenwood Springs, Craig, Alamosa, Durango and three cities in Utah, he said.

The Durango and Alamosa units, which respond to calls from the State Patrol on U.S. 160, make more arrests than any similar INS units in the nation, Rouco said.

The Grand Junction team was second.

Rouco liked Tancredo's idea of a guest worker program.

"I would support a program where you could keep better track of people coming into country," he said.

While Tancredo was pleased with the leap in arrests, he said using military assets, such as soldiers, radar equipment and other sensing devices to secure the border would curtail the illegal influx.

The demand would be cut by imposing sanctions on employers of at least $20,000 per violation and mandatory prison sentences for repeat offenders, he said.

"It is like the drug issue. If you dry up the demand and the supply, the problem goes away," Tancredo said.

The guest worker visas would be good for one or two years, but could be renewed for many years, he said. The workers would be subject to federal labor laws - including wage and hour rules.

Tancredo said his system would make it hard for companies to bring in low-cost foreign workers for jobs unemployed Americans could fill.

"A good guest worker program will put more Americans to work while protecting the rights of the people who do come here to work," Tancredo said.

Tancredo, often critical of the INS, praised the agency for its enforcement effort and the rise in arrests.

John Keeley, a research associate for the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, D.C., also endorsed the idea of a guest worker bill with teeth.

"Illegal immigration improves the bottom line for unscrupulous employers who hired them, but it brings costs that local governments can't handle, such as medical treatment and schools," Keeley said.

Tancredo said his e-mail was already flooded with opposition to a guest worker program because he let representatives for home builders, agriculture, restaurants and other industries review the proposal.

"There are ski resorts and others that are concerned. They have a bottom line worry," he said. "I have a bigger worry. I can't make a policy based on the individual industries that would harm this country."

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/state/article/0,1299,DRMN
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