{"id":91565,"date":"2019-11-26T01:05:34","date_gmt":"2019-11-26T01:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/andrew-romanoffs-record-on-immigration-complicates-his-senate-bid\/"},"modified":"2019-11-26T01:05:34","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T01:05:34","slug":"andrew-romanoffs-record-on-immigration-complicates-his-senate-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/andrew-romanoffs-record-on-immigration-complicates-his-senate-bid\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Romanoff\u2019s record on immigration complicates his Senate bid"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Senate candidate Andrew Romanoff speaks at a candidate forum held at Centennial Middle School in Montrose, Sunday, Oct. 20.<\/span>William Woody\/Special to the Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Andrew Romanoff pitches himself to Democratic voters as the proven progressive option in Colorado\u2019s 2<\/p>\n

But his record on immigration complicates that narrative. As Colorado\u2019s House speaker from 2005 to 2009, he oversaw the passage of what at the time were considered among the most restrictive policies in the nation when it comes to people living in the U.S. illegally.<\/p>\n

Romanoff has come under attack and been criticized for his role in a series of measures passed by the legislature in 2006, including during a special legislative session that year.<\/p>\n

Senate Bill 90 was the most consequential of the 2006 measures, requiring local law enforcement to report arrestees to federal authorities if officers suspected them of being in the U.S. unlawfully. The bill was repealed in 2013. There were also policies restricting people living in the U.S. illegally from accessing government assistance programs and requiring business owners to provide proof of the legal work status of their employees.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat is extraordinarily frustrating is that he\u2019s never acknowledged the actual harm he helped create for the immigrant community \u2013 legislation that\u2019s still impacting those communities,\u201d said state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Denver Democrat and longtime immigrant advocate. \u201cI want to work alongside people to build the world that we all want to see. It\u2019s hard to believe them when they were actively involved in building policies that harmed members of our community but who now say, \u2018Trust me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Romanoff says the measures produced unintended consequences that he deeply regrets. But at the time he maintained that the measures didn\u2019t compromise his beliefs and told The Los Angeles Times<\/em> that at least some of the policies were \u201ctough, effective, enforceable and practical.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, Romanoff argues, he has worked hard to help immigrants by advocating for comprehensive policy reform \u2013 a goal he vows to continue toward if elected next year. He brushed off the idea that the legislation he supported in 2006 could hurt his standing with progressive voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople can take anything they want into account when they are making a decision,\u201d Romanoff told The Colorado Sun last week. \u201cIf they\u2019re holding out for a candidate who\u2019s never made a mistake, they probably won\u2019t cast many votes.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for the criticism from Gonzales, who has spent more than a decade blasting Romanoff for his role in the 2006 bills, he said: \u201cShe\u2019s definitely entitled to her feelings, but that criticism is at odds with the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romanoff says he supported the repeal of Senate Bill 90 in 2013 and that he\u2019s spent years trying to make up for the mistakes he made on immigration in 2006.<\/p>\n

Romanoff\u2019s 2020 U.S. Senate campaign platform includes support for a pathway to citizenship for those now living in the U.S. illegally. He also wants to expand visa programs for workers and protect people who are shielded from deportation under programs like Temporary Protected Status and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.<\/p>\n

Finally, Romanoff said that crossing the U.S. border without permission should no longer be a crime and that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be done away with. \u201cI think the agency has lost its credibility and needs to be replaced,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Romanoff has also been a fierce critic of President Donald Trump\u2019s policies on immigration, saying Trump has demonized immigrants and is trying to divide the nation.<\/p>\n

Romanoff\u2019s record on immigration complicated his 2010 bid for U.S. Senate, in which former state Sen. Jessie Ulibarri accused him of demonstrating \u201cthat if it\u2019s politically expedient for him, he\u2019s willing to sacrifice the most vulnerable in the Latino communities,\u201d according to a Denver Post article.<\/p>\n

Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Coffman used Romanoff\u2019s immigration record as an attack point in Romanoff\u2019s 2014 bid for Colorado\u2019s 6th Congressional District seat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been having this conversation for 13 years,\u201d Romanoff told The Sun<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Eric Sondermann, a Denver political analyst, agrees that the issue is \u201cgetting a little dated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the Democratic party \u2013 in both parties \u2013 purity these days becomes even more important,\u201d he said. \u201cThe true believers give you decreasing latitude to deviate from orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Romanoff is one of nine candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for Colorado\u2019s 2020 U.S. Senate race, including former Gov. John Hickenlooper.<\/p>\n

Romanoff\u2019s immigration record doesn\u2019t remove him as the leading progressive candidate in the race, Sondermann said, but it is a mark on his record.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a strike,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s not strike two or strike three, but it\u2019s a strike.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent months, Romanoff\u2019s rivals in the primary campaign for a chance to unseat Republican U.S Sen. Cory Gardner in 2020 have kept his immigration record in the spotlight, seizing on the issue at recent candidate forums.<\/p>\n

Candidate Lorena Garcia, in a campaign fundraising email, accused Romanoff of trying to \u201csugarcoat some truly terrifying parts\u201d of his voting record on immigration. She also said at a campaign event that Romanoff allowed for the passage of the \u201cnation\u2019s harshest anti-immigrant laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"U.S.
U.S. Senate candidate Michelle Ferrigno Warren speaks to a voter after a forum held at Centennial Middle School in Montrose on Sunday, Oct. 20.<\/span>William Woody\/Special to the Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Michelle Ferrigno Warren, another Romanoff rival in the 2020 primary who has long worked on immigration issues, said she hasn\u2019t forgotten what happened in 2006 \u2013 \u201cand neither has the Hispanic community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are consequences when people make decisions,\u201d she said. \u201dThere was harm done then. I\u2019m not speaking for the Hispanic community, but I have heard over and over again \u2014 they\u2019re remembering that and also just how painful it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2006 bills targeting people living in the U.S. illegally in Colorado, however, didn\u2019t happen in a vacuum. That same year, there were more than 550 bills concerning immigrants introduced in legislatures across the nation. Immigration was also a hot-button issue in Congress, where legislation was being considered that would have turned millions of people living in the U.S. unlawfully into felons and made it a crime to aid a person living in the U.S. illegally.<\/p>\n

Romanoff has in the past argued that the bills passed that year in Colorado were in response to the lack of congressional movement on immigration.<\/p>\n

He also says that measures targeting people living in the U.S. illegally passed during a rare special legislative session in 2006 called by then-Gov. Bill Owens, a Republican, were more tolerable than policies being pushed by immigration hard-liners.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe kept getting bill after bill,\u201d said former state Rep. Fran Coleman, a Latina Democrat who represented Denver in the legislature at that time. \u201cMost of them were pretty draconian.\u201d<\/p>\n

The political dynamics \u2014 Democrats had only recently retaken power in the House \u2014 were such that they couldn\u2019t just say \u201cno\u201d to everything without risking their power at the legislature, she said.<\/p>\n

Owens called the special session after the Colorado Supreme Court rejected a citizen ballot initiative seeking to amend the state constitution to bar people in the country illegally from accessing government assistance programs. Owens wanted the legislature to refer the measure to the ballot and demanded that lawmakers either do that, Romanoff says, or come up with a statutory alternative.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought at the time that the compromise we passed during the special session in 2006 was less damaging than the constitutional amendment we killed,\u201d he said. \u201cIf I had to do it over again, I would have adjourned the session and dared the governor to call us back.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, Romanoff says, the special session served to \u201cindulge \u2014 and by extension legitimize \u2014 the Republicans\u2019 premise.\u201d<\/p>\n

The result of the special session was that the policy barring people in the country illegally from accessing government assistance programs was put in statute. But, Romanoff said, since the statute duplicated federal law, it had little to no effect.<\/p>\n

Polly Baca, a former state lawmaker who in 2006 was fighting the ballot initiative in her role as president and CEO of the Latin American Research and Service Agency, said she still supports Romanoff today because of his willingness to work with her organization.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe laws that were passed, which I never liked, were passed in order to prevent a constitutional question from being placed on the ballot and create harm that we could not repair,\u201d said Baca, who has endorsed Romanoff\u2019s 2020 campaign. \u201cWe didn\u2019t like any of the laws that were passed, but it was about the lesser of a number of evils. People misunderstood his role, and yes it did harm him because of the misunderstanding of the role that he played.\u201dBill Vanderberg, who worked for Colorado\u2019s Progressive Coalition in 2006, now known as the Colorado People\u2019s Alliance, says he thinks Democrats gave up too much.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that they believe they made difficult decisions to compromise in order to fend off some of the nastiest populist ballot initiatives at that time, but in doing so I think that they compromised fundamental democratic principles of fairness and equality,\u201d Vanderberg said. \u201cI think they could have fought harder. And I think that they took immigrant communities for granted.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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