A day before President Barack Obama announces a series of steps protecting around 5 million immigrants in the United States illegally, representatives from the Colorado Business Roundtable and The Colorado Farm Bureau urged Congress to take action and dismissed the president's plan as potentially damaging to any legislative solution.
The representatives called on Colorado's legislative delegation to pass immigration reform in Congress before the end of the current session.
"Whether it's comprehensive or whether it's piecemeal, there are certain staples and tenants of immigration reform that will provide stability and adequate workforce supply, and continue to move our economy forward," said Jeff Wasden, President of the Colorado Business Roundtable.
Wasden added the roundtable agrees reforming the U.S. Visa and H1- Bprograms and creating a more user friendlyE-verify system would be a positive step toward reform.
"That coupled with border security, will allow us to move this dialogue forward," said Wasden.
The president will use executive action to protect nearly five million in the country illegally from deportation and allow them to be eligible for U.S. work permits. In a video posted on the White House Facebook page, Obama announced his intentions.
"What I'm going to be laying out is the things I can do with my lawful authority as president to make the system work better even as I continue to work with Congress and encourage them to get a bipartisan, comprehensive bill that can solve the entire problem," he said.
The Associated Press reports the president's plan would not be a path to citizenship and could be rolled back with the election of a new president in 2016.
Brent Boydston, the vice president of public policy at the Colorado Farm Bureau, said presidential intervention into comprehensive immigration reform now could have negative impacts on any potential movement in Congress on substantive reform in the future.
"When you look at what's being said by [Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell] and [Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner], I think it would definitely present some big challenges," Boydston said. "At this point, we would much rather prefer a comprehensive legislative reform going forward than kind of a piecemeal approach or what's being proposed by the president.”
Boehner has criticized the President's plan, saying that if the president takes action, "he will poison the well and there will be no chance for immigration reform moving in this Congress." It's a warning that the Farm Bureau's Boydston is taking seriously.
"We would really like to not have the well poisoned at this point," he said.
Boydston and Wasden discussed the president's plan during a teleconference by ThePartnership for a New American Economy which also included a representative from the Latino Chamber of Commerce Pueblo.
