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Colorado Senate testimony by CAIR spokesperson Marlene Guerrero on HB-1224 - the "Colorado Secure and Verifiable Identity Document Act" Presented to the State Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, March 3, 2003 My name is Marlene Guerrero. I am a spokesperson for the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform. I come before you to urge your unanimous support for House Bill 1224. In a recently published biography of Benjamin Franklin, surely the most inventively civic minded of our Founders, the biographer wrote: "[Franklin] was forming an organization to perform the most basic function of government: the protection of its citizens." The most basic function of government. The protection of its citizens. Without dispute, the primary obligation of this legislature is the protection of the citizens of Colorado. That is the essential element in the social contract that binds us, legislators to citizens. Without that fundamental understanding, this work-in-progress called democracy could not survive. I am the mother of two daughters. My primary obligation to my daughters is their protection. It is an obligation-a privilege, really-that I assumed when I chose to become a mother. And it is because of that that I home-school my children. A healthy state is like an extended family. It is your obligation-your privilege-as our legislators to fulfill your primary obligation to the citizens of Colorado, your extended family. The matricula consular card is issued by the Mexican government to its nationals living here illegally on the strength of unverified documents, making it little more than a coincidence that any given matricula card would positively identify its holder. Disturbingly, even the most cursory of criminal background checks are also not part of the Mexican consulate's ID-issuing process. And seeing the success Mexico is having with municipalities and institutions accepting the matricula card, Poland and Guatemala and Peru are now issuing their versions of unverified ID cards to their nationals living illegally in the U.S., understandably arguing what's fair for Mexicans should be fair for them, too. Reportedly queuing up now to have their ID cards accepted too are El Salvador, China and Honduras. If we allow this growing ID anarchy to proliferate in our state, we will soon see every country in the world issuing their versions of the matricula card to their illegals residing in Colorado, creating a security nightmare. And if we were to allow such a system eventually to become business-as-usual in Colorado, it would be our children and grandchildren who be left to deal with that mess, a very dirty trick to play on our future generation. I am a naturalized US citizen. I legally immigrated to the US from Honduras, after patiently waiting in line for years. Part of the reason we immigrated to the U.S. was so we could enjoy the reliably consistent integrity of American institutions. As a citizen it strikes me as absurd that we Americans would now abdicate our duty to maintain that integrity by turning our ID-issuing responsibilities over to faceless agents of foreign countries. Indeed, the INS tells us that only illegal aliens would have a need for these unverified ID cards. Why would we encourage the presence of those who are in our country in violation of our laws by giving them a quazi-legal status that these cards would confer upon them? I would not for a moment consider giving the responsibility of, say, the nursing-home care of elderly parents or the baby-sitting assistance of my children, to those using these deceptive, unverified identification cards, those who by definition has demonstrated themselves to be law breakers and unworthy of my trust. Nor could I imaging that any of you would entrust the protection of your loved ones to those who use the matricula consular card or its like to identify themselves. And if you would not, I would not expect you to allow any lesser standard of protection of your extended family members, the citizens of Colorado. As Ben Franklin knew, the most basis function of government is the protection of its citizens. Polls show the vast majority of the citizens of Colorado want protection from the onslaught of these deceptive, foreign ID cards. Accordingly, I respectfully ask your unanimous support to HB-1224. testimony by Fred Elbel Matricula toolkit o Matricula ID card Home |