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News Release - January 21, 2003 Please deliver to NEWS EDITOR / DIRECTOR C A I R Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform NEWS RELEASE _____________________________________________ FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE For more information, contact: Fred Elbel or Marlene Guerrero (In Colorado): 1/888-694-1559 www.cairco.org State law to prohibit foreign IDs CAIR urges state legislators to support Government Identity Documents Act Lakewood, CO (January 21, 2003) -- Associates of the Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR) will be in attendance at a 2:15pm press conference today called by Rep. Don Lee and Sen. John Andrews in the third-floor press room of the state capitol building. The Republican state legislators will announce their sponsorship of a bill that would make illegal the accepting of the Mexican matricula consular ID card and other "unsecured" IDs. Called the Secure and Verifiable Identity Document Act, the bill would prohibit a public entity or public official from accepting identification documents not "issued by a state or federal jurisdiction that is unverifiable by federal law enforcement, intelligence or Homeland Security agencies." Exemptions to the prohibition would be crime reports or where federal law mandated acceptance of such a document. CAIR is calling on all state legislators to support the bill. Fred Elbel, CAIR co-director, said, "In a post-September-11 reality, accepting anything less than secure, verifiable IDs is flirting with disaster." CAIR spokesman, Mike McGarry, said the Mexican martricula consular ID card is a "sham card issued on the strength of false, dubious and unverified documents by agents of a corrupt foreign government." Last December CAIR filed a 13-page formal complaint with the U.S. Attorney's office against Mayor Wellington E. Webb and the City and County of Denver for officially accepting the matricula card as valid ID. On January 8, 2003, CAIR co-sponsored a debate in Denver on the matricula card, The Mexican matricula consular ID Card: Safe or Sorry?. * The Lakewood-based Colorado Alliance for Immigration Reform (CAIR) is a Colorado non-profit corporation which advocates for reducing immigration to sustainable levels. ### Note: To find out more about the bill, go to the Colorado Government legislative information site and enter "1224" as the bill number. (A new browser window will open). Home |