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New Immigration Law Frustrates Local Non-Profits by Sarah Hughes
April 30, 2007 7:40 PM
The Catholic Charities based in Glenwood Springs helps newcomers to the United States. One of its programs, the immigrant advocacy project, helps immigrants through tough times...regardless of their legal status.
On a recent afternoon, a soft-spoken man named Eduardo pays a visit to the project. He's lived in the valley over ten years, has a decent job, and is in the process of obtaining legal status.
[LISTEN]
But he tells a Catholic Charities advocate that his family is under great stress:
"Mi esposa...sufrio dolor de cabeza... y le hizo un MRI, y descubrio un tumor en el lado izquierdo...la operaeraron...y yo vengo a ver en que me pueden ayudar, yo tengo aseguranza pero no cubre todo..."
My wife was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, he says. She's been operated on twice.
Eduardo says he has health insurance...but it doesn't cover everything. And the bills are piling up. The bilingual advocate, Jim Coombs says he can help.
"Podemos discutir si esta recibiendo barious biles... averiguard si la aseguranza esta pagando todo eso..."
Coombs says Catholic Charities can review the medical bills, to see if insurance can cover more.
Catholic Charities may also be able to contribute towards the family's next mortgage payment.
Last year, the immigrant advocacy program received funding from Pitkin County. This year it did not.
That's because of a relatively new state immigration law...known as house bill 1023. It bans state and local tax-funded public benefit money from being spent on undocumented immigrants... with some exceptions.
The idea was to prevent immigrants who aren't in the country lawfully from getting public assistance. When Pitkin County took a second look at Catholic Charities immigrant advocacy project under the new state restrictions, it decided the project didn't pass muster. Nan Sundeen is the county's Health and Human Services Director:
"We had to really consider the contribution of Pitkin county funds to their organization. We had to go with how our attorneys interpreted this law because ultimately they are the ones responsible for defending it."
Catholic Charities director Tom Zieman says the loss of a funding is a setback for the program:
"We have a shortfall And so the way that it affects us is that it hampers our ability to do those services, which we think are pretty important, of helping immigrants with the problems they face as immigrants."
Catholic Charities did receive money from Pitkin County for an emergency fund to help immigrants, both documented and undocumented. Some kinds of emergency relief are exempt under the new law.
Other non-profits in the Roaring Fork Valley are facing different challenges with HB 1023.
David Adamson with Mountain Family Health Centers, which provides care to many low-income and uninsured residents, says counties and non-profits have different interpretations of the law. He says that can make drafting health care contracts between counties and non-profits a messy affair.
Adamson says his organization hired its own attorney to hash out a contract with Boulder County:
"We ended up getting an attorney, who had to talk to the county attorney of bolder... we had to get clarification about what exactly we could or could not use their money for..its unusual to have lawyers talking on your behalf with people you've worked with for years...but 1023 did that"
Indeed, some say that many counties and localities are being overzealous in their interpretations of the law. Ed Kahn is with the Colorado Center on Law and Policy:
"The city of longmont has required that shelter programs that get city money to require proof of lawful presence from everyone who comes into the shelter... it's a case where a city has been overly strict in the application of the law"
Kahn says many counties are figuring the law out on their own, because the bill's language is vague, and legal advice from the state scant:
"When the law was passed there was slim guidance issued by the Colorado attorney general's office. Our agency submitted a list of 50 questions to the state attorney generals office hoping they would issue guidance and answer questions about the practical application of the statute"
The questions range from whether or not a non-profit that provides English classes to immigrants is exempt from the ban to the much broader question as to whether non-profits even have the legal authority to document the status of people whom they serve.
The Attorney General's office says it will answer the list of questions by the end of this month.
Produced by Sarah Hughes, originally aired on Aspen Public Radio [LINK].
Posted by Delaney Utterback on April 30, 2007 7:40 PM | Permalink
