The ordinance proposed before the City Council, adding municipal to state strictures upon hiring undocumented immigrants, is an exercise in misplaced responsibility.

Border security is the responsibility of the federal government, whose program for screening out illegal job applicants is full of holes. This is what needs to be fixed. How hard is it to verify that a Social Security number is legitimate, is not being used elsewhere and fits the profile of the applicant?

Current federal law dates to 1986. For 20 years, there has been an effective conspiracy to lower the wage base by hiring illegal immigrants - who themselves were drawn here by the known availability of (illegal) employment, and often started families.

It is we who brought these undocumented workers here. They're part of our community. To subject them now to massive roundups, destroying families, is an exercise in "blaming the victim."

We need to make provisions for the workers who settled here. The whole system must be revised, and in the first place to provide legal status for established families. Our community should be extending its protection to the human lives involved.

And finally, we must recognize what U.S. policies are doing to cause poverty in other nations. Since NAFTA opened Mexico to our subsidized corn production, 30 percent of its farm jobs have disappeared - and now the price of that basic food has increased by 50 percent due to demand for ethanol in the U.S. market.

This misguided, misleading ordinance fails to locate responsibility where it belongs.
 

originally published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan