DENVER - State politicians are calling for an audit of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment after a published report implied the Department might have intentionally tried to circumvent state law in dealing with illegal immigrants.

Colorado Department of Labor and Employment Executive Director Don Mares insisted his office did nothing improper when it decided in January of last year to suspend a particular software program designed to flag illegal immigrants trying to obtain unemployment benefits. <<Duh. Isn't that illegal???

That decision was the focus of an investigative report by Todd Shepherd with the Independence Institute.

"We would not have temporarily suspended this program if we didn't feel like we had other systems in place that were going to adequately look for folks who shouldn't get benefits because of their legal status," Mares said Thursday.

But State Senator Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield) was unsure of CDLE's intentions.

"It looks really bad," he said. "It appears in black and white that people were breaking the law and knew they were breaking the law."

At issue is a bill passed by the state legislature in 2006. HB-1023 was designed to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining certain forms of government aid. It required state agencies to try to verify status of applicants before handing over something like an unemployment check.

In January of last year CDLE was swamped with a near-record amount of unemployment claims.

"People couldn't get through the system, by phone or otherwise," Mares said. A particular software system designed to help CDLE comply with HB-1023 was, according to Mares, part of the problem.

"It was just holding everything up," he said.

So that system was temporarily suspended, although the "temporary" part of that has now lasted a year and a half.

Shepherd's investigation revealed that there were at least some employees in CDLE that were concerned about the suspension of the program.

"Is this legal?" one employee asked in an inter-office email obtained by Shepherd. "This ain't so hard to do, but we will be effectively disabling the legislatures HB1023," said another email.

"At the very least (the emails) show that there were serious concerns about whether or not the intent of the legislature was being followed," Shepherd said.

Still Mares believes his office did nothing wrong and offers up the assertion that his office flagged close to 900 illegal immigrants during the first nine months of 2009 as evidence of that.

"We felt that overall our system had good checks. Does that mean we aren't always looking at how we can do this better?" he added. "Yes, we are looking to do better."

Yet it's quite clear that many politicians are fuming.

"I think they were ignoring the law and likely broke the law many, many times," Sen. Mitchell said. Sen. Mitchell and a number of other Republican politicians publicly called for an audit of CDLE to determine if any illegal immigrants obtained unemployment benefits because of the change in policy.

It's still not clear if any illegal immigrants obtained benefits improperly however. As one Republican politician said on KHOW's Caplis and Silverman Show on Thursday, "We don't know if it was one, 100, or 5,000."

http://www.9news.com

see boys and girls.... crack kills...

That really sickens me! If they feel the need to file for benefits, then they should feel the need to pay the taxes here also!

What they really need is deported.

Gee. Reading this, it sounds like they had MULTIPLE systems in place to look for 'folks who shouldn't get benefits because of their legal status' ... which, using simple deductive reasoning, means that they KNEW there are / were people NOT eligible to receive benefits because of their 'legal status' who WERE receiving them ... Looks like this is a classic 'Shitt vs Fan' scenario ... and we already know which is gonna win ...

Most definitely, then honest Americans may be able to find jobs.

unemployment benefits require verification of EMPLOYMENT, employers are required to take out income taxes, many people with illegal status still manage to have income from which taxes are deducted,,,

Name two ...

from usa today

"It's a mistake to think that no illegal immigrants pay taxes. They definitely do," said Martha Pantoja, who has been helping Hispanic immigrants this tax season as an IRS-certified volunteer tax preparer for the non-profit Nashville Wealth Building Coalition.

Among those she has assisted is Eric Jimenez, a self-employed handyman who has worked in Nashville for several years. He feels obliged to pay taxes — even though, as Pantoja said, "nothing would happen" to him if he did not.



from taxfoundation.org

It is true that many undocumented immigrants pay payroll taxes (i.e. FICA and Medicare) using either an invalid Social Security number or a Tax Identification Number (TIN), and empirical evidence tends to show that a large fraction of the economic incidence of these taxes falls on workers.

Some of these same individuals also pay income taxes, assuming their reported adjusted gross incomes are high enough to where they actually have a positive liability. Certain legal questions such as the proper filing status most likely exists as well, and mixing a complicated tax system with the complicated issue of undocumented workers can cause nightmares for willing accountants and law enforcement.

That's only ONE ... but hey, if she AND he are BOTH illegal, maybe ICE can pay 'em a visit now ...

one never knows, I am no fan of illegal immigration myself

Unless I don't comprehend the pc term, undocumented, I take it to mean having no verifiable ID.

If, they have a job where they presented an ID/SSN, they would have to be stolen.

2 strikes.

3rd strike is attempting fraud by going in to apply for unemployment.

Those workers who decided to disable the verification screen need to be fired and prosecuted.

A great many of them get it by stealing someones identity to get a social security number.

that is no doubt true, but they still pay into income tax, albeit fraudulenty(which is kind of a strange thing, but it would look more suspicious if employers didnt take that tax out of their paycheck like everyone elses)