Our Voter Voices survey identified immigration as a top issue among nearly all groups, most notably among self-identified conservatives. If you’re a voter who’s concerned about immigration, here’s where your vote has the most impact.
Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally at the Gaylord Rockies Resort & Convention Center in Aurora on Friday, October 11. Aurora is an immigrant city, and one of Trump’s major complaints about the current administration, led by President Biden and presidential candidate Kamala Harris, is the recent influx of newcomers from Venezuela into the Denver area.
Most recently, Aurora has been in the national spotlight for claims, made primarily by Republican politicians and in conservative media, that Venezuelan gang members are terrorizing the residents of entire apartment buildings and neighborhoods.
However, local law enforcement says the concern is much more limited. Residents of those apartments tell journalists their big concern is with the decrepit condition of their apartments and the lack of response from their landlord.
Immigration—who’s coming to the country, how they arrive here and what it means for the nation’s identity—has long been a top concern for many voters. Our ongoing Voter Voices survey shows it remains so among large groups of Coloradans, and especially for self-identified conservatives. The jump in arrivals in recent years has pushed it to the front of the national conversation in new and urgent ways.
Coloradans who responded to the Voter Voices survey expressed a range of opinions on immigration as wide as the variety of immigrants who live here. Some want to see mass deportation and a closed border. Some want to grant legal status to DACA recipients and the undocumented spouses of American citizens. Some want bipartisan immigration reform that strengthens the border while offering those already here a path to citizenship.
Kim John wanted to know, “What steps will they take to stop illegal immigration into the U.S.? Looking for politicians who will NOT vote for measures that direct taxes into efforts to support them.”
Lynn Christensen is concerned about “undocumented immigration and its influence on top-down housing policies, crime rates, taxes/spending, and election integrity.”
And Andrew Good said “Ending illegal immigration. Ending illegal hiring by requiring that employers use E-Verify. Ending sanctuary policies that facilitate further victimization of Coloradans by allowing criminal aliens to remain in our state.”
In Colorado, U.S. Census survey data from 2023 put the total number of foreign-born residents at just under 10% of the state’s nearly 6 million residents, or about 565,000 people. Nearly half were naturalized citizens. But it’s unclear how many foreign-born residents are here illegally. Estimates put the number somewhere around 150,000, depending on the source.
Most of this data precedes the recent arrivals of tens of thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers, primarily from Venezuela. At one point in the past year, Denver leaders estimated the city was seeing more new arrivals per capita than any other non-border community in the country. And while the pace of arrivals has slowed dramatically in 2024, by the start of July, the city had—by its own calculations—provided aid to 42,392 new immigrants, at a cost of more than $72 million.
The presidential race
Immigration has been a flashpoint throughout the presidential race, with the two major party candidates laying out distinctly different visions for how they would use the power of the office.
Former President Donald Trump has promised to oversee “the largest mass deportation” in US history, beginning in Aurora, Colorado, and Springfield, Ohio, where he accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets. To carry that out, the Republican presidential candidate said he would call up the National Guard and use the Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove people from the country.
Trump has also promised to revive policies from his first administration, including denying visas to people from certain countries, ending refugee admissions and building the southern border wall. He would push to end birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to undocumented parents. And he would terminate humanitarian programs that have allowed people to live and work in the United States on a temporary basis.
For her part, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris has focused more on policies that would specifically affect new arrivals at the border and has said less about those already in the country.
She has campaigned vigorously on her support for the bipartisan border deal that stalled out in Congress earlier this year. It would have increased funding for border patrol and detention facilities, raised the standard for granting asylum and sped up the removal of people whose claims are rejected. The package would also have created a quarter of a million new visa slots for immigrants who come for jobs or family.
The Harris campaign has not said whether she still supports proposals she laid out during her 2019 presidential run to grant citizenship to Dreamers and protect millions of other undocumented immigrants from deportation.
The congressional races
Fundamentally, immigration policy for the country is set at the federal level, through laws passed by Congress and orders issued by the president.
However, for nearly 40 years now, Congress has been gridlocked on this issue. The differences were loud and clear during the 9News debate this week between 8th district candidates, Dr. Yadira Caraveo and her Republican opponent, Gabe Evans.
“We must secure the border right now,” Evans said. “We have to create a path for folks who legally want to immigrate to the United States that doesn’t trap them for decades in bureaucracy, and then we have to aggressively target those individuals who are illegally in our communities committing crimes and those are the folks we have to deport.”
“Immigration is one of the issues that more needs to be done by both parties,” Caraveo said. “My responsibility was introducing legislation, which I did that looks at securing the border, making sure that we’re stopping the flow of fentanyl, that we are funding interior cities like Denver and that we are treating people humanely when they do come to this country. That package has not been moved by the Speaker of the House who endorsed my opponent.”
The last reforms, passed in 1986 during the Reagan administration, prohibited the hiring of undocumented workers, increased immigration enforcement resources, and granted legal status to millions of people who were already in the country.
Since then, numerous bipartisan reform efforts have failed. Most recently, a Senate deal earlier this year to strengthen border enforcement and reduce new asylum claims fell apart when it was opposed by House Republicans.
State legislative races
While Colorado’s lawmakers have no power to do anything about the legal status of undocumented people in the state, the laws they pass can have tangible impacts on the lives those residents lead here.
Over the past decade under Democratic control, the state has started allowing people without legal status to apply for driver’s licenses and pay in-state tuition for public colleges and universities. Colorado requires health insurers that offer plans on its exchange to make them available to all people regardless of immigration status.
Starting next year, the state will start covering undocumented pregnant women and their babies under Medicaid. The state has also started the Office of New Americans, to help new arrivals access aid and integrate into their communities.
Colorado also restricts local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement in a number of ways. Policies like that have led to charges that Colorado is a ‘sanctuary state,’ although there is no universally agreed-upon definition for that term.
Local races
The arrival of tens of thousands of new immigrants in the last two years has thrown a spotlight onto cities as the front line for welcoming—or rejecting—them.
At the same time that Denver was cutting some services to cover the cost of sheltering asylum-seekers, other communities in Colorado passed resolutions declaring themselves not to be sanctuary cities. Many cities made it clear they would not offer any formal help to new arrivals.
When it comes to local policies, elected officials also have some power to dictate whether or not the government employees in their offices communicate or cooperate with immigration enforcement.
For the next few weeks, until the election on November 5, we will be sharing with you how those who took the Voter Voices survey came down on the issues. So far, over 7000 people across the state have participated in the survey and you can too through November 4.