Colorado § 8-3.7-101 - Legislative declaration - intent.

§ 8-3.7-101. Legislative declaration - intent.

(1) The general assembly hereby finds and declares that:

(a) Colorado is home to more than half a million immigrants, including refugees, who make up ten percent of the state's population and play a vital role in our state's cultural fabric and shared prosperity;

(b) Over six hundred thousand individuals, who make up eleven percent of Colorado's population, are native-born Americans with at least one immigrant parent;

(c) Immigrants and refugees are an integral part of Colorado's diverse economy and are a vital part of the state's tax base;

(d) Immigrant-led households in the state paid one and one-half billion dollars in state and local taxes and had a combined spending power, after-tax income, of just over fourteen billion dollars in 2018;

(e) More than thirty-five thousand immigrant and refugee entrepreneurs employ over one hundred thousand individuals;

(f) Immigrants and refugees make up a little over thirteen percent of Colorado's science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) workforce, twenty-one percent of the construction workforce, seventeen percent of the manufacturing workforce, and nineteen percent of the administrative and support, waste management, and remediation services workforces; and

(g) Between 2017 and 2019, naturalization rates increased by seventy-seven percent in Colorado and an additional one hundred thirteen thousand eight hundred seventy-three Coloradans are eligible to naturalize.

(2) The general assembly further finds and declares that:

(a) Supporting the integration and inclusion of immigrants and refugees in our communities helps the whole state thrive;

(b) Creating and establishing an office of new Americans will help to organize a structure for state agencies and immigrant communities to partner in order to enhance integration across the state and will provide immigrant communities the means to address any concerns and obstacles they encounter when accessing services; and

(c) The office of new Americans is intended to serve as a centralized location where state programs, initiatives, and policies focused on facilitating economic stability and promoting successful integration for immigrants are housed.

(3) It is the general assembly's intent that the office of new Americans:

(a) Will grow over time so that in the future it could provide grants to local immigrant-focused, community-based organizations, depending on available funds; and

(b) Be funded through gifts, grants, and donations through the 2022-23 state fiscal year and that in the second regular session of the seventy-fourth general assembly an appropriation be included in the annual general appropriation act for the office's state funding and associated FTE, subject to available appropriations; but nothing precludes the general assembly from making an appropriation to the office of new Americans prior to the second regular session of the seventy-fourth general assembly.

Source: L. 2021: Entire article added, (HB 21-1150), ch. 350, p. 2272, § 1, effective September 7.