Utah's lawmakers should treat immigrants with dignity

Let's call immigration what it is and always has been: a work-force issue; a way of making the economy work. And it's a moral issue as to how we treat the most vulnerable among us whose only crime is to try to care for their loved ones.

Kudos to those legislators who are willing to take the political heat to bring attention to "illegal immigration." Giving different drivers' licenses to illegal immigrants, while well-intended, will result only in further hurting them by making them more vulnerable to indiscriminate employers, business sharks and insensitive government workers.

The debate over issuing drivers' licenses to "illegals" is bringing out candid perceptions from some of our elected leaders. Some see Mexican immigrants only as a lucrative economic-development windfall, rather than struggling human beings caught between two governments willing to exploit them for political and economic gain.

Those who worry about racial profiling should be more concerned about "tagging" people as other societies have done in the past. It is dehumanizing and demeaning to people who risk their lives to help their families. Mexicans are victims of two countries that seem to see them as chattel.

Watching the many Latino people lobbying on the hill last week, and seeing how their concerns were ignored, made me wonder, where are their employers? Why aren't they there making the case to protect their work force? Employers created the problem by using free-market principles — staying competitive by using immigrant labor. It's their workers putting a strain on our community resources. Now they are playing "a little loose" with the law.

The U.S. government needs to come up with an immigration policy that reflects our values and the reality of today's global economy. In the meantime, immigrants become the scapegoats because they are the most vulnerable. The Mexican government seems to do little to help its poor and seems eager for them to leave and send back money, which now comprises the second largest source of its economy.

Immigration has been a way of taking care of labor shortages in the United States. As our nation is moving to an economy that requires higher skills and higher pay, our reliance on immigrant labor for entry-level jobs has greatly increased over the past decade. The reality is that our nation has always benefited from immigration.