Latinos gather to express fears about legislation

Worried that the Utah Legislature is poised to approve a bill they fear would make them an easy target for deportation, a group of undocumented residents talked Saturday about showing up en masse at the Capitol later this week — but were talked out of it.

Best to let HB105 "go to a quiet death," said Rep. David Litvak, D-Salt Lake, at a meeting of Latinos. "My fear is that a big demonstration will spur (legislators) to do the opposite. They'll almost feel like they have to show a certain segment of their constituencies that they're tough."

The bill would mandate some Utah Highway Patrol troopers to essentially act as immigration officers, requiring them to detain undocumented workers they happen to pull over for traffic violations. The bill is opposed by the Utah Attorney General and some law enforcement officers who worry that undocumented immigrants would be too fearful to report crimes or provide eyewitness accounts.

The bill passed the House and is now before the Senate. If it is approved by the Senate, that would be the time to demonstrate, said Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah.

About three dozen Latinos gathered at Horizonte School to express their fears about pending legislation in the waning days of the Legislature, and to listen to Litvak explain the ins and outs of the legislative process.

Unless there is immigration reform at the federal level, any new anti-immigration law passed in Utah is "mean-spirited" and harmful, Litvak said. "Nothing at the state level will solve the 'immigration problem."'

Yapias said the Legislature's two Latino members "are not giving us the leadership, the guidance that they could be. ... They're just Latino in name."

The Latinos who gathered Saturday were also concerned about HB437, which would take away in-state tuition for undocumented college students and also prevent undocumented immigrants from accessing public services that aren't federally mandated. Concern was expressed that this would include driving privilege cards.

But undocumented Latinos are even more frightened, Yapias said, about the possibility of future raids like the one on a Hyrum meat-packing plant in December that led to 145 arrests of undocumented workers. It is the raids, he said, that will get Latinos "into the streets" in protest.

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