Hispanics relax a bit about session

Hispanic community leaders have been breathing a little easier this weekend. Many of the immigration-related bills they saw as threatening have been defeated, stalled or revised by Utah lawmakers.

Tony Yapias, director of Proyecto Latino de Utah, said there is still a need to be vigilant in case something comes up before the end of the Legislature on Wednesday night — but he's taking a "wait and see" approach.

"People are feeling a lot more comfortable that they'll be OK as long as they obey the law and keep working hard," said Raul Lopez, vice president of Centro Civico Mexicano.

Yapias and Lopez held a town hall-style meeting on Saturday at the civic center to to discuss this year's anti-immigration bills. A previous meeting left people wanting to demonstrate in protest. Yapias encouraged people to write or call the governor's office instead, and a week later he felt like that was a wise move.

"It's been a good week for us. We don't want to aggravate things when they're going in our favor," he said.

Saturday's meeting was planned to reassess the situation and re-evaluate Yapias' strategy. Yapias encouraged the 100-plus attendees to act responsibly and decrease the number of complaints that prompted this year's bills.

"Anti-immigration people don't make a distinction between documented and undocumented and I see a lot of their attacks as ignorant and their facts aren't always legitimate," Yapias said. "But the (Hispanic) community needs to be better about opposing crime, and people need to take more personal responsibility."

Now that access to driver privilege cards has been protected, he said, people need to get them and make sure that every driver in their family is insured.

Yapias said he's heard stories of uninsured illegal immigrants crashing into other vehicles and not being able to pay for the damage. He said incidents like that inspire anti-immigration bills and are preventable. Bills like HB171 that require a driver to pass a test and be insured before obtaining a driver's privilege card are a step in the right direction, he said.

Yapias also encouraged attendees to reach out to their non-Hispanic neighbors and build friendships so that when anti-immigration bills are debated at the Legislature they can call upon an extended network to voice opposition. This idea was taken up by attendee Yara Betancourd, who encouraged others to share their stories.