From Deseret News archives:
Panel hears human side of immigration
"It was devastating to our community, it took over 100 of our families," Sandoval said, speaking Thursday to members of the Immigration Interim Committee.
He discussed the arrest of 145 workers at the Hyrum Swift & Co. plant as part of a multi-state raid that netted more than 1,200 arrests at sites in six states.
"One child was saying where is my mom and dad," Sandoval said. "That is the reality we have to face."
The meeting was the second of the committee tasked with evaluating SB81, a measure aimed at preventing undocumented immigrants from getting jobs or public benefits, which is set to take effect in July 2009.
The first meeting focused on law enforcement. On Thursday, the panel heard about the economic and human sides of the issue. People on all sides expressed frustration at what was repeatedly portrayed as a broken federal immigration system.
While E-Verify catches mismatched names and Social Security numbers, it doesn't catch those who steal entire identities, he said. The employees arrested at Swift had real government-issued IDs they had obtained using stolen identities.
"Employers are in a bind," Hamilton said. "If they are presented a government issued ID card, it is a discriminatory act to refuse to accept that."
To that end, Hamilton suggested federal legislation to allow the Social Security Administration and Homeland Security to work together to catch identity theft. Short of that, he suggested, the most effective step Utah could take to prevent identity theft would be to enact "rigorous standards" on issuing ID cards.
A requirement that companies that contract with Utah use E-Verify is one of the provisions of SB81. And lawmakers had questions that were left unanswered about the potential economic impact and the accuracy of E-Verify.
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