Ignoring state law

The 2008 Utah Legislature passed SB-81 and the 2009 Legislature allowed it to go into effect on July 1, 2009. SB-81 provisions forbid cities, counties, school district and other taxpayer funded entities from hiring "undocumented individuals." In addition, the law forbids hiring for public contracts, by their contractors and sub-contractors, those illegally in the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security provides the E-Verify Program to help employers determine who is a legal worker. Those public employers not certified to use E-Verify can be assumed to be ignoring the law. After extracting the names of the public employers from the DHS Utah Oct. 30, 2009 list, out of about 80,000 Utah employers, almost 1,800 were E-Verify certified. It also appears that only 17 cities, 11 school districts and 5 counties are attempting to obey the law while the rest, more than 300, seem to be ignoring state law.

Gaylan Stewart

Spanish Fork