Immigration bills putting Utah Latino community on edge

SALT LAKE CITY — Illegal immigration continues to be a hot topic in Utah on several fronts.

Various bills are slowly but surely winding their way through the 2011 Legislature and, according to one activist, are putting the Latino community on edge. Also, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, trotted out his federal proposal again Monday.

Meantime, a Latino activist delivered a letter to Salt Lake City's Mexican Consulate urging Mexico's president to suspend the visas of Mormon missionaries until the LDS Church takes a stronger position on immigration.

From the outset of the 2011 Legislature, lawmakers have said they will address the illegal immigration issue one way or another, although on Monday Senate Majority Leader Scott Jenkins did allow for the possibility of nothing happening.

"I'm not confident at all," the Plain City Republican said.

But his colleague Sen. Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, had a different take.

"I think there's no question we're going to have something," he said. "I think it's remote that we won't."

While the Senate favors taking the best of several bills in what Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, calls a "Utah solution," it is carefully watching individual pieces of legislation work through the process.

That has Mike Picardi, of United for Social Justice, so angry he couldn't contain himself in a committee meeting Monday.

"These bills are all targeted to our Latino brothers and sisters. It's time we called a spade a spade," he said. "They're trying to make this a totally white society with totally white workers."

His outburst came as the House Business and Labor Committee approved a bill that would punish businesses for knowingly employing undocumented immigrants.

In its original form HB253, sponsored by Rep. Chris Herrod, R-Provo, would suspend the business licenses of companies with five employees or more that hire illegal immigrants. But the committee amended it to companies with 15 or more workers.

Herrod said he expects that point to be debated on the House floor.

Herrod also substituted the word "may" for "shall" throughout the bill giving the Utah Attorney General's Office and county attorneys latitude to enforce the law. In so doing, he wiped out a nearly $1 million annual enforcement cost.