Reader comments
Aspects of immigration law under fire

I think the local ACLU rep is blowing this out of proportion. Lately they've seemed very anxious to extend their social activism to include illegal aliens, who have no right to be or work here.

My family has dealt with SSA discrepancies once after we adopted a child. This was caught when we filed our taxes and they pointed out that the name we submitted didn't match the name they had on file for the social security number. It was a relatively quick process to visit the local SSA office with the legal documents and get the problem fixed. I think we were there for less than 30 minutes, including the time it took to wait for our number to be called.

I would think that most of the failures from this system really would be related to an unauthorized person attempting to get a job they have no right to. A citizen could easily fix a digit transposition or even a name challenge, without losing a job. I would much rather have a system with a < 1% failure rate than no system at all with a 100% failure rate.

DOES ANYONE KNOW IF ORRIN HATCH SUPPORTS THIS BILL

This bill passed BEFORE the election, but not starting for 18 months after the legislative session ended was clearly only an election ploy because it was clear voters want immigration reform!

The legislature will reverse this immigration reform bill and STUDY immigration reform for the next legislative election year 2010.

I think that the ACLU is using fear mongering by saying that American citizens are going to have a hard time getting verified for a job by this system. No bonafide American citizen will need to worry about this system. The illegal population will and should have a harder time getting jobs because of this system.

An easier way to solve the problem of illegals getting jobs would be to criminalize the hiring of illegals. Employers who knowingly hire illegals should be held criminally responsible. Those who flout the law and hire illegals would be punished. Soon the market for illegal immigrants would be gone, and illegals would have no reason to come to the US illegally.

As for the ACLU they are an illegals best friend and an enemy to the american workers. These E-verify and systems like it are supposed to catch mis-matching information. And if it is an american citizens that gets caught with a problem then it means someone else is causing the problem, not the SSA or government data. The only way an illegal alien can get a job is to steal someone else's identity and this is what is causing the problem, not the data. The ACLU is out of line and a persons identity is being abused and this is one means of finding out it has been stolen. When an identity has been stolen it can take years for citizens to get it straightend out and the amount of time a verify systems takes is minimal compared to the damage done by illegals to american citizens. It is illegal to employ an illegal alien and there must be means of identifing stolen information. Personally I think we need stricter laws and more penalties for employers who knowingly falsify and aid illegals to steal identies. Why doens't the ACLU act as an agent to help people of ID theft?

Shame on Utah for engaging itsself in such policies. Just leave the poor people alone. All they want to do is to work and make a living. Y'all have forgotten that at one point your own ancestors were illegal in this country. They migrated with a burning desire to enjoy freedom and to make a better life. So leave these illegal immigrants alone. They're not stealing your children and they're not knocking on your doors to beg for food. In fact they play a major role in making your products and services more accesible and affordable. So leave them alone.

If the legislators had the intestinal fortitude to pass this bill with an effective date of last July 1, BEFORE THE ELECTION, we wouldn't have to be discussing it now. Now they can postpone it during the upcoming session for "further study" or amend it into ineffectivness, and once again will have actually done nothing at all. Cowards.

Shame on the US government for not enforcing our immigration laws. So if it is up to the individual states to do it, then they will do it. For every delay in enforcement the number of Illegals increase as the past 7 amnesties have shown. Some studies indicate as many as 30 million here now.

All Utahns should watch this bill closely and remember those who vote against the enforcement of this bill. We are supposed to be a nation of laws. Illegal aliens are illegal aliens. They broke our laws over and over and brought us their crime.

I don't see the need to train each and every officer in the field on immigration policy. Just train the people in the jail. If someone gets arrested and brought into jail, then performing an immigration check on them seems like a reasonable thing to do. If you keep your nose clean and avoid jail, you can avoid the check. Pretty simple. Don't do the crime if you don't want to be shipped home.

And if any officials decide to postpone SB81, then we need to let those people know they won't be in their position for long. I, for one, checked to see who voted for SB81.

Waah! Waah! Waah! Cry me a river....
How about the "poor" illegal immigrants do it the way I did it to become an American citizen, the LEGAL way? Why should a certain group of people have special privileges when all the others have to play the official game.
Do we really want Utah to become like California, bankrupt because it has embraced all illegals, coddled them and extended to them all kinds of special services and freebees?
Will rational and brave voices raise against all the lunacy? Utah legislators, do you know why Cannon is not in congress any more and Jason Chaffetz is? Don't be cowards, ignore the nuts at the ACLU and do what is right, enforce the laws. Our country will be better off for it. Time to restore law and order and not give in to special interests. That is why we elected you, you are on OUR errand!

Get these people out of here! They contribute nothing and take everything!!

If the State were able to rid the population of all the illegal persons that are currently residing here, you would see a dramatic drop in the crime rate.

These people bring with them their culture of gang membership and criminal behavior. If you eliminate the ability for them to earn money, they will move out of the state, and take their crime with them.

...they are a'changin'.
With unemployment, foreclosures, ID theft, and uninsured on the rise NOW is the time to enact this legislation.
Our priorities must shift to our own with the increasingly tight social service budgets.
Every illegal alien who is working is taking an employment opportunity away from our most vulnerable people, youth...minorities...poor...less-educated.
These labor-intensive, entry level jobs are the very ones we need right now. Don't you get it, people? Bush has sold us a bill of goods with this "Jobs Americans won't do" nonsense.
And the politicians who isolate the problem with just the criminals among them are selling their souls and our economy in exchange for biz and special interest groups.

I really don't see the issue. Employers are currently required to use the I9 Form to verify identity when hiring. Two forms of ID are required to complete the form, all of which are government issued and required to be originals. If the applicant does not have a passport, an original birth certificate, SSA card or DHS card are required.

Currently, the form is not filed but kept for inspection (such as an ICE raid). EVerify simply provides an avenue for the employer to immediately confirm the identity and work eligibility status. In today's technology, this is an appropriate step and is really no different that running a credit check.

I applaud our legislature for dealing with this problem. The ACLU's chicken little attitude is misguided. Those in our country illegally do not have 'civil rights' protected by law. As noted above, fixing the discepancies with SSA is fairly easy.

With the prliferation of high quality forgeries, such a verification is necessary to protect employers and the public. I would encourage other jurisdictions to follow the example of Weber and Washington and get their people trained. Turning a blind eye is unacceptable.

Keep on using E-Verify as long as possible. It may not be perfect, but it is close enough and has provisions to fix errors.

How come only TWO counties are signed up for their cops to enforce immigration laws?

We welcome LEGAL immigrants, but ever since SLC Police Chief Ruben Ortega's days, it has been pointed out that about half of our crime is connected to ILLEGAL aliens. If you get rid of the criminals, you don't have them commiting crimes.

This is a good law, now USE IT!

The E-Verify provision sounds like a great measure. Perhaps it will help clamp down on identity theft and those who have no legal right to be in our country.

To the ACLU, I say, "It's about enforcing existing laws." Certainly, the ACLU would have no problem with upholding our country's laws. Would they?

Perhaps only two counties are signed up for their copes to enforce immigration laws because their cops would rather enforce laws like rape, child abuse, homicide, robbery, etc. It is essential to encourage people to report these crimes and help with identifying suspects, but that will not happen if witnesses are afraid that cops are going to have them deported if they come forward.

sb81 is a bad bill. Brad Dee is quoted in the article saying we're not out to get the immigrants, just the criminal element within. What a joke of a cop out! This bill is clearly an attempt to pester the immigrant population in general, i.e. racist, and when guys like Brad Dee, an elected official, try to escape that way, I'm ashamed of my fellow Utahns in his district.

sb81 is a bad bill. We need to help our poor neighbors from south of the border, and we can. And we'd better help rather than try to further criminalize them (immigration law does not really have any criminal penalty), rather than build useless fences, rather than try to isolate our pure white selves from them. The Utah legislature, and voters, would do much better to pass bills encouraging education, job training, and assimilation, not excusion.