Latina Legislator has Solution to Immigration Impass

Leave it to a Latina to show us the way.

You’ll find few people these days who think that our immigration policies are good as they are. Almost everyone thinks they need fixing. The argument has been about what’s wrong with them and how to make them better. The solutions, so far, have been negative and reactionary, ranging from putting troops on the border to arresting people who look undocumented.

In Utah, though, there’s another, better, idea that addresses the same issues but from a different point of view. Utah state Sen. Luz Robles is putting together a bill, called the Utah Pilot Accountability Permit Program, that gives undocumented people a workers permit card if they pass a criminal background check, pay taxes and enroll in English classes.

It puts a new spin on the states’ rights argument of the immigration debate. Yes, the federal government has not addressed immigration, and yes that leaves the states with no option but to find a solution themselves: so here’s a solution, give the approximately 100,000 undocumented workers in Utah a state green card. What a wonderfully novel idea!

“Immigration is a federal issue and we all recognize that, but the federal government has failed to take care of this issue and it has been an issue for at least decades,” said Robles in a Fox News Latino report. “The state have been working on reactionary and proactive solution and we believe this is a Utah solution.”

The alternative, in Utah, is a bill introduced by state Rep. Steven Sandstrom that, according to the Fox report “involve(s) law enforcement checking the immigration status of people who are stopped by police. Police would be obligated to turn the suspects into federal immigration officials if believed to be here illegally.”