Utah’s New Immigration Bills: A Blast From the Past -- In These Times

Mar 15

In These Times Magazine

The state laws have been called “the nation’s most liberal,” but they’re not much different from Cold War-era deportation policies.

By David Bacon

Labor supply programs for employers, with deportations and diminished rights for immigrants, have marked U.S. immigration policy for more than 100 years.SHARE THIS ARTICLE | Last week the Utah legislature passed three new laws that have been hailed in the media as a new, more reasonable, approach to immigration policy. Reasonable, that is, compared to Arizona’s S.B. 1070, which would allow police to stop anyone, demand immigration papers and hold her or him for deportation. Arizona’s law, signed by Republican Governor Gary Herbert on Tuesday, March 15, is currently being challenged in court.

Utah’s bills were called “the anti-Arizona” by Frank Sharry, head of America’s Voice, a Washington D.C. immigration lobbying firm. According to Lee Hockstader, on the Washington Post’s editorial staff, the laws are “the nation’s most liberal—and most reality-based—policy on illegal immigration.”

The Utah laws, however, are not new. And they’re certainly not liberal, at least towards immigrants and workers. Labor supply programs for employers, with deportations and diminished rights for immigrants, have marked U.S. immigration policy for more than 100 years.

One bill would establish a state system to allow employers to bring people from the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon as “guest workers.” Under this program, workers would have to remain employed to stay in the country. They would not have the same set of labor and social rights as people living in the communities around them. Another bill would give undocumented workers now living in Utah a similar guest worker status, lasting two years. The National Immigration Law Center (NILC) says the third bill, the Arizona look-alike, “requires police to interrogate individuals and verify their immigration status in a wide array of situations, promoting harmful and costly incentives for law enforcement to racially profile.”

Utah, like most states in the west and Midwest, has been down this road before.

Utah Enacts Anti-Immigrant Bill

Mar 16, 2011
Democracy Now

In Utah, Republican Gov. Gary Herbert has signed into a law a new package of measures similar to last year’s anti-immigrant crackdown in Arizona. Utah’s Republican-controlled legislature approved the laws earlier this month. Immigrant rights activists are expected to challenge provisions that force law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of people stopped for violations.

Two Utah State Workers Lose Jobs for Creating List of Undocumented Immigrants

July 21, 2010

DN-Two employees in the Utah Department of Workforce Services will lose their jobs for their role in creating and distributing a list containing personal information of about 1,300 purported undocumented immigrants. An anonymous group recently sent the list to law enforcement officials, state lawmakers and the media, demanding the immediate deportation of everyone listed. The list included names, addresses, workplaces, phone numbers, birth dates and, in some cases, Social Security numbers and even due dates of women. Only Latino names appeared on the list. One of the state employees has already been fired. The other was served with a notice of intent to terminate. Both employees could face criminal charges.