For The Tribune 's editorial board and Salt Lake City's police chief to call Senate Bill 81 inhumane and uncompassionate demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the world in which we live and just how different perceptions of morality and humanity have become.

I am sure I am considered one of those "ideologues" on Capitol Hill -- notwithstanding my wife being a legal immigrant I married in the Ukraine and with whom I experienced the immigration process firsthand, my business partner being from Ethiopia, or in passing the first human trafficking legislation in Utah, as well as other legislation to help legal refugees.

What is compassionate depends largely from whose perspective one looks. Compassion is much different from the perspectives of a potential immigrant living in a refugee camp, legal immigrants trying to help their families come here legally, a taxpayer or parent wanting a background check to mean something, or unemployed U.S. citizens trying to feed their families.

(Editor's note: Among other things, SB81 gives state and local law enforcement departments the right to choose whether to cross-deputize their officers as federal immigration officers. Also, starting July 1, agencies providing certain government-funded health benefits must verify their patients are U.S. citizens or legal permanent resident aliens.)

The immigration debate is not some academic exercise for many of us. I have seen parents in tears when denied visas. They simply wanted a better life for their children. To witness this will change you.

I have seen the squalor in which much of the world lives and have friends who have lost relatives while waiting to come to this country. I understand that the prime reason they find themselves caught in the horrors of human trafficking is the enticement of illegal employment.

The problem is that Salt Lake Police Chief Chris Burbank and many others see illegal immigration as a victimless crime -- which it is not. An illegal alien commits a multitude of felonies by working, but more importantly steals from others one of the greatest blessings: living in this great country.

Am I an ideologue for simply believing it is wrong to discriminate against someone following the law in favor of those breaking the law? Should everyone have an equal opportunity to come here -- not just those willing to break the law? Is it right to punish children simply because their parents chose to obey the law while they wait for legal visas? Who speaks for these forgotten children?

Those crying the loudest naively support institutional racism since current immigration trends are radically different than in the past. The United States effectively discriminates against Russian Jews, Ukrainians, Africans, Asians, Polynesians and many others because of our lack of resolve to enforce existing immigration law. Since the U.S. can absorb only so many immigrants and keep the melting pot, spots are limited.

According to the Pew Research Center, seven percent of the world's population is getting 81 percent of the benefit of illegal immigration. This is the very definition of institutional racism. The fact is that 4.8 billion people have lower standards of living than the country from which the majority of illegal aliens comes.

Others argue that it is not realistic to expect illegal aliens to return home, but the U.S. has had six amnesties since 1986 and the problem has only become worse. Realistically, why would one expect a different result? More importantly, a stable, free society is based on a social contract that understands that one obeys laws that one might not like because others follow laws that they might not like.

When police chiefs rather than legislatures decide laws, civil society breaks down.

The immigration debate reveals how radically different the view of morality has become. As we head down the road of socialism, conservatives still believe that true compassion should never forcibly come at someone else's expense. This is true whether it be money borrowed from our children and grandchildren or taking away the opportunities of potential immigrants following current immigration laws. According to the Heritage Foundation, the amnesty effectively called for by Chief Burbank and the attorney general would cost $2.3 trillion, the greatest bailout in history.

Most Utahans are tired of being called racist, uncompassionate, or unchristian for simply wanting immigration law enforced and believing that this nation is for all people of the world. SB81 is a good law that deserves respect -- not enforcing SB81 and current immigration law is what is truly inhumane and immoral.

Rep. Chris Herrod , R-Provo, represents District 62 in the Utah House of Representatives.