It is one thing to read that there are an estimated 90,000 illegal immigrants in Utah. It is another thing to see between 20,000 and 40,000 people, many of them Latinos, many of them, presumably, undocumented people or their families, marching on the streets of Salt Lake City.

That's what happened Sunday. That makes the immigration reform debate real. And that should galvanize Utahns and the rest of the American people to demand that Congress quit ducking its responsibility and pass comprehensive immigration reform legislation this year.

Sens. Orrin Hatch and Bob Bennett, Reps. Chris Cannon, Jim Matheson and Rob Bishop, we're talking to you. We're calling you out. The people want it. Get it done.

When compromise in the U.S. Senate melted down last week, there was lots of hand-wringing among the talking heads that immigration reform is now dead in the Congress, perhaps for years.

Poppycock.

It's only dead if the American people let their elected representatives let it die.

There's also been a lot of palaver about how immigration reform has fractured the Republican Party, and that the Democrats are playing politics by watching the Republicans squirm. But failing to act won't help either party.

The odd thing about this debate is that both sides - the people who want tougher border enforcement and the people who want a guest worker program - are right. The country needs to replace its broken immigration system with one that takes rational account of economic reality and human behavior. It must be comprehensive. Enforcement by itself won't work. Neither will amnesty.

What the United States needs is a system that raises legal immigration quotas dramatically, provides tamper-resistant documents for all legal workers, requires employers to verify those documents and gives them an efficient way to do that, and enforces penalties against people who break the law.

It also must include a path for the 12 million people now in the country illegally to come into the light of lawful residence. Without that, these workers will continue to be exploited and wages for all workers will be depressed.

Until Sunday, the scale of illegal immigration in Utah was invisible to many. It isn't anymore.