This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2011, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Take four immigration bills riddled with legal and practical problems, wrap them together in an omnibus bill, and what do you get? Voila! An omnibus bill riddled with legal and practical problems.
No matter how Sen. Curtis Bramble tries to dress up his package bill to deal with multiple immigration issues in Utah, it still would run up against a fundamental fact: Immigration law is a federal constitutional prerogative, and the Beehive State cannot rewrite federal law. Only Congress can do that. In that sense, a catch-all bill is no improvement.
Politically, we understand the motivation of the omnibus bill. It would offset the mean-spirited appearance of Rep. Stephen Sandstrom's plan to draft local police officers to arrest illegal aliens with the kinder and gentler look of Rep. Bill Wright's state-based program to register and document foreign guest workers. It also might water down Rep. Carl Wimmer's bill to deny in-state college tuition to illegal aliens who have lived in the state for three years and graduated Utah high schools.
The sticks-and-carrots approach of the omnibus bill is good public-relations spin, but it does not change the fact that Sandstrom's bill is a legal crackdown intended to threaten undocumented aliens with heightened chances of deportation and deter them from coming to Utah illegally. Two consequences would be that illegal aliens would be less likely to cooperate with local police when they are crime victims, and police resources would be diverted from fighting more serious offenses.
Wright's system for guest workers, on the other hand, has different problems. Though humane, well-intentioned and economically sensible, it is dependent on securing waivers from federal law. However, the Legislature's own attorneys say there is no authority in federal law for such waivers.
Then there's Chris Herrod's bill to punish Utah businesses with 15 or more employees that fail to verify employment eligibility through a system such as the federal government's online E-verify system. It would pull the business licenses of offenders. Trouble is, E-verify is plagued by false negatives that place employers in limbo while employees try to sort out their problems with federal agencies. While rolling Herrod's bill into the omnibus, Bramble reportedly would replace the clunky federal database maintained by Social Security and Homeland Security with a new state database. That, however, does not eliminate the legal problem that employment eligibility based on immigration status is a federal, not a state, prerogative.
An omnibus with four flat tires shouldn't leave the station.