A Petition to Repeal Utah State Senate Bill 81

A petition to repeal Utah Senate Bill 81.
(SB 81 will be go into effect on July 1, 2009) There are a small number of changes that will be voted on in the State Senate this legislative session.

We, the undersigned residents of the State of Utah in recognition of the following:

1) SB 81 was written in haste without first assessing the financial burden enforcement of the bill on local municipalities and State Agencies.
2) SB 81 will violate the civil rights of many legal citizens of Utah and will cost an untold amount of money in litigation. Therefore this law is fiscally irresponsible.
3) Our current United States Immigration policies are unworkable and create great humanitarian harm to both our citizens and residents documented and undocumented.
4) Immigrants pay taxes, contribute to the economy, start businesses and create jobs for our state.
5) Implementation of SB 81 does little to solve complex immigration issues and creates hardships for all residents of Utah and our businesses and government agencies required to enforce this law.
6) Enforcement of this law was originally delayed until 2009 to allow for our federal government to address this national problem at the federal level.
7) A new Presidential Administration and Congress with mandates and goals to more comprehensively address our nations immigration policies are just taking office.
8) SB 81 sends an inappropriate message to our nation and the world that Utah does not welcome peoples whose race, ethnicity and culture are different from our historical majority. This state has a proud tradition of reaching out to other peoples and cultures different from our own.

We request that more study is done to assess the actual fiscal impact of undocumented immigrants in Utah. We request that SB 81 be repealed or at the very least delayed.

We support more humane and comprehensive immigration reform legislation.