Legislature's Immigration Committee to Discuss Draft Legislation Today

Dec 18, 2008 by Faroe Robinson
(KCPW News) The Utah Legislature's Immigration Interim Committee is discussing legislation and taking public comment today on Capitol Hill. Lynn Gillies, Mayor of the small town of Fairfield in Utah County, planned to comment on a measure to align the start dates of the National Real ID program with the Utah state driver's privilege card.

"I don't even think they should have a driver's privilege, because if they can't read the road signs, what good are they on the road? They don't know what the speed limit is, I says, ‘Can you tell what the speed limit is?,' ‘No, I don't speak English,' well, if you can't speak English, what are you doing with a drivers license. They don't have the right to have a car registered to them in the United States, that's against the law, the laws that are already in place, but they are just lettin' it go, lettin' it go, lettin' it go," Gillies said.

A bill that would have done away with the driver's privilege card didn't make it out of the legislature this year, and the Republican who sponsored it lost his re-election bid in a primary vote.

The committee is also discussing a bill that would give companies that use E-Verify, a national database to check an employee's citizenship, priority in state contracts, and a bill that gives local law enforcement a bigger role in monitoring illegal immigration. Gillies says many feel that illegal immigrants fill jobs that Americans won't take, and therefore help the economy, but he disagrees.


"Illegal aliens have no right to be here because they are bleeding the economy dry, they're not taxpayers, they are usually paid under the table, or they have stole someone's identification. I think what we have done is we have taken the jobs that our teenagers can handle, and get a work ethic, rather than standing around until they are 18 years old with their thumb up their nose wondering what am I going to do now?" Gillies said.

Gillies also feels that children born in the U.S. to illegal immigrants should not receive citizenship.
http://www.kcpw.org/article/7156