Rep. Sandstrom: Immigration bill will be lawsuit-proof
StoryDiscussionJoe Pyrah - Daily Herald | Posted: Sunday, August 8, 2010 12:03 am

A few weeks ago, Steve Sandstrom thought he had escaped on a 20th anniversary cruise with his wife.

Alas, he couldn't dodge the hot-button issue he has chosen as his own: immigration.

"This whole immigration thing has taken over my entire life," the Orem lawmaker said.

While he was on the ship, someone released a fake version of a bill he is working on, prompting calls from lawmakers, media and friends. The actual bill, which should be released as a draft this week, mirrors much of the recently passed Arizona law.

It's a sensitive enough issue that Gov. Gary Herbert already has met with Sandstrom about it and has him on his office schedule again this week, though the legislative session isn't until January.

"I'm a pretty popular guy with the governor," Sandstrom said. "These meetings are really for me to sit down with the governor, keeping him updated with where my bill is going."

Herbert spokeswoman Angie Welling said the governor respects the legislative process.

"His primary interest on this issue is to make sure that all viewpoints are considered as Utah moves toward immigration reform," she said.

Where it's going has changed because of the federal court ruling against several aspects of the Arizona law. Sandstrom said he's working with several D.C. attorneys to craft the law to make it "absolutely impossible to be litigated against."

After Sandstrom made it public that some of the tougher measures of the Arizona law would be left out of his bill, he started getting calls accusing him of going soft.

"Everyone thinks that I'm going to have a watered down bill that does nothing," he said. "It's not going to be as onerous as the Arizona bill. ... But it's going to be hard-hitting."

He's cut out the requirement to carry papers showing citizenship or legal status. Illegal immigrants wouldn't be able to post bail, though the bill also wouldn't permit warrantless arrests.

One of the Utah-influenced modifications stems directly from the recent issue of a list given to media purporting to contain the names of 1,300 people in the country illegally. Two people from the Department of Workforce Services are being investigated in the incident.

A portion of the bill would require state employees to notify law enforcement agencies in the event they notice suspicious activity.

"It wouldn't legalize what the list people did. That was illegal absolutely," Sandstrom said. "It would have given those people who were frustrated a mechanism to report that [illegal immigrants] were fraudulently obtaining ... state services."

Besides the lawyers, Sandstrom said he's kept mostly his own advice, deferring only to the attorneys and Ron Mortensen, co-founder of the Utah Coalition on Illegal Immigration. Mortensen has lobbied lawmakers for years for tougher immigration laws, focusing mostly on identity theft.

Mortensen, who's out of the country, wrote in an e-mail that he's been helping Sandstrom "make sure that the bill is as tough and hard hitting as possible in order to meet the expectations of the Utah citizens who want to see a strong immigration bill with teeth passed in 2011." That includes streamlining the bill to identify things in Arizona's bill that are already being done in Utah and helping to avoid things that could result in legal challenges to the bill.

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