This article in the Deseret News/Associated Press states Utah's immigrant population has grown significantly in the past five years, up 21.6 per cent. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates Utah's undocumented population between 75,000 and 100,000.
Because of the frustration and the apparent deadlock in Washington DC, states like Colorado have moved to fill the void with their own form of damage control. Rumor has it the extremists in the Utah Legislature are preparing bills to control, punish and persecute the undocumented among us. We and they love to send their sons and ours to Spanish speaking countries seeking converts to the predominant religion of this state and yet we do not want them to settle among us it seems.
A quick tour through our community or any with open eyes discloses how dependent we have become on this work force and vital minority in our society. Let me ask the questions: Who is it that mows the grass and tends our lawns? Who builds our houses? Who cooks our french fries? Who cleans the floors of the hospitals, empties the bed-pans, wipes our back sides and changes the linen when we cannot do it ourselves?
Senator Hatch and others suggest we must return them to their home countries. Has anyone tried a bus, train or airplane
recently?
Let's end this hold over from our American tradition of exploitation and slavery. Emancipate the undocumented. Allow them work permits and a path toward citizenship. Let's pay them reasonable wages, allow them health benefits and retirement. They will become even more valuable to our society and economy.
I hear the shouts and clamor for upholding the law. Does that mean if the minutemen and their fellow travelers lived in the days of the real minutemen of the colonial era, would they be shouting to uphold King George and British rule over the colonies?
From a Catholic web site I found something touching upon immigration. After the infant Jesus was no more than a few days old, he, his mother Mary and her husband Joseph had to flee to Egypt. They were immigrants and King Herod's version of Homeland Security was searching for them. Jesus proved to be very uncomfortable for the ruling party later in life, a very polarizing influence in his society.
In the final analysis his message is still the same today for all of us. "Blessed are the poor and the meek and hungry..." Let us bless and not curse them, realize we are all beggars and we depend on him for all we have.
