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Beverly Hills, California, United States
Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Friday, August 13, 2010

A Better Way

Utah may offer a better model than Arizona for dealing with illegal immigrants.

Economist reported: AS ARIZONA’S lawyers prepare to enter more federal courtrooms to defend SB1070, the state’s new law against illegal immigrants and the harshest of its kind, the other 49 states are watching for clues. But SB1070, partially blocked by a federal judge, looks decreasingly likely to become a model. That may come instead from a neighbouring state. “I want to have a Utah solution; we are not Arizona,” says Gary Herbert, Utah’s governor. And he thinks Utah is close to finding one. Utah might seem very similar to Arizona. Historically, both once belonged to Mexico, then to the cowboy West. Demographically, both are very white, with significant Latino populations. Politically, both are conservative—a recent Gallup poll found Utah to be the most Republican state in the country. Both have nativists who dislike migrants and occasionally forget to distinguish between illegal and merely brown. And both have Republican governors who stepped into office because their predecessors got better jobs from Barack Obama, and who both now have to win re-election on their own terms. In this more civil conversation, an idea by Mr Shurtleff, the attorney-general, has been gaining favour (although he, too, is getting bags of hate mail for it). Mr Shurtleff proposes an arrangement between Utah and individual Mexican states such as Nuevo Leon, in the north-east. Employers in Utah could request workers and the Mexican authorities would screen applicants. Utah would issue these Mexicans a guest-worker card similar to the driving permits it already gives illegal immigrants. It would separate “the work line from the immigration line,” says Mr Shurtleff.

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