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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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Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Lewis: Focus on Moderate Migrant Bill

Arizona Republic: Arizona's newest state senator is taking the national stage as an advocate for a moderate approach to immigration reform.

Within hours of defeating Senate President Russell Pearce in last week's District 18 recall election, Jerry Lewis made it clear he is intent on reversing what he has called Arizona's dismal image on civil-rights and immigration issues.

Lewis, a Mesa Republican, will take Pearce's seat after election results are certified, most likely next week.

Joining other advocates of immigration reform, Lewis participated in a national teleconference to mark the Nov. 11, 2010, adoption of a document called the Utah Compact, which advocates a more humane approach to immigration issues.

The compact -- endorsed by numerous political, business and religious leaders in Utah -- says the nation must find ways other than strict enforcement to deal with people who are here illegally but working productively.

It states that immigration is a federal problem requiring federal solutions, says local police should focus on serious crime rather than civil immigration violations, encourages policies that keep families together, recognizes immigrants' contributions to the economy and says immigration policy must be based on the principles of a free society.

The teleconference was sponsored by the National Immigration Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based group that opposes an enforcement-only approach.

Arizona has not seen a statewide endorsement of similar principles, although efforts are under way to do that. Last spring Mesa's Human Relations Advisory Board urged the City Council to officially support the Utah Compact, but the matter never made it onto a council agenda.

During an Oct. 6 campaign debate with Pearce, Lewis said Arizona's focus on strict border enforcement has made the state a paraiah in some national and international quarters. Drawing boos from Pearce supporters, Lewis said Arizona now suffers from an image akin to that of "1964 Alabama."

During last week's teleconference, Lewis said the Utah Compact already has had a role in helping Arizona to change that image.

"The Utah Compact has had a tremendous influence on the state of Arizona and more particularly this recent election," Lewis said. "What it did was give a set of guiding principles that would help people realize that there is hope on the way. We don't need to have knee-jerk reactions to the real issues. We need to focus on principles to guide that discussion, and the Utah Compact did just that."

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff, a Republican, also participated in the teleconference.

A year ago, Shurtleff said, "Utah was headed in a knee-jerk rush toward copying Arizona Senate Bill 1070." Pearce's law would have made it a state crime to be in the United States illegally and required people to produce proper immigration or citizenship documentation when asked to do so by the police.

Key provisions of the law are on hold pending federal court review.

Shurtleff said that in the absence of federal immigration reform, it's understandable states would act on their own. But he credited the compact with guiding Utah toward "some really different immigration reform that is comprehensive, that is pragmatic and workable."

Early this year, Utah enacted a guest-worker law, in addition to one that focused on enforcement, but not as strictly as SB1070.

Former Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard, whose campaign for governor last year may have been doomed by Gov. Jan Brewer's signing of SB1070, said Lewis' election signals a new day in Arizona's immigration debate.

"We've been painted largely because of Russell Pearce and his extremist plans and proposals as an area of racial extremists," Goddard said. "That's not our heritage."

Lewis signaled he intends to be a force for moderation in a Legislature that already this year rejected five of Pearce's immigration bills.

"We definitely need to allow those people that are here, whose only crime is to be in our country without documentation, a pathway to square themselves with the law," Lewis said. "If you can provide an economic solution coupled with a tighter border, I think it will work."

That does not mean, he said, lobbying for repeal of SB 1070.

"We're not sure the key provisions are going to make it to the streets," Lewis said. "Time and the courts will decide that for us."

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