Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Guest worker programs and AZ-type attempts to handle illegal immigration

I have been following with interest some of the discussions about undocumented immigrants. There are more than two sides to this issue. I would like to point out that it's difficult for us to find good information on this because of the breadth of the problem. We honestly have no idea how many undocumented immigrants are in the country, but some hospital administrators are starting to document the costs of health care. Schools in Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico and others have been dealing with the costs of education for undocumented immigrants. They have to provide bilingual teachers, etc. When children aren't doing well in school, we can predict all kinds of problems.

However, on the other hand, some of the undocumented people come here thinking they can get a visa to work, or they are being manipulated by unscrupulous people. Whenever there is a policy that isn't enforced well, we will have problems with people taking advantage of the system. An excellent example of this is the slave trade system and agricultural workers. There are lots of stories about people who were lied to when coming to this country and then are abused, beaten, raped, etc. They can't report their injuries if they are undocumented. So, what to do?

Representative Bill Wright and others are debating these problems on Capitol Hill as we speak. Check out this story if you are interested.

http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=833&sid=14404836

There are hosts of other stories on this topic. It would be interesting to see if we can collect a bunch of them to attempt to understand the many sides of the undocumented immigrants.

Best!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

First Family Impact Seminar

 Representative Drexler

From right: Lynn Wardle. Judge Kimberly Hornak, Ray Wahl

Representative Christine Watkins



Lori Fowlke


Lori Fowlke, Gloria Danziger, Ray Wahl, Judge Kimberly Hornak

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Utah's First Family Impact Seminar is History!

For our first Family Impact Seminar (FIS), we discussed the Unified Family Courts (UFC) model. We had representatives from the Juvenile Justice System provide information describing how our Juvenile Justice System in Utah "gets it" when it comes to family courts issues.

I found the discussion quite interesting! The UFC model is an attempt to keep family issues in the same court with the same judge. Utah is considered NOT to have a UFC system because it's not completely family oriented even though it is family driven. It's interesting how the two models are similar and different at the same time.  Speakers Gloria Danziger from the University of Baltimore Law School, Lynn Wardle from the BYU Law School, Lorie Fowlke, former House Representative, Ray Wahl and Judge Kimberly Hornak all spoke and did a fantastic job! The interesting outcome is that many of the speakers and discussants want to continue discussions! I am excited to see what happens as a result.

We didn't have as many legislators as I hoped. However, we did have some key people attend the seminar and lots of interest. I will be creating materials discussing the outcome and sending to all legislators.

It was an exciting, exhausting and exhilarating experience!  I hope you can all come to our next event! I'll post pictures as I can get them uploaded.