5 Keys to Comprehensive Immigration Reform:

Media accounts of the Attorney General's immigration ideas have thus far been incomplete. Immigration reform must be comprehensive and multi-faceted to be real, successful and sustainable.

1. Secure the Borders

We must continue to insist that the federal government to its job of securing the border. Until that is done, an Arizona style "round 'em up" law will only take state and local police officers away from their job of enforcing state law and keeping us safe, and those rounded up and deported will be right back.

2. Security

Any solution must increase, not decrease the security of U.S. citizens. Making the police force the immigration force overburdens law enforcement while robbing them of the tools needed to protect our citizens. For example, my office has a Criminal Alien "SECURE" Strike Force that works with federal and local officers to aggressively go after the violent felons who are in our state illegally for one purpose: violate Utah laws by dealing drugs, gang-banging, murdering, stealing identities and running fake ID mills. We rely on otherwise law-abiding undocumented aliens to cooperate with police in going after the "worst of the worst" who put us all at risk. In less than a year the strike force has arrested more than sixty of these dangerous criminal aliens.

3. Immigration

Recognizing that the job line is separate from the immigration line is a critical step toward providing a real and sustainable solution. Placing someone at the bottom of the job AND immigration lines, for crossing the border illegally or committing crime while he or she is here, creates an economic incentive to do the right thing.

4. Economics

The root of the illegal immigration problem is economic. People come to this country and remain illegally in order to feed their families. In doing so they work hard and do jobs that are essential to our own economy. Any sustainable solution needs to address the needs of industry. Public policy that ignores the economics is not sustainable. Creating economic incentives for industry and immigrants to do the right and legal thing is a sustainable public policy. Requiring E-verify must be paired with a legal guest worker program. I suggest a pilot program between Utah and a Mexican state to use the current law to make legal, documented temporary immigrant workers available for those jobs that companies can prove cannot be filled with U.S. citizens.

5. International Cooperation

Working cooperatively with Mexico and other nations whose citizens are coming to the U.S. is essential to a sustainable solution. It is in our best interest for these nations to prosper economically and politically so that their citizens will stay home. Actions perceived as anti-Mexican or anti-Latino drive a wedge between nations. We want to cooperate with our neighbors to the South so they will secure their side of the border and provide incentives to their citizens to use the legal process already in place and encourage legal immigration and legal guest worker activity. Anti-Mexican rhetoric ignores the fact that the Mexican government is in a war against the drug cartels that has left over 20,000 dead. These drug cartels exist largely to support America's insatiable drug habit, and U.S. weapons are being used by drug traffickers and other criminals to murder police and government officials. Joint efforts to win that war and help Mexico prosper are essential.