Good approaches to illegal immigration for Utah

I've seen the effects of our onerous immigration system on some coworkers and friends. Someday I'll detail some of the difficult stories in people's lives caused by our bad policies so you can hear individual accounts. Thankfully, others are starting to raise their voices in favor of some better approaches, and not simply in favor of heavy-handed punishments that most people seem to advocate.

The Utah Foundation is a policy research institute for Utah, and they've published a few items about immigration. One is from the Sutherland Institute: it's a philosophical statement (with links to studies about the demographics of illegal immigrants) that describes why we should be compassionate and humane rather than unwelcoming. But there's more: a research brief that gives some quantitative measurements on the benefits and drawbacks of undocumented immigrants in our state; it refers to two studies from Texas, one of which concludes that "strict immigration reforms led to labor shortages, decreased employment, high costs of implementing reforms with little associated return, and high fiscal costs".

Both are very persuasive arguments to be careful and compassionate in the way we handle illegal immigration.