In 2008, the Utah State Legislature passed SB81 in an attempt to curb the growth of illegal immigration in the state. Many of us who opposed SB 81 warned that there would be many unintended consequences and that we really wouldn’t discover many of these until it became law – which it did last July 1st.
I received a call from a friend last week who helps Hispanics start businesses in Utah. She told me that several of the folks she’s helped recently were being denied a license to pay sales taxes because they were undocumented and did not have a valid Social Security number. In the past, she told me, no one asked for a Social Security number for someone to start a business. She wondered if I’d look into it.
Here is what my staff uncovered:
A section of the bill SB 81 requires any state agency offering “a state or local public benefit” to verify the “lawful presence in the United States” of anyone applying for those benefits. These benefits are defined by federal law, and include any “professional license, or commercial license provided by an agency of a State or local government.” According to the Utah Tax Commission, this includes a business sales tax license.
In other words, the ability to pay sales taxes to the state has been made a “public benefit” under SB 81. Therefore, any aspiring businessman or woman wishing to have this privilege must have their citizenship or immigration status verified by the Tax Commission.
Now understand this part very carefully. When federal law speaks of a “public benefit” in this regard it’s referring to welfare benefits – that is, it’s referring to people who would place a burden on taxpayers. In this case, however, we’re not talking about people who came to America and Utah wanting to get on our welfare rolls, we’re talking about people who actually want to pay taxes. We’re talking about people who want to start a business, hire employees, and pay taxes.
On its face, we could presume that the authors of SB 81 had no idea that this provision would lead to such an unconstructive outcome. On the other hand, this oversight might actually expose how its authors think about undocumented residents here in Utah.
One of my criticisms of advocates on both sides of the debate is their penchant to objectify undocumented immigrants – some of the pro-SB 81 supporters thinking of them as “criminals” and some in our business community referring to them only as “workers.” The fact is they’re human beings, most of who come here with families.
But if you only saw them as “criminals” or as freeloaders looking to take advantage of our American way of life, then I can understand how this sort of provision in SB 81 would slip by you.
As I’ve said many times in the past, undocumented immigrants live here and they aren’t going to go away. Either we can continue to make their lives miserable or we can help lift them to the surface of society.
This licensing provision deep inside SB 81 only makes it harder to bring everyone to the surface of society. There is no better way to encourage an undocumented immigrant to be unproductive and avoid paying taxes than to explicitly tell them that it’s illegal for them to be productive and pay taxes.
I hope that cooler heads will prevail this next legislative session as we move to amend this part of SB 81.
I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.
