Immigration law

WASHINGTON — Leading conservatives are engaged in a bitter public fight over the costs of overhauling the nation’s immigration system, exposing a rift within the Republican Party days before the Senate is set to begin debating a comprehensive reform proposal.

SALT LAKE CITY -- U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, a critic of past immigration bills, says he now thinks it's time to fix the nation's broken immigration system.

WASHINGTON — A Senate plan to rewrite U.S. immigration law has stoked a years-old debate over allowing undocumented residents a chance to become citizens, a measure viewed by opponents as rewarding lawbreakers with “amnesty” and undercutting American workers.

OGDEN — Top of Utah chamber leaders are at odds with Utah’s two U.S. senators over the pace at which Congress is developing a comprehensive immigration plan for the country.

“We are telling them we need to get the dialogue going,” Davis Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jim Smith told the Standard Examiner on Wednesday.

Smith was one of eight Utah chamber leaders who gathered Tuesday at a news conference in Salt Lake City to urge Utah’s congressional leaders to solve the nation’s immigration problems.

SALT LAKE CITY — State business leaders say Utah and the country need a comprehensive immigration plan, and they’ve called out Utah’s congressional delegation for saying the process is moving too fast in Washington, D.C.

The presidents of eight Utah chamber of commerce groups held a news conference Tuesday in Salt Lake City urging Congress to act quickly on the issue and include plans to expand access to visas and lure highly skilled workers.

The push from state’s business community comes as a bipartisan group of U.S. senators is working to finish a sweeping immigration overhaul bill that it hopes to unveil later this week.

PHOENIX -- On the political map of the Southwest, Arizona stands out.

Most of its neighbors - California, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada - are independent-minded states that once leaned Republican but are trending Democratic, partly because of increasing numbers of Hispanic voters alienated from the GOP by its tough stance on illegal immigration.

But not Arizona.

SALT LAKE CITY — Critics of Utah’s immigration enforcement law say last summer’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a similar law in Arizona shows that Utah’s measure is unconstitutional.