If you look in my Photos under Feb 28 2011 Immigration Facts you will find 4 documents, the first being a flow chart to show legal options of immigration, the second is a chart showing the crime rate at a 30 year low yet massive increases in the Hispanic population and undocumented population, the forth document walks you through Representative Chris Herrod's facts that he has quoted about undocumented people and it shows you the real facts. Last is an 11 page document from the Sutherland institute pointing out more research about the same. These are real numbers.  

Today I got an email from a good friend asking me to sign an internet petition about a law that gives illegal immigrants (undocumented immigrants) social security benefits. It was forwarded to me and then I went to snopes and sure enough found out the entire email was a lie. There is no such law or bill but this message has been circulating since 2006 with the name Pres Bush and now they just changed it to Obama.

The press conference today pointed out several lies that our lawmakers have used. Does misquoted facts sound better than lies? Interestingly enough The Hispanic Population has increased significantly since 1978 yet the violent crime rate has gone way down, in fact the crime rate in Utah was at it's lowest in 30 years in 2008.  www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs

The experts today pointed out several things: First, there is no legal line that most of these people can get in once they leave the country unless they are married to a US Citizen or have a family member that is a US Citizen such as a son, daughter, brother, sister, father or mother. Even then the wait can be up to 44 years.

They explained that a lie can make it half way around the world before the truth even gets it's boots off so they gave out a fact sheet that checks Representative Chris Harrod's facts. The fact sheet is 7 pages long showing how most of Rep Herrod's numbers are not only misrepresenting the issues but lying about them.

Herrod 2/18/11 floor debate: Said that 16.6% of those wanted for murder in our prison system were illegal aliens and 22.58% convicted for rate of a child were illegal aliens. Truth: Lower Percentages listed on the fact sheet. 12% / 20% and if you look at all sex offenses the percentage is 9%

Only 4.6% of the inmates in the Utah Prisons are undocumented which correlates with the 4 to 5% of the population in Utah being undocumented. The numbers are also thrown off since Utah houses undocumented inmates from other states and undocumented immigrants are not eligible for sex rehabilitation and therefore cannot be released for good behavior therefore they are serving longer sentences although throwing off the statistics.

Herrod claims many other things that were proven wrong but the real facts to me the email I received and the so-called fact Rep Harrod quotes that are non-existent, wrong or misleading do not help the cause but actually show how uneducated and wrong they truly are.  When you try to fight a problem with lies it will backfire eventually. With the Utah legislature basing its decisions off of facts that Rep Herrod provided we now know they were basing their decisions of misinformation. It would be prudent for the lawmakers to spend the time and get the real facts. AZ is now facing many problems that have come about because of laws they passed based on misleading information and now the business community is realizing this and petitioning the Government to fix it. I have the fact sheets for anyone that would like to read them.