Veto HB386 and Its Harmful Immigration Restrictions

I urge you to veto HB386, which passed the House on Friday with a 39-33 vote after Rep. Trevor Lee inserted provisions from his stalled HB88 into Rep. Lisa Shepherd's original legislation. This bill creates citizenship requirements that bar undocumented immigrants from accessing state retirement funds, housing assistance, in-state tuition, and professional licenses. What began as a straightforward effort to repeal two unenacted 2011 immigration programs became a vehicle for discriminatory policy through a last-minute floor substitution. The financial argument for this bill is fundamentally flawed. Rep. Raymond Ward warned that young Utahns without citizenship would forgo college under these restrictions, costing the state tuition revenue without any clear replacement funding. This is not fiscal responsibility. It is economic self-sabotage that punishes our state while harming vulnerable residents. Rep. Hoang Nguyen's testimony powerfully illustrated the human cost of this legislation. She explained that if this bill had been law when she arrived from Vietnam as a young person, she would not have been able to attend college and her mother would not have been able to buy a house or build their first restaurant. Utah would have lost a productive legislator and business owner because of arbitrary barriers to opportunity. This bill removes pathways to citizenship and economic stability for people who are doing everything possible to build lives here. As House Minority Whip Jennifer Dailey-Provost noted, it eliminates opportunities for students working toward citizenship rather than supporting their integration into our communities. The procedural manipulation that brought this bill to passage, substituting controversial provisions into unrelated legislation after the original bill stalled, undermines the legislative process and public trust. The bipartisan opposition during floor debate reflected serious concerns about both the policy and the tactics used to advance it. I ask that you veto HB386 and send a clear message that Utah will not embrace policies that harm residents and damage our economy in the name of immigration enforcement that Congress must address.