Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Marc Giauque ReportingJose Suarez runs a small store on Park City's Bonanza Street that caters to many of the workers there.
"This is a good town for the people for work you have higher pay, more than Salt Lake, more than everywhere."
In fact, advocate Shelly Weiss believes Park City is far ahead of others.
"The police department has an outreach program that's nationally recognized by Georgetown University as being the best practices, the schools, the churches."
And in a city known for its affluence, Mayor Dana Williams says many full-time residents simply are not.
"Park City is a small service town and so we have a community were about 40 percent of our community does not have health insurance."
It's why the city helps fund the People's Health Center, where advocates like Mike Andrews claim illegal immigration is nothing new. He says his father initially came here illegaly.
"One day, a ship arrived in Philadelphia and he got off the ship and never went back."
The Mayor insists it's not just about legal or illegal, it's also about people and economics.
"A service resort town takes a huge workforce in order to make it function. And unlike most ski areas, we still have a large part of that population that still lives in our city."
He says legislation making illegal immigrants felons, might also require local agencies that have been working to reach out, to suddenly crack down.
"That would tear Park City apart."
He and others hope the Senate rejects the bill.
"Since we've had such a big track record of trying to actually figure out ways to assimilate all of the communities and ethnicities that are here, it's completely contrary to what the city's philosophy is."
A philosophy he says may have started decades ago.
"When you had a small mining town that was just changing and everyone coming here had ponytails and birkenstocks and the old school in town didn't want that and you couldn't find housing and you couldn't find work."
