Rights, Privileges, and State Bill 81

The local news has been making a big deal about Utah's State Bill 81, a new immigration bill. Frankly, I hadn't heard anything about it until I started hearing stories like this, stating that the Salt Lake City police chief has warned legislators that his department will refuse to enforce it. It seemed odd to me that none of these news reports mentioned what the bill actually did. They only quoted the police chief refusing to make his officers into immigration agents. So I looked up the full text of the bill to see what the big deal was. It seems to do a lot of things that seem like common sense to me. For example:

• If someone is booked into jail for "driving under the influence," the county sheriff is expected to make a reasonable effort to check on their citizenship status before letting them go free.
  
• Liquor licenses won't be issued to illegal aliens.

... and so on. It looks like the part that the police department is up at arms about is this:

64 . prohibits a unit of local government from enacting an ordinance or policy that limits
65 or prohibits a law enforcement officer or government employee from
66 communicating or cooperating with federal officials regarding the immigration
67 status of a person within the state;

You can find more details on lines 577 through 592 of the same document. If I'm reading it right, it means that local police departments (or any government office) can't tell their officers that they're not allowed to report illegal immigrants. It doesn't necessarily mean that their officers have to report illegal immigrants--they just can't get in trouble if they do.

The only part I'm unclear on is this:

593 (d) This Subsection (3) allows for a private right of action by a natural or legal person
594 lawfully domiciled in this state to file for a writ of mandamus to compel a noncompliant local
595 or state governmental agency to comply with the reporting laws of this Subsection (3).

So my question for all you lawyer types out there is this: Does this mean that if I notice my local police department has a policy of refusing to cooperate with immigration officials, I can file to have them get rid of that policy? Or does it mean that if I notice an illegal immigrant in my neighborhood, I can file to make the local police investigate them? (I suspect the former.)

I have two more observations to make on the matter. First, the article I linked to earlier mentioned that people are afraid that it opens up a door to racial profiling. I just don't see how this law could possibly be construed to do that. It doesn't say that police officers can book people into jail on suspicion of being illegal immigrants, for example.

Secondly, I think people are getting confused about the difference between rights and privileges. People have a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People have a right to choose what actions they will take each day, as long as their actions do not infringe upon the rights of others. People have a right to not be discriminated against based on their race, religion, and sex. People do not have a right to a job--that's a privilege. It's something that can be given or retracted at will. It is normally not wise for employers to fire somebody without reason, but they have every right to fire somebody who is not doing their job.

How does this apply? Every police officer has a right to decide whether he or she will report an illegal alien to the proper authorities. If their boss (the chief) feels that by deciding to report or not to report illegal aliens, they are not doing their job properly, he can choose to fire them. He has been duly appointed to his position, and is therefore given this privilege. If, however, his employer (the government) decides that by firing those workers, or by establishing any policy contrary to the law, he is not doing his job properly, they can fire him as well. Since they have been duly appointed by the people, this is their privilege. And if their boss (the citizenship) feels that they are not performing their duty correctly, they can fire congress as well. This is a simple principle of self-governance, which falls under the Liberty category, and is therefore not a privilege, but a right of any people.

So the officers individually have the right to resign, or to stop performing their duty to the point that they get fired, if that's what they want. The chief has the right to do the same. But the Police Department as a government entity has neither the right nor the privilege to refuse to enforce a law which has been passed by duly-elected officials. Congress, likewise, has neither the right nor the privilege to refuse to represent their constituency. When the police begins to govern the people, rather than the other way around, it's called a police state, and we don't want that, now do we?