The House passed two bills of Utah interest Tuesday, one to help remove illegal aliens who are arrested and one to help end illegal pirating of computer software.
The House voted 410-2 to approve a bill creating a national pilot program to put Immigration and Naturalization System agents in jails nationwide to identify and immediately remove illegal aliens who have been arrested.Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, amended the bill in committee to ensure that 20 percent of the INS agents assigned to the program are placed in non-border states such as Utah.
"One of the main challenges facing Salt Lake County at this time is inadequate jail space," Cannon said, adding that removing illegal aliens would help. "Salt Lake City police records from 1995 indicate that 80 percent of arrests for felony-level narcotics violations were (of) undocumented aliens."
In the other bill, the House approved by voice vote changes to outlaw distributing computer software without permission - even if the distributor has no financial gain.
Three years ago, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that a man who had given away more than $1 million in software via an electronic bulletin board could not be prosecuted because he had not benefited financially.
Cannon - whose district includes such computer software giants as Novell and WordPerfect - was a co-sponsor of the bill to change that.
"Playing Robin Hood on the Internet - the theft and giveaway of what should be purchased - is a recipe for disaster to our domestic software industry," he said.