I rarely agree with the Sutherland Institute. Paul Mero, the president of the conservative think tank, has penned opinion columns in the Tribune that make me want to simultaneously laugh and cry.

But a Deseret Morning News editorial directed my attention to something from Sutherland that I can agree with: the call for a sane and compassionate immigration policy, particularly within our state. The Sutherland Institute also released an essay, explaining their positions, citing heroes of the right from Milton Friedman to Thomas Sowell to William Buckley, Jr. explaining why a compassionate policy makes sense morally, politically, and economically.

President Reagan, who has “been nearly deified by political and intellectual conservatives alike, signed the 1986 immigration bill,” which granted amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. Money quote from Reagan:

I have thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land…and the price of admission was very simple…any place in the world and any person from these places; any person with the courage, with the desire to tear up their roots, to strive for freedom, to attempt and dare to live an a strange and foreign place, to travel halfway across the world was welcome here…I believe that God in shedding His grace on this country has always in this divine scheme of things kept an eye on our land and guided it as a promised land for these people.”

The “promised land” language always makes me nervous, but in this context, I find Reagan’s words reverberate with me.

Being the Sutherland Institute, the people who brought us Quiverfull “movement”, of course, they couldn’t fail to mention that many Hispanic immigrants have as strong, if not stronger, a reverence for the family as many Utahns (read: Mormons). Sutherland’s point here, of course, is that Hispanic immigrants fit well within Utah’s family culture and could contribute to strengthening it.

I know some liberals might consider it heretical to agree with a far-right wing group like the Sutherland Institute. Then call me a heretic (and this guy, too). When it comes to good public policy, particularly on an issue as emotional as immigration, we need all the allies we can get.