[divegeek]

Looks like he did a good job of sabotaging the bill because you now have to be a US citizen or a permanent resident (Green Card holder)to be eligible for a Utah CFP.......no more non immigrant alien applications.

Where does it say that? I just spent some time looking through the law, and I can't find it. It doesn't appear to be anywhere in the administrative code, either. R722-300 used to say that non-citizens and non-residents followed the same process as citizens and residents, but it has gone away (along with the requirement to notify a peace officer that you're carrying concealed).

The law does say that the Commissioner has the right to make administrative rules governing the CFP application process but does he really have the right to do that WITHOUT publishing the rules? According to 63G-3-301, he does not. All proposed rules have to be published first in the Utah Bulletin, then undergo a 30-day public comment period before it can go into effect. I've looked through all of the Utah Bulletin issues for this year, and no rule regarding CFP eligibility has been proposed.

If the BCI is denying permits to non-residents, it looks to me like they're doing it illegally. I can't find anything in the law or the administrative code that can be used to justify it, and I don't think the Commissioner has the authority to make such policy changes without following the legal rulemaking process.

 

[divegeek]

I don't know if they made a rule change to effect this, or if they just decided to do this by executive fiat.
I hope that we can get this fixed in the legislature.

Well, they didn't make a rule change.

And if access to foreign criminal records is the issue, they also shouldn't issue to resident aliens, or naturalized citizens. I think this is xenophobia, not pragmatism.