Churches choose to stay out of questions of status

Armando Solorzano likes driving into Centerville because the sign marking the city boundary notes it was founded in 1847.

"Yes," Solorzano says to himself. "This was created in Mexican territory. This is my place."

A University of Utah ethnics studies professor, Solorzano has deep-seated pain over Brigham Young's declaration — "This is the right place" — as Mormon pioneers arrived in what became the Salt Lake Valley nearly 160 years ago.

"I can't call them illegal immigrants because the term didn't exist then," he said. "But they were certainly trespassing on Mexican territory."

Only when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican-American War in 1848 awarding present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas and parts of Colorado, Nevada and Utah to the United States did Mormon pioneers gain legal status.

Solorzano says undocumented immigration becomes more relevant if taken from a historical perspective, adding it is not a new phenomenon.

"It is an American institution. It's part of the structure of our country. It's a pillar of our country," he said. "It is in the foundation of our own state."

Furthermore, Mormon polygamists fled to Mexico in the late 1800s to escape prosecution. They practiced plural marriage there contrary to Mexican law. Later, during the Mexican revolution, their children returned — undocumented, Solorzano notes — to Utah for work.

Undocumented immigration, he says, is "at the roots of our history, and it goes both ways."

Today, Solorzano sees the LDS Church as a magnet for illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central and South America. The Book of Mormon describes a group of people LDS doctrine professes to be their principal ancestors. Some archaeological evidence suggests the Aztec civilization migrated south from southern Utah, he said.

Latinos do not think of themselves as illegal immigrants, Solorzano says. "It doesn't matter if I go to my sacred land illegally or legally. What matters is my spirituality."

The LDS Church downplays its draw for Mexicans and South and Central Americans who come without documentation.

"My feeling is the state of Utah has been very friendly," said Elder John Pingree, who works with the church's Hispanic Initiative. "It's not necessarily the church."

He cites illegal immigrants' (former) ability to obtain drivers' licenses, health care, education and employment as more salient reasons. Elder Pingree also suggests friends and relatives already in the state have much to do with it.

About 60 percent of Latinos in Utah are Catholic, while 30 percent are LDS converts, according to Solorzano. He recently published a chapter on the history of Latino immigrants in Utah in a book titled "Beyond the Gateway: Immigrants in a Changing America."

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