The Red-State City That’s Doing Immigration Right
Some of these young women — part of a corps of thousands of young Mormons on missions around the world, including at Church headquarters — fly American flags, but on a recent weeknight most did not, instead carrying flags of Malaysia, Mexico, the Dominican Republic and South Korea, among others. As these international arrivals converge on Salt Lake, thousands of local Mormons disperse across the world to the Church’s approximately 450 overseas missions, getting a crash course in internationalism from an early age. (Sometimes they have a very intimate look; as one chatty Uber driver explained to me, “They go off and get married.”)
The awareness that its founders were refugees permeates the Church and the broader culture, even if refugees today look different. Beus, the resettlement official, said that in recent years a large number of Latin Americans have arrived in Salt Lake, many of whom have a connection to the place. The group does a lot of family reunification, he explained, and works with many Congolese, Sudanese and Afghan arrivals. The UN estimates there are 65,000 refugees in the state, mainly around Salt Lake. Those numbers don’t quite match those of states like Texas or California, which have received more than 20,000 in just the last few years, but on a per capita basis, Utah is well above them.
That number is stagnating, however, as the Trump administration has put the entire nation’s refugee infrastructure on ice; Since Trump took office, he has restricted the resettlement program almost exclusively to a small number of white South Africans, forcing resettlement organizations to focus on supporting refugees who have already arrived. In keeping with the state’s frontier philosophy, emphasis is placed on self-sufficiency. In the West Valley, the IRC has leased land for one of several farms and community gardens where refugees can grow produce, some of which is sold at farmers’ markets facilitated by the organization.
