by David Safier
Conflicting Mormon views on immigration continue to cause political ripples. The Mormon Church's acceptance of the principles in the Utah Compact and the backlash against Russell Pearce's anti-immigrant policies have been the clearest recent examples.
Here's another, a Latino Mormon movement against supporting Romney's presidential bid.
[T]wo decades after her conversion while a college student at Mississippi State, the 43-year-old [Antonella Cecilia] Packard finds herself on a new mission: defeating Mitt Romney and any Mormon politician who betrays what she sees as a basic Mormon principle of protecting immigrants.
[snip]
"Yes, we are happy that we have a Mormon running for president," said Packard, a Saratoga Springs, Utah, resident and member of Somos (We are) Republicans. "But a lot of us aren't supporting him because of his stance against immigrants."
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While stressing the Mormon faith's historic connection to converting immigrants, Latino Mormons point directly to immigration stories in the Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' recent statements against policies targeting immigrants. They also view Romney's stance against proposals giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship as hypocritical since Romney's great-grandfather, Miles Park Romney, who had five wives and 30 children, sought refuge in Mexico after passage of an 1882 law that barred polygamy.
[snip]
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not keep ethnic data on its 6 million or so members. But according to a 2011 national survey of Mormons by Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, Latinos make up 7 percent of Mormons in the U.S.
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