Utah, the state with the highest percentage of GOP voters, is by some measures the most welcoming to illegal immigrants. Latinos accounted for 9% of Utah's 2.2 million residents in 2000, according to census figures. By all estimates, the Latino population has continued to climb.
Utah was among the first in the nation to give illegal immigrants licenses that allowed them to drive, buy insurance and travel without fear of violating the law and to charge them the same tuition at public colleges as legal residents.
But this year, legislators partially repealed the driver's license law. Undocumented immigrants can now get a card that allows them to operate a vehicle, but does not serve as official government identification and cannot be used to board airplanes.
"The people of Utah are not at all happy about what's going on," said Bob Wren a founder of Utahns for Immigration Reform and Enforcement. "You can just hear what Chris Cannon is saying nowadays as opposed to what he was talking about two years ago."
Cannon now budgets an hour in his constituent forums to explain the nuances of his longtime position -- that a combination of securing the borders and a guest-worker program would transform an influx of illegal immigrants into an orderly procession of foreigners eager to work legally in the U.S. He says it's not disingenuous to focus on border protection because he's long argued that controlling the influx of migrants is key to a workable immigration policy.
At a recent forum, Cannon sat on a folding chair in the living room of an Eastern Provo ranch house as nine GOP activists questioned him about illegal immigrants.
"It sounds like you're in favor of giving amnesty to the ones who are here now," said Sharon Memmott, a homemaker.
Cannon said he wasn't in favor of amnesty, but of allowing law-abiding people who are working to continue to contribute to the economy -- a stance that Memmott said she supported. "I've never been some kind of lefty softy on this issue," Cannon said.
Utah's elections law allows any candidate garnering 60% of the delegates' votes at the state party convention to win the nomination without a primary. So Cannon and his challengers -- former U.S. Rep. Merrill Cook and real estate developer John Jacob -- have been wooing the district's 1,000 delegates, party activists who tend to be even more conservative than the district's voters. The candidate who secures the GOP nomination is expected to win the seat in November.
