Behind the cash register, a Peruvian immigrant named Karin says she loves Utah. And even better, this state seems to love her back.

''My aunt told me you can get a [driver] license, you can go to university. That was a big reason I came,'' said Karin, 25, who said she plans to take advantage of a law that allows illegal immigrants to get in-state tuition by studying nursing.

Shuffling through a pile of invoices nearby, Teresa Campos, the store manager, nods knowingly.

''I've lived in California. I've lived in Las Vegas. No place is like this,'' Campos said. Here, ''they don't think just because we don't have papers we aren't human beings.''

Amid the country's caustic immigration debate, Utah may be the closest thing these days to an immigrant paradise.

Utah is the most Republican state in the country. But the state's more than 95,000 undocumented immigrants can legally drive with a ''driving privilege card'' created last year. They can, if they graduated from a Utah high school, go to any public university or community college and pay in-state tuition.

Many of the state's otherwise conservative lawmakers are major players nationally in pushing for a more open immigration policy. In 2003, conservative stalwart Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, sponsored the Dream Act, a bill that would have removed federal penalties for states that want to give illegal immigrants a college tuition break.

But in a possible sign of a harsher stance in this election year, Hatch last week missed a Judiciary Committee hearing on immigration reform, sending in just one proxy vote against a guest-worker program.

Political observers seeking to explain the state's unusual embrace of immigrants point to a variety of factors, many involving the state's dominant faith.

Over the last several decades, the Mormon church has sent thousands of Utahns to Latin America on two-year missions to preach and proselytize, creating strong links between the region and people who went on to become some of the state's top policymakers.

Utah Republican Rep. Chris Cannon served a mission to Guatemala in the 1970s. The state's attorney general, who has adopted two Mexican-American children, spent two years in Peru.

But one of the strongest influences, experts say, is embedded in the central doctrine of the Mormon faith, a force with enormous influence over both politics and society here.

The Book of Mormon teaches that a group of people that traveled to the American continent from Jerusalem in 600 B.C., later called the Lamanites, are the forefathers of the native peoples of Mexico and Central and South America.

Many Mormons see the tens of thousands of Latin American immigrants who have arrived in the seat of the church as guided by the hand of God in order to be converted and become critical players in an unfolding religious tale of biblical proportions.

''Mormons have the Book of Mormon, and the Latin American, aboriginal ancestry is relevant to their views. Those notions, if sometimes misunderstood, are at least widely held,'' said Cannon, a five-term congressman and a Mormon.

''The Mormon church has taken a position that is pretty clear. They are a proselytizing church, and they view the people coming to Utah as a great group of people to convert,'' Cannon said.

The result is an atmosphere in which illegal immigrants say they both have access to key services and feel welcome. The driver cards allow them to get auto insurance, for example.

But the cards are actually a step back for undocumented workers. Before a change in the law last year, immigrants could obtain regular Utah driver licenses, a form of identification accepted by a much broader range of agencies and businesses than the new cards. All government offices, for instance, are prohibited from accepting the cards as official ID.

They are, however, widely accepted by local banks for loans and mortgages. Zions Bank, one of the state's largest, has begun opening immigrant-oriented branches called Su Banco. And two years ago, the Mormon church began a Hispanic Initiative that provides Spanish speakers with English lessons and classes on household budgeting.

Not that there isn't some trouble brewing.

Recently, opponents have fought back in Utah, wielding their own version of church theology. They note that the Book of Mormon emphasizes obeying the law and that prospective converts must swear that they deal honestly with other people before they can enter a Mormon temple. Both are inconsistent with crossing the border illegally, critics say.

''Whether there is love of our fellow man is beside the point. The point is they are breaking the law,'' said state Rep. Glenn Donnelson, who launched an unsuccessful effort during this year's legislative session to rescind both in-state tuition and the driver privilege cards. With politicians now battling in Washington over competing visions for the country's immigration policy, both sides are looking to Utah to see if the state's approach holds any larger policy lessons.

Critics who launched the frontal assault on several of the state's pro-immigrant laws in this year's legislature say the laws have made the state a magnet for illegal immigrants.

Ken Jameson, a University of Utah researcher, said that so far there is little evidence that that's the case. The state has significantly fewer illegal immigrants than some of its neighbors, including Colorado, he said.

Meanwhile, advocates for a more open approach say there is at least tentative evidence that the policy has paid off with better schools, more secure neighborhoods and safer roads.

A legislative audit performed this year showed that 75 percent of the 25,000 people holding driver privilege cards in Utah had insurance, a rate only 6 percent below the average for all drivers.

And while numbers for the in-state tuition program are small - there were only 117 students in 2003-04 - educators say anecdotal evidence suggests it is keeping a higher number of immigrant students in school long enough to get a high school diploma, helping reduce the state's gaping Latino dropout rate.

To educators like Keri Graybill, that ought to be all that matters. Graybill teaches at Salt Lake's Granite High School, and drums into the heads of her students their opportunities to go to college despite their status as undocumented immigrants.

She said the law has made a difference.

''For these kids, it's a motivator. They'll say 'I'm staying in school because of this,' '' said Graybill, who teaches Spanish and English as a second language.

''I have friends who see it the opposite way. For them, 'It's my [tax] money, and I don't want to spend it on that,' '' she said. ''I get their point,'' she said. But ''for me, education is the future.''