Latest from Mormon Land: Would the LDS Church and its members back Trump’s mass deportations?

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Is an LDS vote for Trump a vote for mass deportations?

While exit polls show most Latter-day Saints voted to return Donald Trump to the White House, that doesn’t necessarily mean they support his vow to return millions of immigrants lacking permanent legal status to their countries of origin.

That’s especially true given the global’s faith’s publicly stated immigration-friendly positions.

For starters, 19th-century Mormon pioneers were immigrants and refugees themselves, fleeing what they then viewed as a hostile United States to seek refuge in Mexican territory.

Fast-forward to 2011. That’s when the church said it “supports an approach where undocumented immigrants are allowed to square themselves with the law and continue to work without this necessarily leading to citizenship.” Five years later, it opposed Trump’s call for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S.

Top Latter-day Saint leaders also have twice given their blessing to the Utah Compact, a civic accord that emphasizes humane treatment of immigrants, keeping families together and focusing deportations on serious criminals.

And, in the first major public policy stance taken under church President Russell Nelson’s administration, the faith urged Congress in 2018 to protect from deportation hundreds of thousands of “Dreamers,” whose undocumented parents brought them to the U.S. as children.

It should be noted as well that the church lets undocumented immigrants be baptized, serve missions and obtain temple recommends. Church meetinghouses, meanwhile, have doubled as welcome centers in places like Las Vegas and Mesa, Arizona, helping newcomers to the U.S. — regardless of their legal status.

“If there were a mass deportation,” Latter-day Saint data researcher Stephen Cranney told The Washington Times last week, “a lot of Latter-day Saints in the United States would be gone.”

McKay Coppins, an award-winning Latter-day Saint journalist who covers national politics for The Atlantic, echoed that view.

“Mass deportations could sweep away families that are the backbone of various branches and wards [congregations] throughout the country, and trigger backlash from fellow members,” he said in a postelection “Mormon Land” podcast. “...The church has made very clear it wants a humane policy of immigration enforcement that prioritizes keeping families together.”

Major move in Canada

Our neighbor to the north, Canada, is now its own church area.

The governing First Presidency has announced that the country of 40 million people will now be represented in a single area instead of being carved up among three North American areas.

Starting in August 2025, Canada’s area presidency and area office will be based in Toronto. Here is a quick tale of the tape of the church in Canada:

• Membership: More than 203,000.

• Congregations: Nearly 500.

• Stakes (clusters of congregations): 53.

• Temples: Nine existing, with two more planned.

The church came under scrutiny in Canada two years ago, when “The Fifth Estate,” the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s version of “60 Minutes,” detailed how the Utah-based faith had funneled $1 billion over 15 years to its Brigham Young University campuses in the U.S.

Most of that tax-free money came from the tithes of Canadian members. Although the nation’s laws allowed the practice, it nonetheless deprived its treasury of hundreds of millions of dollars. Relisten to this “Mormon Land” podcast with the producer/director of the documentary.

The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: The dating divide

It’s sometimes called the “dating game.” After all, there are rules, sometimes written but mostly unwritten. There are bad moves and good moves. There are winners and losers. And it can get even dicier for single Latter-day Saints — whether they date outside and even inside the faith.

Listen to the podcast.

RootsTech keynoters announced

• RootsTech 2025, set for March 6-8, will feature keynote addresses by author Ndaba Mandela (grandson of Nelson Mandela), prominent artist Dana Tanamachi, and Olympic and Paralympic gold medalists Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall.

Register here for the family history conference.

From The Tribune

• In a Christmas sermon, senior apostle Dallin Oaks urges members — young and old — not to shun friendships with those outside the faith.

• Developers plan to turn a historic Latter-day Saint chapel into luxury apartments.

• Tribune columnist Gordon Monson explains why it’s OK for Latter-day Saints to date outside the faith.

• BYU’s Jewish quarterback is starring on the “Wheaties” box of kosher foods.

• BYU-Pathway runs into technical issues, preventing some from registering for classes.