As if Mitt did not have enough problems lately, here is a story on Fox News Latino about Hispanic Mormons speaking out against his policy on immigration. I found this especially interesting:
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 undocumented 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.
“We view immigration as a God event,” said Ignacio García, a history professor at Brigham Young University and a Sunday school teacher at his Mormon ward. “The book says no one comes to the Land unless they are brought by God.”
Those stories in the Book of Mormon, Garcia said, give Hispanic Mormons a powerful religious argument to use, especially since most believe they are descendants of the Lamanites, an indigenous group in the Americas described in the Mormon sacred text. According to the Book of Mormon, the Lamanites lived in the present-day American Southwest, traveled south and face years of hardship, and are prophesized to eventually return to the Promised Land.
Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/02/20/latino-mormons-speaking-out-against-romney/#ixzz1mvzlVEv8
Perhaps these are among the reasons the Church has taken a relatively moderate position on immigration?