Immigration That Works | Matt for Utah

Why this matters

Utah knows something about leaving home. Our pioneer ancestors came here as refugees, driven out of one state after another for what they believed. Later waves came from Mexico, the Pacific Islands, Europe, Asia, and Africa with little more than a willingness to work. And today Utah sends young people all over the world as missionaries, learning new languages and being welcomed into strangers’ homes.

That history gives Utah a clear view of immigration. People who come here to work, raise families, and follow the law make our state and our country stronger. They build our homes, harvest our food, care for our parents, and start businesses. It’s right that we welcome them the way so many Utahns have been welcomed abroad.

That doesn’t mean anything goes. A country has to control who comes in, and the law has to mean something. The goal is a system that’s secure, legal, and fair, and that’s built on facts instead of fear.

Utah has led before

In 2010, Utah business, faith, and political leaders signed the Utah Compact. It called for enforcing the law, keeping families together, and treating immigrants with respect, and it helped cool a debate that was turning ugly in other states.

The next year, Utah’s Republican legislature went further. It passed a state guest worker law that would have let immigrants already working here stay if they had a job, no criminal record, paid a fine, and registered with the state. It never took effect. It needed permission from Washington, and Washington never gave it. By 2016, legislators were moving to repeal it.

Utah had the right idea. The fix has to come from Congress, and Utah’s delegation should lead it.

The facts

Immigration arguments are full of claims that fall apart when you check them. Here’s what the numbers show.

$235MUtah state and local taxes paid by undocumented immigrants in 2022

8.3%Their Utah tax rate, higher than the top 1% of households

27Confirmed noncitizens found among 2 million+ Utah voter registrations

95%Drop in southwest border arrests from the 2022 peak to 2026

Undocumented immigrants pay taxes. In Utah, they paid about $235 million in state and local taxes in 2022. Nationally they paid nearly $97 billion, including about $26 billion into Social Security, a program they can’t collect from.

Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants (2024), Utah figures.

Source: Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (2024), via KSL NewsRadio. Other federal includes income taxes, unemployment insurance taxes, and excise taxes.

They can’t collect most federal benefits. Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, or health insurance subsidies. The main exception is emergency care: under a 1986 law signed by President Ronald Reagan, hospital emergency rooms must treat anyone in an emergency, citizen or not.

They’re less likely to commit crimes, not more. Texas checks the immigration status of everyone it arrests. Using that data, researchers found that U.S.-born citizens were more than twice as likely to be arrested for violent crimes as undocumented immigrants, and more than four times as likely for property crimes.

Source: Light, He & Robey, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2020), using Texas Department of Public Safety arrest data.

Noncitizen voting is extremely rare in Utah. The lieutenant governor’s office checked more than 2 million Utah voter registrations. It found 27 confirmed noncitizens on the rolls, and only 13 had voted in an election since 2018.

The border is quieter than it’s been in decades. Border Patrol arrests at the southwest border in fiscal 2026 fell to their lowest level since the 1960s. Whatever you think about how we got here, the job now is to keep the border secure while fixing everything else.

Sources: U.S. Customs and Border Protection data as reported by KSL, the Center for Immigration Studies, and DHS. Fiscal 2026 is approximate.

My plan

1. Keep the border secure

A secure border is the foundation. Without it, nothing else is credible.

Fund the people and technology to keep crossings low. That means enough Border Patrol agents, modern surveillance between ports of entry, and better scanners at legal ports of entry to stop drug smuggling.
Decide asylum cases in months, not years. More than 3 million cases are waiting in immigration courts. I’d hire enough immigration judges and asylum officers to decide new cases quickly and fairly. People with real claims get protection sooner. People without them are sent home sooner. Both are better than a decade of limbo.

2. Let the job market decide who we need

Most immigration should be about work, and the number of work visas should follow the economy, not a number Congress set decades ago.

Guest worker visas that rise and fall with demand. When Utah employers can’t find workers, more visas open. When unemployment rises, fewer do. American workers always come first.
Every job pays in. Employers pay prevailing wages and full payroll taxes on every guest worker, the same as for any American. That’s the same principle as the guest worker initiative in my Social Security plan and the construction visa in my housing plan.
Keep the talent we train. Foreign students who earn advanced degrees at Utah’s universities in fields we need should be able to stay and build their careers here, not take what they learned to a competitor.
Verify every hire, once the legal options exist. When employers have a real way to hire legal workers, every employer should check that new hires are authorized to work. The system should be free and fast, so it doesn’t bury small businesses in paperwork.

3. An earned path to citizenship

Some people have been here for years, working and paying taxes. Others will come through a guest worker program and spend years doing the same. If they play by the rules, they should be able to earn citizenship.

Work and pay taxes. A steady work history, and any back taxes paid in full.
No violent or criminal record. Anyone convicted of a violent crime or a serious offense doesn’t qualify and should be deported.
Pass a background check and pay a fine for anyone who came or stayed illegally.
Wait in line. No one who broke the rules gets ahead of people who applied legally.

Dreamers deserve the same chance, sooner. People brought here as children, who grew up here and know no other home, should be able to earn citizenship without paying for a decision their parents made. They pledged allegiance to our flag in grade school, graduated from our high schools, and now work in our hospitals, schools, and businesses. Some have even worn our country’s uniform. In their hearts, they’re every bit as American as you or me. It’s time the law said so.

Citizenship through service. Any Dreamer who wants to serve should be able to enlist, and honorable service should count as earning citizenship. Hundreds of Dreamers enlisted through a Pentagon program that let them sign up, but it was suspended in 2016. Young people willing to risk their lives for this country shouldn’t be turned away at the recruiting office.

This isn’t amnesty. It’s earned, it has conditions, and it ends the shadow economy that undercuts honest employers and American workers alike.

4. Only citizens vote

Only American citizens should vote in American elections, at every level. That’s already the law, and I’ll defend it. Noncitizens, whether they’re here legally or not, have no place on the voter rolls. Utah’s audit shows the safeguards are working, and I’d keep strengthening them. The path to the ballot box runs through citizenship, and that’s the only way it should.

5. Keep families together

Separating parents from their children isn’t a policy any Utahn would accept for their own family. Enforcement should focus first on people who are a danger to their communities, not on the parents of American children who have worked here peacefully for years.

What I won’t do

Open the border. A country that can’t control who enters can’t make any of the rest of this work.
Give anyone a free pass. Every path to citizenship is earned, with work, taxes, a clean record, and a place at the back of the line.
Let noncitizens vote. Not in federal elections, not in state elections, not in local ones.
Deport the workers we depend on. Removing workers with clean records hurts the farms, builders, and families that rely on them, and drives up prices for everyone.
Use fear to win votes. Immigration is a serious issue, and it deserves real numbers.

The bottom line

Utah has always been a place people came to build something. A secure border, a legal system that follows the job market, and an earned path for people who work hard and obey the law isn’t a left or right idea. It’s the Utah way, and it’s time Washington caught up.