In a dramatic departure from Utah’s 15-year-old consensus on immigration, state lawmakers voted on Friday to repeal 2011’s migrant worker program and to end access to subsidized tuition and home loans for illegal immigrants.
The bill, which faces an uncertain future in the Senate after a series of razor-thin votes in the House, marked a symbolic step away from the optimistic proposals that made Utah a national model for compromise as the state confronts a new immigration reality.
The illegal immigrant population in Utah doubled from an estimated 90,000 to nearly 180,000 during the six-year period after state leaders recommitted to the principles outlined in the Utah Compact on Immigration in 2019.
Even as legislative leadership continues to uphold the document’s emphasis on economic integration, lawmakers have debated how to respond to the pressures mass immigration places on public schools, services and safety.
Over the past two legislative sessions, House Republicans have shifted the focus away from facilitating assimilation to reforming what they see as incentives that may attract immigrants in the country illegally to Utah communities.
While Utah’s neighboring states have a higher overall population of illegal immigrants, the final 18 months of the Biden administration saw parts of the state receive more immigrants per capita than almost anywhere else.
An Associated Press analysis of U.S. Customs and Border Protection data published in October found during this time Salt Lake County had the third highest rate of immigrant arrivals of any metropolitan area in the country.
The rate of 1,685 immigrant arrivals for every 100,000 residents was mirrored by a statewide rate of 1,015 per capita, making Utah sixth in the nation, outranking traditional hot spots like Arizona, Nevada and California.
Accompanying the record-breaking wave of immigration is a surge in the number of students who need to learn English, a spike in car crashes involving unlicensed drivers and an increase in expenses borne by the Utah taxpayer.
For some conservatives on Capitol Hill, like Utah House Speaker Mike Schultz, these changes require revisiting some of the assumptions that led to the Utah Compact on Immigration becoming state code 15 years ago.
On Monday, Schultz, R-Hooper, told the Deseret News he thought it was “fair to have another conversation” about the state’s approach to immigration, and consider whether current policies attract more immigrants than other states.
“There’s an important balance,” Schultz said. “I think Utahns have always been very open and welcoming, but we also want to make sure that we’re not straining our resources and that we can integrate those that are here.”
Few areas in Utah have felt the lingering effects of open borders more than the southwest corner of Salt Lake County, where House Majority Whip Candice Pierucci, R-Riverton, lives with her husband and two children.
Last session, Pierucci spearheaded policies to make it easier for federal agents to deport illegal immigrants in Utah jails and to support teachers whose classrooms have had a sharp increase in students who are learning English.
This year lawmakers are pushing proposals to further limit resources for illegal immigrants, apply penalties for unlicensed drivers and eliminate the visa program at the core of the Utah Compact, which never received federal approval.
“The state is doing our best to try and manage what has happened over the past four … years, and I think that we’re moving in a direction to try and right some of those policies that might have made us a magnet,” Pierucci said.
But there is only so much the state can do. Immigration reform is a federal problem that Congress has repeatedly refused to solve, Pierucci said, leaving states like Utah to navigate the difficult issue on their own.
Now, 15 years after Utah became a beacon of common sense immigration policy, the Legislature is tasked with finding a new equilibrium while maintaining the Utah Compact’s foundations of human dignity and rule of law.
Lawmakers reexamine immigration policy
Several bills progressing through the Legislature are getting a second life after dying in the Utah Senate last year. One of these, HB136, sponsored by Rep. Matt MacPherson, R-West Valley City, is on track to pass.
The bill would allow law enforcement, after pulling someone over for a traffic violation, to impound an adult’s car and to do a fingerprint scan if they have no driving credential and no one can pick up the vehicle.
Law enforcement agencies report being unable to issue citations to drivers, even repeat offenders, because they can’t be identified. This has become a major obstacle amid rising numbers of accidents involving unlicensed drivers.
As total car crashes have fallen statewide over the past five years, the number of crashes involving unlicensed drivers has grown — last year increasing to 1,106 in West Valley City alone, representing 35% of all crashes.
Unlicensed drivers now account for 45% of the city’s DUI arrests and 40% of hit and runs. The issue is statewide: 2024 saw 262 crashes in Layton, 91 in St. George and eight highway fatalities involving unlicensed drivers.
Another bill aimed at improving the safety of Utah roads, HB118, sponsored by Pierucci, is also headed for a final vote. The bill would require those applying to drive large trucks in Utah to attest to their English language ability.
One more policy from last year that passed the House and awaits Senate consideration is HB141, sponsored by Rep. Stephanie Gricius, R-Eagle Mountain, which would tax foreign money transfers by undocumented immigrants.
The 2% tax has been framed by critics as cruel to immigrants who need to send money home to relatives. But it was pitched to Utah by the America First Policy Institute as a way to deter illegal immigration and drug trafficking networks.
The dosage units of fentanyl seized by Utah law enforcement every year have exploded, soaring from 49,000 in 2020, to 330,000 in 2021, 1.5 million in 2022, 3.4 million in 2023, 4.7 million in 2024 and 7.6 million in 2025.
HB294, sponsored by Rep. Tiara Auxier, R-Morgan, has also been criticized as economically harmful. It would expand the number of businesses required to verify legal status from those with at least 150 employees to include those with more than 100.
Illegal immigration can lead to child identity theft. In 2023, 165 employers paid wages to individuals who appeared to be fraudulently using Social Security numbers which belonged to 222 Utah children under the age of 12.
HB294 passed the House on Tuesday on its way to the Senate. A similar proposal last year, which also included criminal penalties for the use of fraudulent identification for employment purposes, never made it out of House committee.
While these bills have made it farther on their second try, some of the strongest attempts to crack down on illegal immigration this year have been met with hesitation or dismissed by legislative leaders in both chambers.
Attracting the most attention is HB88, sponsored by Rep. Trevor Lee, R-Layton. Initial versions of the bill required taxpayer-funded programs to immediately deny local or federal benefits to those who could not prove lawful presence.
The bill received firm pushback from providers who said it could bankrupt food pantries, prevent the homeless from accessing shelters and exacerbate public health concerns by decreasing vaccination uptake.
It also galvanized lawmakers in both parties who said it violated Utah’s spirit of charity. After advancing from a House committee last week, it was abruptly suspended on Monday by a “voice vote” in the middle of a floor debate.
But on Friday, when forced to stand by an official vote, 39 House Republicans chose to include a narrow version of HB88 in HB386, the bill closing the loop on the Utah Compact’s most ambitious attempt to balance immigration needs.
The bill would now do much more than repeal a defunct program. It would remove exemptions allowing immigrants who are unable to prove legal residency to qualify for in-state university tuition, subsidized home loans and the Utah retirement system.
Lee’s other proposals, HB287, to repeal Utah’s driving privilege card program for illegal immigrants, and HB571, to block access to banks, jobs and housing for illegal immigrants, are being held without a committee hearing.
What does compassion look like?
Despite the momentum behind some of these bills, the Senate signaled it is not ready to reexamine Utah’s immigration consensus. On Tuesday, Senate leadership rejected the narrative coming from House Republican counterparts.
Senate President Stuart Adams, R-Layton, questioned whether Utah had received a disproportionate number of immigrants and said the most important thing is a clear federal policy because the “birth rate is not keeping up.”
“We’ll take each of these bills as they come,” Adams said. “I don’t know if we’re looking at an overall view of it but I think we’re trying to make sure each bill stands on its own and we have good policy as we move forward.”
If there is something attracting immigrants to Utah, it is its No. 1 economy, according to Senate Minority Leader Luz Escamilla, D-Salt Lake City, who was skeptical of any correlation between legislation and illegal immigration.
As one of the architects of the Utah Compact, Escamilla said the law, which tightened employee verification and expanded migrant worker partnerships, was an example of Utah leading the nation as “a laboratory of innovation.”
“When you see some state laws now superseding some of this work, and making it more difficult for people to function, and for children to access education or food or health, it doesn’t necessarily reflect our state,” she said.
Illegal immigrants are already barred from most public programs, so Lee’s bills feel like they are “targeting” a very vulnerable population, said Maurice Hickey, the executive director of Voices for Utah Children.
Lawmakers passed an exception to this rule in 2023, creating a 5-year pilot program providing state-subsidized health care to low income immigrant children, which Voices for Utah Children advocated for at the time.
“We should always start with the human element, everybody should be treated with dignity and respect,” Hickey said. “If someone is a resident in your community, you represent that resident, regardless of their status.”
But other Utahns worry this mindset could gradually lead to policies that undermine quality of life in the state.
One of the reasons why Kevin Dolan, a father of seven, moved to Utah County in September was because he had seen the impact of mass immigration on communities where he had lived in Virginia and North Texas.
He does not see it as “us vs. the immigrants,” rather he believes the Legislature should create a framework that encourages everyone to follow the law and treats the economy as more than a question of labor supply.
“A lot of the reason immigration is discussed … is we don’t have enough bodies to do the jobs,” Dolan said. “When you have kids, you sort of go, ‘Well, I don’t regard people as this interchangeable, fungible economic unit.’”
An overemphasis on migrant workers has come at the expense of other factors that matter to strong communities, according to Kory Cross, a father of three who lives in Lee’s and Adams’ Layton districts.
State lawmakers should seek a balance, Cross said, between ministering to those in need and elevating the ability for Utah children to have the safest environment, best education and a chance at the American Dream.
Over half of Utah’s population growth in 2023 and 2024 was caused by immigration, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Cross worries this has exacerbated Utah’s housing shortage and stretched school resources.
“My personal concerns are that my children will not be prioritized at the school,” Cross said. “When you transform the domestic population rapidly, it disrupts the order in ways that creates needless disagreement.”
Cost of illegal immigration
The debate may come down to whether policymakers concentrate on the costs or contributions of immigrants.
There are an estimated 58,419 English as a Second Language (ESL) students in Utah for the 2025-2026 school year, according to the State Board of Education, costing around $675 million in per-pupil spending.
Over the past few years, schools like Riverton High have seen the number of English language learners multiply by a factor of five, while districts like Alpine, Provo and Jordan have seen an increase of more than 100%.
In 2025, lawmakers appropriated $5 million for Pierucci’s bill that would make up to $500,000 available for schools that had a 75%, or 30-student increase in English learners compared to the previous three-year average.
The Legislature changed the policy in January when it renewed the budget, lowering the threshold to include any increase of 40%, or 10 students — or any school the board finds is overwhelmed by ESL student enrollment.
This surge in schools has tracked with the increase in illegal immigration to Utah since 2022.
The number of illegal immigrants in Utah hovered around 90,000-100,000 for nearly two decades, according to most estimates, until it rose rapidly as the U.S. experienced historic levels of illegal border crossings.
By 2023, it had reached 140,000, according to Pew Research, the Migration Policy Institute and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, a nonprofit organization that advocates for reduced immigration.
Last year, FAIR put the estimate at 180,000. While Pew has not published its estimate for 2025, this number is consistent with Pew’s prior estimates combined with the more than 30,000 asylum cases filed in Utah since 2023.
A 2023 study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that illegal immigrants in Utah contributed $235 million in state taxes, with an aggregate income of $2.8 billion and an effective tax rate of just over 8%.
Different analyses often cannot be directly compared because of different methodologies, but a 2023 report by FAIR estimated illegal immigrants cost the state $690 million a year, around $170 million more than in 2017.
State or federal solutions?
Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, said states have a responsibility to respond to mass immigration because it has a direct impact on taxpayers.
States can mitigate illegal immigration by avoiding policies that reward it, Vaughan said. Utah, she pointed out, is one of 14 states that give subsidized health insurance to children of low income households regardless of status.
“States don’t have a choice in how many people arrive from abroad but they’re the ones that pick up the tab for certain programs to support migrants,” Vaughan said. “States are not helpless against this unfunded mandate.”
But while it is understandable that states would react to constituent concerns about immigration, punitive state-level approaches make the problem even worse, according to National Immigration Forum president Jennie Murray.
As states await federal immigration reform, it is clear they can “absorb” even high levels of immigrants, which Murray said contribute far more to states than they consume, particularly in the arena of housing supply.
Illegal immigrants are around 5% of Utah’s population but make up 12% of the construction workforce, an American Immigration Council report found. They make up an even larger share of specific construction jobs, Murray said.
Some of the bills being considered in Utah would “absolutely have really lasting economic detracting effects,” according to Murray. “The answer is not to try to place band aids within their state system.”
But congressional inaction on immigration, going back decades, has put cities in an impossible situation, according to Riverton City Council member Andy Pierucci, who is married to state Rep. Candice Pierucci.
An increase in 911 calls, court translation costs, emergency room visits and apartment complexes filled by recently arrived immigrants strain the city, and it shouldn’t be local leaders’ job to “fill the gap,” Pierucci said.
Riverton is the only Utah municipality with a task force agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, Utahns must be careful not to “vilify” illegal immigrants, he said; the real problem is the process.
“We have often said let’s secure the border and then let’s tackle immigration reform,” Pierucci said. “Because the reality is, we are a country of immigrants, and immigration, when done right, is a net positive for our community.”
But Utah lawmakers remain pessimistic about solutions coming out of Washington, D.C.
On Thursday, a state House committee approved HB386 and unceremoniously buried one of the centerpieces of the Utah Compact. In a unanimous vote, lawmakers voted to repeal the innovative guest worker program first passed in 2011.
The program would have permitted the state to manage its own immigrant work visas independent of the federal government, allowing Utah to secure needed labor while strictly enforcing employer verification laws.
The necessary federal waiver to make the program operational was never granted. The state tried to strike a unique balance on immigration, lawmakers lamented on Thursday, but the federal government got in the way.