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Media Relations

Immigrants turn Utah into mini-melting pot

USA Today
Sept. 15

By Haya El Nasser

Immigration is changing the complexion of communities across the USA. As it sweeps through Utah, traditionally one of the least diverse and most conservative states in the nation, its impact is particularly dramatic. About 98% white until 1970, Utah is becoming a mini-melting pot. "This is a missionizing church," says Jan Shipps, a scholar of Mormonism at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. At age 18 or 19, Mormons "receive a call to go on a mission and spend two years at their own expense making converts." They learn a foreign language and go abroad. "They experience another culture," she says. "That tends to make Utah ... a very cosmopolitan place."

Read the entire article at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-14-utah-cover_x.htm

Leard more about Shipps at: http://www.polis.iupui.edu/RUC/Staff/12.htm

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