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Show 4 | MyWeberMedia.com | August 29, 2019 LANDIN GRIFFITH | The Signpost MITT ROMNEY ADDRESS IMMIGRATION, GUN CONTROL AND ABORTION AT WEBER STATE By LANDIN GRIFFITH Assistant Desk Editor United States Sen. Mitt Romney addressed the heavy topics of immigration, gun control laws and abortion laws during a town hall meeting in Weber State University’s Lindquist Hall on Aug. 27. Since Romney's election into the Senate on Nov. 6 during the 2018 midterm election, he has been holding town hall meetings across the state of Utah to receive comments and feedback from the public in regard to recurring significant and consequential issues. A former U.S. Air Force pilot stationed in Laredo, Texas, a town directly on the U.S.-Mexico border, witnessed illegal immigration and smuggling first hand, the first topic amongst the audience, and said, “I saw planes fly across the border and drop packages onto waiting trucks and people crossing the Rio Grande river who were heading north.” “How tall and how deep does a wall have to be to stop that kind of traffic from coming into the United States?” the former pilot said. Romney supports most of President Trump’s policies in regard to people immigrating into the U.S. legally and stated that a wall would have some effect to reduce illegal immigration but not eliminate it entirely, thus new solutions are constantly being created. To prevent large numbers of people from pouring into the U.S. illegally, Romney said the most effective thing that the U.S. can do is to establish a “mandatory E-Verify system,” which requires employers to validate their potential employees’ citizenship by providing their social security or green card numbers before they can be hired. Romney made clear that when an employer disregards the E-Verify system and hires someone despite their lack of citizenship, the employer will be sanctioned and fined. On gun control laws, President Trump is open to universal background checks, which would require that a background check be administered before any gun purchase or transfer, something that Romney is inclined to until he sees the final bill, but he fully supports the concept. Romney supports the second amendment and said that it’s difficult to create gun laws on a national level because of the ongoing disagreement between the republican and democratic parties. A form of gun control laws currently put in place are red flag laws, which “the federal government is not going to mandate,” |