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From my personal perspective, the fact that every bit of meaningful news coming out of Minnesota is related to migrants behaving badly or the Politicians doing insanely self-destructive stuff has been ridiculously radicalizing on the immigration question.
Before, the literal only thing I 'knew' about Minnesota was the Movie FARGO and the accents. Never been there, but the people I meet from that area are unfailingly polite and stable if a little weird to my southern sensibilities.
I viewed it as a quaint little slice of Midwestern rural charm. A bit of cultural crossover between the U.S. and Canada, maybe.
I've since learned that for NGOs and the Obama and Biden administration, it was viewed as "Free Real Estate."
And if you asked me to define the precise polar opposite of the Minnesotan cultural archetype, I'd probably say "Somalia".
So naturally a whole bunch of Somalians with zero cultural connection and from an area with a completely incongruous environment got shoved into Minnesotan towns and given every single piece of governmental assistance possible to try to ease their transition... and now the full implications of that are unavoidable. The existence of Ihlan Omar alone is enough for me to balk.
All the more so because as far as I can tell the Minnesotans were never asked, nor do they currently have much of a say. That is what really makes the situation feel 'unfair' if you ask me. The FedGov, through cooperation with NGOs (funded by FedGov) can instantly and irretrievably change the entire character of a given town without technically violating anyone's rights or needing their direct approval.
We've seen how well off communities react to this (Remember Desantis' Martha's Vineyard stunt), but these towns probably have little political clout and not much wealth to speak of.
Wait, how do you think they got there?
The current refugee regime dates back to Carter’s presidency. It integrated the efforts of existing VOLAGs, which are probably the NGOs you have in mind. Not exactly a new invention.
Minnesota has a bunch of NGOs, including some of the VOLAGs. Global Refuge is Lutheran and USCCB Catholic; both denominations are well-represented in the state. Historically, they’ve literally volunteered to take refugees. I believe they’re ending up in the Twin Cities more than individual towns, but I don’t have a source for that.
Somalis specifically started fleeing their civil war in the early 90s. Omar got here in ‘95. There was definitely a surge around 2012 coinciding with a new push in the war; that accounts for about 6,000 Minnesotans. More stats here.
Point is, the Somali population mostly pre-dates Obama and definitely pre-dates Biden. There’s been plenty of support from native Minnesota institutions, largely downstream of a strong Christian presence. The national involvement was hashed out before there was even a Somalian civil war, and continued for decades without today’s wailing and gnashing of teeth. I don’t think you can write it off as nonconsensual Federal airdrops to random towns.
I'm not saying they were hiding it.
The process was definitely transparent in that they will straight up tell you how many they brought in.
I just note that somehow, the Sub-Saharan Immigrant population was about 1.3 million in 2010, and is listed at 2.5 million in 2024, so almost doubling.
Do I have to point out who the sitting Presidents were during the majority of that time period?
And the included map shows that a huge number of them were indeed dropped off in Minnesota, to the point they're around 3% of the population in the Minneanapolis area.
The part that hasn't become so transparent until lately is exactly how much aid these folks were receiving, and, likewise, how much fraud and crime many were involved in.
If the Minnesotans start to disapprove of this situation, what's their recourse, precisely?
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Unfortunaltely, Minnesota, for some reason or another, is incredibly liberal relative to its demographics. The non-africans voted for billions of africans, and they continue to vote for billions of africans for the forseeable future.
I don't think they voted for them all to be slammed down into the same jurisdictions granting them instant majorities and almost zero demand to truly assimilate.
Hell, if they had been spread around the country rather than specifically creating ethnic enclaves with outsized political power, I would find it less objectionable.
Yet the minnesotan whites who just had a million somalians dropped in their small town will still vote blue no matter who
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It’s not actually incredibly liberal relative to demographics, it’s full of secular urban northern euros.
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