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It’s clear that an outsized level of corruption exists among the Somali newcomers in Minnesota.
Tax dollars allegedly flow into autism treatment centers to treat children who don’t have autism, and state funds prop up charitable ventures that employ scores of people but fail to engage in any legitimate charitable functions.
That’s just what we know from the existing indictments.
And while most of the reporting not unexpectedly focuses on the fiscal extent of the fraud, there’s a broader, gnawing crisis: the immigrant reliance on welfare.
It’s difficult to work out the exact percentage of Minnesota Somalis who rely on some form of government handout, but it’s extraordinarily high.
President Donald Trump shared a graph on social media that showed 72% of Somalis were on welfare.
It’s unclear where he got those numbers, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
One study, for instance, contends that 86% of Somali households with children receive Medicaid.
Reliance on the state is antithetical to long-term economic and civic success.
Just look at Europe, where numerous large cities feature suburban enclaves, virtual ghettos, teeming with immigrants who subsist on the dole.
The most notorious are the banlieues of France, where generationally unemployed Muslims live in crime-ridden suburbs.
But in Germany, descendants of Turkish guest workers and their families who came in the 1950s still congregate in the same isolated areas, unable to integrate, with a large percentage unemployed and subsisting off generous social benefits.
Somali defenders point out that criminality among immigrant groups isn’t unique to this era. Anyone who’s ever seen a mafia film likely agrees.
The big difference is that most ethnic criminals of the past preyed on their own communities, because the state wouldn’t or couldn’t properly protect them.
But Somalis have almost certainly been able to engage in the unprecedented defrauding of taxpayers because politicians, either obsessed with identitarian ideas or looking for new constituents, coddle them.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz responded to the fraud story by accusing those who amplified it, including Vice President JD Vance, of being driven by “white supremacy.”
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey groused about the “racism directed at a black immigrant community,” tying it to the killing of George Floyd.
Now, it shouldn’t be lost on us that one of the reasons welfare fraud is rampant among Somalis, and others, is our own negligence, permissiveness and endless expansion of the system.
Minnesota’s Medicaid program is so easy to scam that it attracts tourists from around the country to con the state out of tens of millions of dollars.
This level of corruption is abnormal even by the shoddy standards of government.
So big, in fact, that Walz, who only in 2024 was a vice presidential candidate, was forced to abandon his gubernatorial reelection campaign.
Then again, to be fair, perhaps other states are just as bad or worse.
The Biden administration, after all, sent out more than $19 billion in federal funding without requiring attendance verification from child-care centers.
We don’t know the extent of the fraud because states such as California refuse to divulge their statistics.
As Americans, we often feel an obligation to celebrate immigrants — all of them, as if everyone who’s ever crossed the border shares identical values, motivations and achievements.
Anything less is treated as an attack on a foundational ideal.
But even if you believe immigration is primarily a societal good, as I do, it’s self-destructive to embrace such delusions.
There are exemplary immigrants, and then there are those who take advantage of our generosity.
And some cultures more easily assimilate into American life than others.
Where is the Somali Joe DiMaggio or Frank Sinatra or Enrico Fermi, all of them children of immigrants or immigrants themselves?
The most famous Somali in the United States is Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), an unsullied symbol of failed assimilation.
The congresswoman is a bad immigrant not because she’s Muslim or black or a Democrat, but because she doesn’t believe in the ideals that should define American life.
We are constantly lectured that citizenship isn’t contingent on skin color, faith or ethnicity, but rather a set of beliefs. And I strongly concur.
But if we are a creedal nation, then we must admit that our ideas are superior — and expect newcomers to embrace them.
Before modern progressivism gained a foothold in our institutions, this was a near-universal belief in the country.
Self-reliance is one of the vital conditions of a prosperous citizenry.
But we also want citizens to share a common set of ideals — equality, liberty, rights, the rule of law.
In that regard, wokeness, welfare and immigration have been a toxic mix.
David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. X: @davidharsanyi