Gov. Tim Walz (D), who is running for vice president with Kamala Harris, once bragged about how a lot of immigrants swarmed a small town in southern Minnesota, calling it an example of “beautiful diversity.”
Late in 2019, Breitbart News had a lot to say about Worthington, Minnesota. The town had fewer than 14,000 people living in it, so the owners had to raise taxes by tens of millions of dollars to make room for more foreign children to attend school.
That huge influx of people in Worthington is mostly due to the federal government’s Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program.
During a governor debate in October 2022, Walz talked about how many immigrants have been coming to Worthington for decades, saying that the fact that people speak more than a dozen languages in the schools was a good thing.
“We respect that because we are a state of refugees. No other state has more refugees per person than we do. That’s not only the right thing to do, it’s also good for our culture and economy,” Walz said.
“This beautiful mix we see out in Worthington when I’m there—so many languages spoken in school, and every shop is full of different foods and businesses. The state of Minnesota needs to keep doing that. That’s up to the Office of Governor.”
In Worthington, the number of people born outside of the United States has grown to almost 30% of the total population since 2000. About 24 years ago, only half as many people from other countries lived in the town as there are now.
Minnesota is one of several states that spends billions to teach American English to immigrant children who have just moved to the state and are now attending school there. The English as a Second Language (ESL) program in Minnesota cost taxpayers almost $1.2 billion in 2020 to run. It helped more than 75,000 people learn English.
In June, a look at all of Minnesota’s public schools showed some very worrying patterns.
The number of fourth graders in the state who are not good in reading rose from 62% in 2019 to almost 70% in 2022. Also, the number of eighth graders who were not good at math rose from 56% in 2019 to almost 70% in 2022.
It’s scary to think that during the 2021–2022 school year, almost a third of all kids in the state were “chronically absent,” which means they missed 10% or more of school days.
