Minnesota to Expand Immigrant Benefits
- Author: Michael Bordonada
- Posted: 2024-08-11
Since Joe Biden was sworn in as America's President in 2021, there have been so many border crossings by immigrants that no one truly knows the count. Some have the estimate at over 2 million, while others claim it's over 5 million at this point. It's such a train wreck down there on the border that no one really knows anything. Though most Americans know how the story goes. All of those Italian and French and Scandinavian restaurants and corner shops and hardware stores that closed down during COVID will start opening up under new ownership as Mexican restaurants, bodegas, and other businesses owned by Mexicans and others from Central and South America and Somalia.
One of the reasons that so many immigrants want to come to America is that the American government green-lights business loans as if it's a reward for landing here. Even President Joe Biden once famously quipped about Indians owning all of the 7-Eleven stores. In Minnesota, the state's plan is to offer more business opportunities for immigrants, with the government's plan to open up the Office for New Americans. In essence, this office would rubber-stamp business loans for newly settled immigrants, as well as giving specific government grants to businesses already owned by immigrants, which make up nearly half of all the small businesses in the state as-is.
At a time when Minnesota is facing the worst labor shortage in its history, the answer the government proposes is not to actually do more for existing Minnesotans to get their businesses back up and running. Instead, their answer is to offer incentives to get even more immigrants into the state.
American Benefits: Benefiting Everyone But Americans
Perhaps you love the idea of immigrants coming into America and doing well financially. That's fine. Though how do you feel about the state spending hundreds of thousands of dollars every single year to prop up immigrant-specific businesses while ignoring the people who were born and raised in Minnesota, whose families go back there generations? There is absolutely not one piece of legislation in the works to get Minnesotans in the workforce or to help their failing businesses; but there are multiple pieces of legislation aimed at new immigrants' financial success.
The Voters Are Not Happy
Whether or not America should accept immigrants in the first place is a topic that's not nearly as polarizing as what the mainstream media in the country would have you believe. It basically boils down to one thing: The legality of it. Republicans, generally speaking, are not anti-immigrant. They just want immigrants to enter the country legally, and they scoff and sneer at the states and federal government showering illegal immigrants with benefits. Whereas Democrats, generally speaking, seem to just champion immigration and don't particularly care if they get here illegally. But there is no concerted effort by anyone to send immigrants packing or to deny them. However, when it comes to states and the federal government just giving money to immigrants and not to Americans, that's where the issue becomes bipartisan.
According to recent studies, upwards of 70% of Americans polled are against immigrants receiving benefits and other monetary packages over American citizens. States like Minnesota, California, New York, Illinois, and other Democrat-led states have been carving out special exemptions for certain groups since the COVID trillions were printed and handed out. Black-specific grants, female-specific loans, and immigrant-specific benefits (primarily for southern border immigrants) were the top three packages handed out to people during the pandemic lock-downs. Frankly, Americans in general are very tired of Americans being segmented off into special groups before the government helps them. Not that the government cares, of course. There are even more studies that make it abundantly clear that the United States' government, on both the state and federal level, does not listen to voters and instead only does what corporations want. That's both parties, mind you, despite what a biased mainstream media would gaslight you into believing.
Minnesota's proposed Office for New Americans is not aimed at actual Americans. It's a way to give benefits to people who are not citizens and may not ever become citizens. Even though a majority of Minnesotans disagree with these things, the government will do whatever it wants, per usual, and more immigrants will end up owning businesses while more American citizens go into poverty.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue of immigration, you have to admit that it just seems unfair for tax-paying citizens of a state to come last to their own elected officials.
