Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — Free Healthcare and College Education for Illegal Aliens

In a recent post, I began an analysis of various immigration-related positions that Tim Walz, presumptive Democratic vice-presidential candidate, has taken as Minnesota governor. Next up are free health care and college tuition for illegal aliens residing in the state.

SF 2995. On May 23, 2023, Walz signed the One Minnesota Budget, which included Senate File (SF) 2995, the “Health and Human Services appropriations Omnibus bill”, into law.

The governor’s press release for that bill is rather anodyne, noting that SF 2995 (among other things) “addresses health care access and affordability and includes guaranteed reductions in cost-sharing, the establishment of the Center for Health Care Affordability, and other efforts to reduce the cost of health care”.

What that leaves out is that the bill also allows illegal immigrants in the North Star State “to enroll in subsidized health coverage if they meet the program’s other eligibility requirements”, bringing the state in line with just California and the District of Columbia in that regard.

As the Washington Examiner explains, the subsidized health care plan in question is MinnesotaCare, the state’s version of Medicaid.

MinnesotaCare “offers free and subsidized health insurance to residents at 200% of the federal poverty level and below. That includes residents making up to $30,120 per year or families of four with an income of up to $62,400 annually”.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Walz “justified” the measure through its “overall benefit to the state”:

Making low-income immigrants in the country illegally eligible for healthcare — a move that could cost the state upward of $60 million a year if immigrants enroll in large numbers — would save hospitals and the state money by cutting down on unpaid-for emergency room visits, he has argued.

That may be true in the short run, but the prospect of free medical care in Minnesota will likely also draw more illegal migrants to the state, which would logically increase those costs and drive even more aliens to utilize limited healthcare services — including at emergency rooms.

“North Star Promise Scholarship Program”. Last May, Walz also signed education legislation creating the North Star Promise Scholarship program. As the program’s website explains:

Beginning in fall 2024, the North Star Promise (NSP) Scholarship program will create a tuition and fee-free pathway to higher education for eligible Minnesota residents at eligible institutions as a "last-dollar" program by covering the balance of tuition and fees remaining after other scholarships, grants, stipends and tuition waivers have been applied.

According to the Examiner, that program offers tuition-free education at state colleges and universities for Minnesota families that earn $80,000 or less per year, including “illegal immigrants who attended a Minnesota high school for at least three years and have either a high school diploma or a GED from a school in the state”.

The Examiner explains:

Minnesota has a median household income of $90,390 per year, according to Statista, making the state’s average middle-class family ineligible for the program. Yet, the state will put tens of thousands of dollars toward paying for illegal immigrants’ college degrees. Meanwhile, middle-class families work overtime and make personal sacrifices to afford their children’s education — and pay for the college education of illegal immigrants on top of it.

While NSP plainly won’t be quite the magnet that the state’s free healthcare offer is, it will still send a message to newly arrived migrants that Minnesota will be amenable to their needs and the needs of their college-age children.

It’s a basic rule of political economics that you will get more of anything you subsidize, be it electric cars or milk, and in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes, that includes illegal immigrants.

“Tim Walz’s Immigration Record Mirrors Democratic Push to Embrace Migrants”. The Journal article argues that the governor’s record on free medical care, college tuition, and driver’s licenses for the state’s unauthorized population “is in line with the [Democratic] party’s goal to integrate the millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally — most of whom have been here for decades — in the absence of help from Congress”.

By “help from Congress” for illegal immigrants, I assume the Journal means a “massive amnesty”.

That Congress hasn’t seen fit to pass such a bill — including during periods under President Obama when Democrats held a majority in the House and a supermajority in the Senate in addition to the White House — suggests that that the Party of Jackson understands that such an amnesty is either not a great idea, or political suicide, or both.

When states “integrate” those here illegally it simply sends a clear message to would-be illegal migrants that they should come as quickly as possible before the freebie window gets shut in the face of crushing state debts.

Or, as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted:

The Disproportionate Costs of Accommodating “New Residents”. Under the constitution, immigration is a strictly federal issue and only Congress has the power to either expand the opportunity to immigrate here or restrict it.

Regardless of whether “millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally” have “been here for decades” or for a day, they are still here illegally and under the laws that Congress has written, are supposed to be removed, not subsidized and accommodated by states and localities.

That said, the citizens of Minnesota are free to spend their hard-earned wages however they see fit, and if Walz and his fellow elected officials decide that doling out millions in benefits to the undocumented is the best use of state tax dollars, so be it.

The problem is that the Biden-Harris administration has expanded that “Democratic push to embrace migrants” to the federal level as well, and specifically to the one branch of the federal government that actually has the power to enforce the immigration restrictions Congress has written — in accordance with its unfettered authority over immigration, as specified in the Constitution.

In light of the work the governor has done to assist illegal immigrants in his state, it’s questionable at best that a Harris-Walz administration will be any more willing to secure the border against illegal migration, to detain those who come here illegally as the law requires, and to deport aliens ordered removed than the Biden-Harris administration has been.

That’s a problem, and not just for those who value national sovereignty and security.

As former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) himself recently explained in the Journal, “a disproportionate share of the costs of accommodating these new residents falls on economically vulnerable Americans. Wages, affordable housing, healthcare and other resources are already too meager in those communities in which impoverished migrants are likeliest to arrive”.

You can add limited higher-education resources to the top of that list, because for most “economically vulnerable Americans”, a college diploma is their best shot out of generational poverty.

Frank, as I explained in my analysis of his points, is as progressive on immigration issues as any current elected representative you can name, but he’s no economic nitwit. He understands that all of that state-level “integration” of the illegal population comes at a cost, and Americans who bear the brunt of that cost usually have the least.

Will Vice President Walz be any more conscious of the fact that offering free healthcare and college education imposes actual and lasting costs on the least advantaged Americans than Gov. Walz has been? Only time (and the will of the electorate) will tell, but thus far, his record offers nothing to suggest he will.