Minnesota nice enabled immigration fraud to flourish in Twin Cities for decades, ex-sheriff says: Its all about votes

A former Minneapolis sheriff says an excessive helping of “Minnesota nice” enabled the egregious spread of immigration fraud uncovered by federal officials in the Twin Cities last month.“Minnesota has always been a very welcoming place,” said Rich Stanek, who spent 12 years overseeing Minneapolis law enforcement as Hennepin County Sheriff.“But when people say ‘Minnesota nice,’ they simply didn’t ask.Or they ignored it.”It’s those midwestern manners that Stanek believes led directly to the immigration crisis US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) discovered across Minneapolis and St.

Paul in September: of 1,000 immigrant households visited during a two-week period, nearly half were engaged in some form of immigration fraud.“Officers encountered blatant marriage fraud, visa overstay, people claiming to work at businesses that can’t be found, forged documents, abuse of the H1B visa system, abuse of the F1 visa, and many other discrepancies,” USCIS director Joseph B.Edlow told reporters after the operation concluded.Stanek — who called USCIS’ findings “extremely high” — thinks local left-wing officials have been openly ignoring those abuses for decades, possibly with the long-term goal of building a voter base that would support their agendas.“You’ve had several governors in a row — Mark Dayton and Tim Walz — who have ignored it.

You had local officials in Minneapolis, St.Paul, Hennepin, Ramsey County, that have have ignored it,” he said.

“It’s all about votes.”USCIS did not say which immigrant communities were behind the fraud, but the local Somali population has boomed in recent decades to about 82,000 people — and Stanek said they have been particularly adept at working their way into local politics as they become naturalized.“The community did what a lot of immigrant communities do — they became empowered.They elected themselves, they elected their kin to office, city councils, school boards, sta...