Minnesota’s Somali population has become symbolic political fodder protected from objective examined through transparent data. Gov. Tim Walz repeatedly claims they present no unusual financial or public-safety burden. Democrats dismiss any evidence to the contrary as “racist.”

But the metrics that matter — poverty, public spending, fraud prosecutions, and human-capital indicators — tell a much more sobering story.

Minnesota is grappling with one of the largest welfare-fraud operations in American history. Federal investigators uncovered a child-nutrition and Medicaid fraud network valued between $250 million and $300 million, much of it connected to organizations operating inside Somali enclaves. Some independent estimates now place the total fraud well over $7 billion.

While not every Somali Minnesotan was involved, the scale of the scandal reflects systemic weaknesses tied to educational and economic disadvantages that political leaders refuse to acknowledge.

Minnesota’s population is about 5.7 million. Approximately 107,000 residents are Somali-born or Somali-American — roughly 1.5% of the state. Yet state data shows that about 58% of Somali Minnesotans live in poverty, or roughly 62,000 people. By contrast, Minnesota has around 530,000 residents in poverty overall.

That means Somali Minnesotans represent nearly 12% of the state’s poverty population while accounting for less than 2% of its residents.

Those numbers translate into major financial obligations. Minnesota spends billions each year on welfare, housing assistance, Medicaid, nutrition subsidies, and related programs. Based on per-capita welfare costs, the Somali share of the poverty load represents an estimated $2.8 billion in annual public-assistance commitments.

Taxpayers fund these programs, yet few elected officials have ever acknowledged the magnitude of the dependency they underwrite.

Public-safety claims follow a similar pattern. Walz has repeatedly asserted that the Somali population does not contribute disproportionately to crime. He has never provided statewide data to substantiate that claim. In fact, federal immigration statistics contradict it. Black migrants make up just 5.4% of the U.S. immigrant population but represent 20.3% of immigrants facing removal for criminal convictions. That category consists largely of East African nationals, including Somalis.

Minnesota’s recent federal indictments reinforce the pattern. A significant share of complex fraud, money-laundering, organized theft, and benefits-abuse cases prosecuted in the last decade have been linked to Somali networks. These facts do not imply that most Somali immigrants engage in crime. They simply disprove the political narrative that the group poses a lower-than-average risk.

To understand why Minnesota’s welfare system and oversight mechanisms remain overwhelmed, policymakers must confront the human-capital realities of countries of origin.

Somalia ranks near the bottom of global development rankings. UNESCO estimates adult literacy at roughly 31%. Secondary-school completion remains below 20%. According to the World Bank, Somali citizens average less than three years of formal schooling — the lowest levels recorded in any major national population.

These measures correlate directly with employment success, assimilation speed, and long-term economic independence. When refugee populations arrive from countries with severely limited educational infrastructure, integration requires extraordinary resources and long timeframes.

Somalia’s estimated average IQ — around 68, according to international intelligence and psychometric research — places the population in a range typically associated with significant cognitive-skill deficits.

While IQ assessments are imperfect and not used as immigration criteria in the United States, every global indicator tells the same story: Somalia faces structural educational and developmental challenges that shape outcomes for migrants who resettle abroad.

Risk-based screening is standard practice around the world. Countries assess travelers differently based on the risks in their regions. The United States screens entrants from Colombia or Honduras more heavily for narcotics trafficking. Visitors from Norway receive less scrutiny.

Somalia is a country marked by decades of civil conflict, corruption, institutional breakdown, and educational collapse. Treating migration from Somalia as identical to migration from stable, high-development countries is willful blindness.

None of this diminishes the achievements of law-abiding, hardworking Somali Americans who contribute meaningfully to Minnesota. Responsible immigration policy does not target individuals. It evaluates population-level indicators tied to fiscal costs, social service demands, and public safety risks.

Minnesota is learning, at great expense, what happens when political leaders substitute narratives for measurable realities. The conversation surrounding Somali immigrants has nothing to do with race or religion. The United States has an obligation to evaluate the data — poverty rates, crime patterns, terrorism concerns, schooling levels, and human-capital benchmarks that cannot be ignored simply because they are politically inconvenient.