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

By Andrew R. Arthur

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.

https://cis.org/Arthur/Minnesota-Gov-Tim-Walz-Free-Healthcare-and-College-Education-Illegal-Aliens

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