In late 2019, Breitbart News reported extensively on Worthington, Minnesota, a small town with fewer than 14,000 residents that was forced to hike taxes to the sum of tens of millions in order to expand their school district due to a rapid increase in migrant children enrolling. This mass immigration can be attributed to the federal government’s Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program and the presence of a JBS Pork slaughterhouse that attracts newly arrived migrants to the area.
During a gubernatorial debate in October 2022, Governor Tim Walz bragged about the mass immigration that has inundated Worthington for decades now, spinning it as a positive thing that several dozen languages are now spoken in the town’s schools. Walz said, “We are a state of immigrants that values that. We have more refugees per capita than any other state. That’s not just morally a good thing — it’s our economic and cultural future.” He continued, “The beautiful diversity we see out in Worthington when I’m there, you see 50 languages spoken in the school and you see every storefront filled with different types of foods, different types of businesses that are happening. Minnesota needs to continue to do that. The Office of Governor can set the tone on that.
Since the year 2000, Worthington has seen its foreign-born population balloon to almost 30 percent of the town’s population. About 24 years ago, the town’s foreign-born population was half what it is today. Minnesota is one of several states spending billions to teach American English to newly arrived migrant children enrolled in its school districts. With more than 75,000 English learners, Minnesota taxpayers paid nearly $1.2 billion to fund its English as a Second Language (ESL) program in 2020.
In June, a statewide look at Minnesota’s public schools revealed alarming trends. From 2019 to 2022, the percentage of fourth graders in the state who are not proficient in reading has increased from 62 percent to almost 70 percent. Likewise, eighth graders not proficient in math increased from 56 percent in 2019 to nearly 70 percent in 2022. Perhaps most alarming, almost a third of all students in the state were deemed “chronically absent” in the 2021-2022 school year, meaning they missed 10 percent or more school days.