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Reality Check: Pawlenty's Immigration Information

Pat Kessler
Reporting (WCCO- Minneapolis)

Gov. Tim Pawlenty says he is not anti-immigrant. But he is anti-illegal immigrant.

"You have to be really living under a rock to not see that this is a real issue with real consequences and real challenges," Pawlenty has said.

IN FACT, there are no reliable numbers on how many illegal immigrants live here.

We know there are more than 325,000 legal immigrants, many of them from Mexico; most coming north for work.

They take jobs near Minnesota's 17 largest food processing plants, from Pelican Rapids in the northwest to Worthington in the south and over east to St. Charles.

Estimates of illegals: from a low of 18,000 to the governor's high, 85,000. And there's no way to know how many of them commit crimes, because the state doesn't keep records.

So where does the governor get his information?

"You have to go out and talk to anybody who lives in the real world," Pawlenty has said. "Go talk to cops. Go talk to social service workers. Go talk to hospital administrators."

But getting information that way is INCOMPLETE.

Reports of crime by illegal immigrants are certainly true, but no one has any idea how many. The state doesn't track it; the evidence is only anecdotal.

We can't verify it, because the governor says it was given to him confidentially by elected officials and law enforcement.

Nevertheless, it's why the governor says he's proposing an anti-crime package targeting illegal immigrants. And not for the first time.

Here's what you NEED TO KNOW.

In a 2002 political ad, then-candidate for governor Tim Pawlenty used immigration as a campaign issue. Running for re-election, he is using it again.

That's Reality Check.

Tim's latest plan (from Minneapolis Star Tribune)
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