Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, recently selected as Kamala Harris’ running mate for the 2024 presidential elections, has a limited but notable record on immigration issues.
In 2023, Walz signed a bill into law allowing Minnesotans to obtain a license regardless of immigration status. In a statement, he said the law was aimed at making the roads safer for everyone. The move also benefited undocumented immigrants, who number roughly 82,000 people in a state of about 5.7 million people. Legislators, community, faith, labor, law enforcement, and immigrant advocates supported the law.
The 2023 legislative session also led to an expansion of in-state tuition to all low-income Minnesota students, including undocumented youth, and access to MinnesotaCare for undocumented immigrants.
In 2022, Walz criticized his then-rival for the gubernatorial elections, Scott Jensen, for saying states aren’t mandated to accept federal orders to resettle immigrants. Jensen had said accepting those migrants would be “undercutting so much of Minnesota’s fabric of life.” Walz responded otherwise.
“This myth — and to be very honest it is meant to discredit immigrants — that they are using public services and not paying back is absolutely false,” Walz said. “It’s proven by the data that we know that the community pays in and gives far more back than they take out.”
Immigrants make up 8.4% of Minnesota’s population and pay $5.4 billion in taxes annually.
Walz has also expressed support for “a clean pathway to citizenship” for essential workers, Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status holders, and their families. “Immigrant youth and TPS recipients live, work, study, worship, and are a part of our communities, and they are the parents, spouses, siblings, and neighbors of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens,” Walz wrote in a letter to Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Years ago however, Walz was elected to congress as a moderate, representing a rural district. And being a moderate reflected in his support for a measure in 2015, when he joined with a majority of Republicans to create stricter screening measures for Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States. When he ran to be governor of Minnesota in 2019, however, he changed his views about the measure.
In 2018, Walz criticized the Trump administration’s separation of undocumented immigrant children from their families that summer. He co-sponsored legislation to end the practice. “I’m proud to join my colleagues in introducing the Keep Families Together Act,” Walz said in a statement in June 2018. “Ripping children out of their parents’ arms at the border is a human rights violation and we cannot tolerate such abuses as a nation.” He also called on then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign because of the family separation policy.
The public’s reception of Walz as Harris’ chosen running mate for the presidential election has mostly been positive, except for targeted criticisms from Republican party rivals. Analysis and political commentaries about the vice presidential selection process indicate that the idea of choosing Walz is to help appeal to electorates in small towns and rural regions that could help turn swing states blue.
ABC News announced yesterday that former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have agreed to a September debate.
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