In its haste to acquire Greenland, the White House neglects to consider whether the interests of the United States might be better served by contracting rather than expanding the nation’s territory.
Minnesota governor Tim Walz has said the state’s National Guard stands ready to protect citizens if necessary, adding ominously: ‘We’ve never been at war with our federal government.’ Mayor Jacob Frey has told Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a federal law enforcement agency, to ‘get the fuck out of Minneapolis’. Their remarks come after the fatal shooting of a US citizen by an ICE agent during an immigration raid. The circumstances are contested, with some believing the woman was driving away and posed no threat, and others that she was driving towards the agent who shot her.
The North Star state has been in the news a good deal lately. Federal prosecutors are probing allegations of widespread statewide daycare fraud, with the authorities investigating whether the US government has been making payments to fake nurseries with no children. This comes in the wake of the Covid food poverty fraud, which saw the fraudulent acquisition of $250 million (£186 million) in pandemic-era funds to feed needy children, and amid separate federal investigations into alleged defrauding of benefits for autism support and housing.
A lot of America’s problems could be solved if it just expelled Minnesota from the Union
Reports that some of Minnesota’s alleged frauds have been ‘orchestrated mainly by members of its Somali community’ – though not all accused or perpetrators are of Somali descent – have drawn attention to high levels of welfare dependency and other integration problems among Somali migrants to the state.
A majority (52 per cent) of Somali immigrant children live in poverty, almost seven times the rate for native-born Minnesotans, and 54 per cent of Somali households receive food stamps, eight times the percentage for Minnesota families across the board. Nine in ten Somali households with children are claiming one welfare entitlement or another. Four in ten Somali adults have no high school diploma and half of those resident in the US for longer than a decade still cannot speak English ‘very well’.
Minnesota is also a hotbed of police shootings and riotous backlashes. In the last decade alone, there has been unrest of varying degrees over the deaths of Jamar Clark, Amir Locke, Philando Castile, George Floyd, Daunte Wright, Winston Boogie Smith, and others. A state where the cops kill civilians with such regularity and then have to manage waves of rioting and looting is frankly more trouble than it’s worth.
A lot of America’s problems could be solved if it just expelled Minnesota from the Union. Declare it extraterritorial to the US and let it get on with its destiny of being a mildly more interesting Canada. Either that, or give it to Denmark as a peace offering. Which is a snarky, very roundabout way of saying that, whatever strategic advantage Greenland might offer the United States, there are more than enough troubles to be getting on with back home before going territory-shopping. Before eyeing up other countries’ territory, the US government should try to reassert its authority in the territory it already holds.
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