REFUTING the outrageous claim by Rep. Ilhan Omar and other Muslim/Leftist activists that “Somalis built America”

Actually, a more fitting headline would be “Somalis bilked America.” Other than vastly expanding welfare fraud, building mosques, Islamic centers, and halal food shops, Somali Muslims have contributed virtually nothing of value to America, but rather brought in a lot of corruption and crime.

If you’ve seen the memes, the headlines, or the outrage from Somali Muslims, Michael Knowles breaks down the viral false claim sweeping TikTok and X — separating historical fact from political fantasy. Knowles explains where the narrative came from, what the data actually shows, and why activists keep pushing these revisionist talking points.

“Somali Immigrants Are Revitalizing Main Street America,” NBC News claimed. A barrage of similar stories hailed Somalis and other Muslim migrants for ‘transforming’ Middle America. After President Trump’s criticism of Somali abuse, triggered by reporting of massive $1B plus frauds conducted by the David Horowitz Freedom Center and other conservative media outlets, the media has rushed out more of these same stories about Somali accomplishments.

But let’s look at some of the facts.

Daniel Greenfield Somalis are the second largest foreign-born population in Minnesota after Mexicans. 42% of Somalis fall below the poverty line. This is far worse than the 21% poverty rate for African-Americans or any Christian African immigrant population such as Ethiopians (18%) or Nigerians (8%). 45% of Nigerians own homes, so do 27% of African-Americans, but only 12% of Somali settlers in America do. Somali ‘exceptionalism’ is not racial or immigrant: it’s cultural.

40.6% of Somalis settlers in Minnesota don’t even have a high school degree. 40% of Somalis have an income at the 200% federal poverty line. 40% of Somali settlers in Minnesota earn below $35,000. Their median household income is $43,600.

This limits any taxes they are likely to pay and allows them nearly limitless access to welfare.

Recent media stories claim that Somalis “pay about $67 million in state and local taxes.” Considering that there are an estimated 100,000 Somalis, that comes out to around $670 per Somali. That $670 not only falls far short of the average tax burden of over $8,000 in the state, but it only pays for about two weeks of public school for one of their children, a few months of their food stamps or two of their medical visits. Never mind the cost of a single court date.

1 in 5 children in the state are already foreign-born. Minneapolis spends around $18,500 per pupil. The cost of educating the Somali offspring alone amounts to three quarters of a billion per year. The $67 million that Somalis allegedly pay in taxes doesn’t even cover 10% of the cost of educating their kids. Never mind everything else.

Had Somalis remained just another underemployed high-welfare population, they would have been mostly overlooked, but members of the community took existing welfare abuses to a whole new level with a massive series of ‘super-frauds’ beginning with a $250M meal fraud in which Somali facilities claimed to be feeding over 100,000 kids (more than twice as many kids as they had) that escalated to a $120,000 cash bribeand efforts by those responsible to flee America.

Then there was the signature billion dollar autism fraud. 1 in 16 Somali four-year-olds were supposedly suffering from autism leading to a mass demand for “culturally sensitive” services. The services were fraudulent and parents were paid to sign up their children by the providers.

Somali food aid demands shot up from $3.4M in 2019, to $42 million, to $197 million in 2021. Autism claims followed a similar pattern, going from $3 million in 2018 to $54 million in 2019, $77 million in 2020, $183 million in 2021, $279 million in 2022, $399 million in 2023, and nearing $400 million most of the way through 2024 for a total of over $1.4 billion.

These two giant frauds were supplemented by $100 million plus housing and daycare frauds that take the toll for Somali welfare to somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5 billion.

Divide that up by the Somali population and you get a $15,000 per person fraud burden. Deduct the reported $67 million in taxes and you get $1.43 billion and a $14,300 per person burden.

Those are just the basic numbers. They do not take into account the wave of Somali crime, including the rapes recently reported on by the Freedom Center or the ICE arrests of illegal alien criminals in Minneapolis including a Somali pedophile and Abdulkadir Sharif Abdi, a Somali illegal alien and a former member of the Gangster Disciples and a Vice Lord.

We are often told that Somali immigrants are in Minnesota to “do the jobs that Americans won’t do.” Are we really suffering from a shortage of gang members?

Does Minnesota have a dire shortage of people without high school diplomas earning 200% of the federal poverty line and sitting on every welfare program imaginable even if they have to make them up?

In the last fiscal year, Minnesota was supposed to have a $17 billion surplus. Now that surplus has turned into a $6 billion hole. The surplus was used to approve a gargantuan $72 billion budget with tons of welfare spending that was supposed to fix the state’s problems.

Welfare spending grew by 42% in 20 years. Health and Human Services spending, the political piggybank that was raided by the Somali fraud machines, went from a quarter of the budget to approaching a third of the budget. Per person welfare spending rose to around $35,000 per person. The Somalis frauds benefited massively from this unlimited spending spree.

But these numbers also show how Somalis benefited Minnesota. They certainly didn’t benefit its economy or build its future, but they provided the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party with the political and human capital to staff up and fund their welfare state machine.

Somalis not only voted DFL, but they justified the massive social welfare spending that the DFL wanted to build up the political infrastructure, provide the consulting contracts and employ the staffers who traditionally form the Democratic Party’s political and operational base.

And $1.5 billion is cheap at the price when you consider that in New York City, $850 million in mental health funding just ‘disappeared’ and in Los Angeles, $2.4 billion in homeless spending couldn’t be tracked. Somali welfare fraud isn’t American, but it’s certainly Democratic.

Somalis didn’t build Minnesota, but they built the Minnesota Democratic machine.