Ramstad: Readers remember Hortman and question my ideas on immigration, corporate downturns

My recent columns around Rep. Melissa Hortman’s untimely death prompted readers to write me about the complicated topic that she was once vocal about: immigration.

One reader in Woodbury who identified himself as a Republican and asked me not to use his name said he was shocked and saddened over Hortman’s death. He added he was sad to read in one of my columns that she believed Republicans hated immigrants.

“We do not hate immigrants and we do not even hate illegal immigrants,” the reader wrote. “Most of us are very much for legal immigration. We just do not want taxpayers to pay for benefits for people that do not belong here.”

He was responding to Hortman’s lament that some lawmakers’ biases blocked what could have been productive reform of DFL actions in 2023: “The energy spent hating immigrants could have been spent saying, ‘As we put these policies in place, did we make all the right decisions balancing between workers and business?’”

Since my last column of reader correspondence in early June, I wrote two columns with comments from Hortman, the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, who was assassinated June 14.

Those columns — one published that day and the other a few days later with comments from an interview we had after the Legislature’s special session — unsurprisingly prompted the most feedback from readers.

The second column brought a lot of thoughtful remembrances of Hortman. In a comment typical of those sentiments, a woman from Minneapolis wrote, “I am inspired by her pragmatism, dedication, and continual commitment to getting the people’s work done.”

I wrote that the Biden-era approach to the border was a mess, but we don’t have that many illegal immigrants in Minnesota and our workforce is hardly growing and could use more people.

Readers who criticize that viewpoint bring up the same argument as the correspondent from Woodbury: Legal immigration is fine but illegal immigration isn’t.

“If you want or need more immigrant workers or citizens in Minnesota, then make that argument and change the laws,” wrote a reader from Eagan who also asked me not to use his name. “But attracting more illegal undocumented [people] through incentives we can’t afford isn’t the solution, nor is it sustainable.”

That’s exactly the argument I wish we were having. There are plenty of ideas for regulating immigration that fall between Biden’s open borders and Trump’s deportations without due process.

Closing what’s known as the asylum loophole, the process that encourages migrants to claim asylum rather than pursue legal immigration paths, would be a start. As well, the nation’s visa system needs updating and could be designed to expedite decisions on who is allowed into the U.S. Also, there are interesting proposals for migrants, or their prospective employers in the U.S., to put up bonds on entry that would be refunded on exit.

The downbeat counterpoint, as Ward Brehm of Minneapolis noted in a Minnesota Star Tribune opinion essay this past week, is that Congress has failed to act on immigration reform for decades “despite countless commissions, bipartisan proposals and moments of national urgency.”

In other news, this past week I wrote twice about UnitedHealth Group — on Monday before its quarterly results and after executives spoke so contritely about them on Tuesday.

One reader wrote on Monday that UnitedHealth wasn’t the only Minnesota company that has seen its stock slashed in half lately. He pointed to 3M and asked why I didn’t cite its troubles and its recovery.

3M’s shares peaked in spring 2021 and took two years to lose half their value. They hit a low in fall 2023 and have since climbed most of the way back to the peak, a reflection of enormous work including a spinoff and hard-fought legal settlements over pollution.

Of course, the share values of two other Minnesota giants, Target and Best Buy, are also more than 50% below the record highs reached during the pandemic era.

“The issue is their culture, [which is] short-term focused,” wrote Edina’s Joel Stegner, who worked as a market researcher for large hospital systems. “When they drop so many Medicare Advantage patients for not being profitable enough, rather than make a serious effort to reduce costs with better long-term outcomes for patients, they no longer meet human needs.”

He recommends looking at UnitedHealth’s customer satisfaction data and “studies they do with long-term customers to see if their health is better than a matched group from other plans.”