Ilhan Omar Is Not the Kind of Immigrant America Needs

By Rich Lowry

Tuesday, December 02, 2025

 

Is it too much to ask that immigrants love America and its system of government?

 

That’s a question that President Trump has been asking, with an especially high level of vitriol, in the wake of the horrific shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington, D.C., the day before Thanksgiving.

 

The video player is currently playing an ad.

 

In a corker of a Truth Social post announcing “a permanent pause” in immigration from third-world countries, Trump went after Minneapolis-area Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, and for good reason.

 

Omar stands for everything we shouldn’t want an immigrant to be — ungrateful, hostile to the American system as such, and perhaps not above perpetrating immigration fraud.

 

Maybe the next time Omar is a refugee from a war-torn, desperately poor African country looking for a safe haven in the West, she should try Canada or Australia.

 

After fleeing the civil war in Somalia, Omar was granted asylum in the United States in the 1990s, and she lived for a time in one of the most desirable suburban counties in the country — Arlington, Va., outside of Washington, D.C. — before settling in Minneapolis.

 

In the course of her successful life here — so far from Mogadishu, in a country characterized by its peace, prosperity, and opportunity — one would have thought that she’d have steadily accumulated a debt of gratitude.

 

Most “heritage Americans,” after all, never become members of Congress or enjoy a net worth as high as $30 million (Omar’s husband has a venture capital firm).

 

But, no — quite the opposite.

 

“In Omar’s version,” a Washington Post profile noted a few years ago, “America wasn’t the bighearted country that saved her from a brutal war and a bleak refugee camp. It wasn’t a meritocracy that helped her attend college or vaulted her into Congress. Instead, it was the country that had failed to live up to its founding ideals, a place that had disappointed her and so many immigrants, refugees and minorities like her.”

 

It’s not just that she came here with nothing and is now a person with prestige (in certain circles) and resources; she may well have gotten away with a scheme years ago to marry her brother for fraudulent purposes. She hotly denies that the man she briefly married was her brother but has never managed to definitively rebut the charges, relying instead on accusations of racism to scare away critics.

 

Is this a great country, she must secretly think occasionally, despite herself, or what?

 

The same thought might have occurred to those members of the Somali diaspora in Minnesota who engaged in a gigantic grift of the state’s social-services funds. Prosecutors believe that more than $1 billion has been stolen in a variety of plots. The perpetrators stole from programs intended to provide meals to hungry children during the pandemic, services to the homeless, and therapy for autistic children.

 

At least these members of the Somali diaspora must have been grateful — for the generosity and credulousness of a Minnesota welfare state that couldn’t be bothered to keep fraudsters from stealing from the taxpayers on an epic scale.

 

Obviously, native-born Americans commit graft, too, but the Minnesota crimes are especially galling, coming from a group of people we did a favor for by allowing them into the United States in the first place.

 

It’s one thing to look a gift horse in the mouth; it’s another to steal the incisors and molars when you think no one is looking.

 

The video player is currently playing an ad.

 

It should go without saying that these crimes don’t implicate law-abiding Somali-Americans, and not all Somali immigrants share Ilhan Omar’s grievances (although many of them repeatedly show the poor judgment of electing her to Congress).

 

Still, the crux of the matter is that U.S. immigration policy should be about serving our national interest rather than the interests of immigrants. We should select as carefully as possible for newcomers who want to embrace America and are willing and able to thrive in an adopted homeland that they love.