Mike Lindell, CEO of My Pillow and a Republican candidate for governor of Minnesota, suggested he would give amnesty to illegal immigrants during an interview with the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Lindell’s plan includes a “six-month moratorium” where illegal immigrants could apply for a visa that would let them stay in the United States indefinitely, provided they don’t commit a crime. He also appeared to open the door to illegal immigrants potentially applying for citizenship once they had gotten the conditional work permits.
The Washington Examiner contacted Lindell after the initial interview for clarification on his comments on a pathway to citizenship.
MIKE LINDELL URGED TO WITHDRAW ‘ABSURD’ ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION AMNESTY PROPOSAL
“There is no amnesty!! I done [sic] have a policy??? Not sure what you are talking about ??” Lindell responded via text.
Following the interview, Lindell took to social media to explain that his words were taken out of context. The Washington Examiner has published the transcript below. The entire conversation between Lindell and the Washington Examiner lasted more than 50 minutes. The published transcript includes the portion of the interview in which Lindell discusses his proposal, about a 13-minute segment.
Lindell: CNN’s coming here tomorrow (Wednesday), and we’re doing, I’m doing a big, big forum myself, where I’m going to be laying out my policy, part of my budget, and my immigration, illegal immigrant policy, which is going to be, that’ll probably be around the world, that policy because it, it actually, it saves everything, it changes everything.
It saves the two sides from always, “You shouldn’t ship out illegals and this is a good person because all he did, he’s never committed a crime.” I agree. I agree with both things. Bad people should go, and good people should stay.
I’m a person of second chances. If the only thing they ever did was cross the border and didn’t report back in because they were afraid of not or being re-deported. But anyway, that’s coming out tomorrow. And my policies, none of them have problem solutions, like I have, that I’m going to lay out. None of them.
Washington Examiner: Any sneak peeks of those policies that you can give?
Lindell: Yeah. Here would be one. Um, I’ll give you, I’ll give you two. I’ll give you one.
So, my, the illegal immigrants, okay, that are here, if the, if the only crime they’ve ever committed was crossing the border and then they didn’t report back in when it was time or an overstayed visa or whatever, okay, you have them.
The way this would go down, you would have, right now in Minnesota, you have 1,300 illegals here that have committed felonies. That’s murder, rape, blah blah blah, pedophile, whatever, whatever felony they committed. We’re housing them in Minnesota. It costs $85,000 a month to house or a year to house. It’s $110 million. You ship these guys out immediately. They have to do their time in their own country.
Those deals have already been made with other countries to come to get them out. Now the ones that are left, the illegals that are here. I started, I worked on this 10 years ago when I was buying cotton in California, and I was with the guy’s cotton field, and I was there buying his cotton.
And he goes, “You know what? It’s hard for me to compete with next door.” He said, “There’s two things going on. They’re hiring all the illegals. They’re avoiding paying taxes. That these are the employers, the horrible employers that are using these guys for slave labor, underpaying them [in] cash.” … And remember this was eight, nine years ago.
Washington Examiner: Yeah.
Lindell: And so I went and I met with the illegals, this is down in San Diego. I met with a lot of them, and I heard their stories. And they’re going, even getting underpaid cash, a lot of them, they’re getting money stolen from them. They get back, maybe home wherever they would be staying, they steal the money. They commit crimes against them because who are they going to tell? Because they’re going to get deported. You follow me?
Washington Examiner: Yeah.
Lindell: So, they’re living in the shadows. It’s horrible. Okay. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to have a six-month moratorium. This will be a one-time. This is what I would like. I’d like the whole United States to do this, but let’s say I did it here in Minnesota.
Six months, all the illegals here, immigrants, would have to go get what’s going to be called a work, a conditional work visa. They don’t expire, they just have conditions. So it’s a conditional work visa. You go get your fingerprints taken. You get put in the system now. You’re not a citizen. You can’t vote, but you have this card that now you can work and you can go be paying taxes, be functioning in society. And so you have six months to get this card.
Now here’s the condition to this: if you ever commit a crime? Not commit a crime. Convicted of a gross misdemeanor or more, you’re shipped out of the country. That was your chance. It’s almost like being on probation. It’s a lifetime probation. I mean, that’s it.
Unless you want to go get your, you can also go apply to be a citizen. I met with the people that are waiting in line. I went down to Florida, the immigration center there in Palm Beach, or West Palm Beach I think it was, and met with them. The people that are coming here legally, they’re standing in line a long time. It’s very expensive, but they love, they’re loving to come here. The first thing they do is learn English.
Okay, now here would be another thing that these guys, if they have these cards, could also go get a driver’s license. And if they get a driver’s license, there’s going to be another requirement in Minnesota: You have to learn English.
You cannot drive a car if you can’t read the road signs. If you don’t know English, you’re not going to be allowed with those conditional work visas to get a driver’s license. It’s going to be a part. When I used to get DWIs and alcohol tickets back in the ’80s, I had to go through years of testing, rehabilitation in order to get the privilege to drive again. Driving is a privilege, and so you would put that on there.
Now here’s another thing, the employers, the employers that are employing these. If after those six months are up, if you’re ever caught, if you’re caught hiring people for cash again, hiring people for cash, the illegals, you go to prison.
The CEO goes to prison for 90 days or to jail. There’s not going to be a fine. There’s not going to be a fine because if there’s a fine, they’ll just use that as the cost of doing business. So these people are going to be held accountable.
Now here’s what happens. The money, just in Minnesota, and I don’t have the figures, God dang it. It’s $7.5 billion that are being spent, or they’re being taxes, or wages that are being paid out illegally in Minnesota. $7.5 billion, with a B.
Okay, the taxes not paid on that, at the employer level is about, I believe, it was $800 million. At the worker level, it’s $560 million. That’s a lot of money that can come back to the taxpayers of Minnesota. And here’s a beautiful thing I’m putting on it.
Washington Examiner: Yeah.
Lindell: The illegals that are left, that didn’t come in to get that conditional visa, work visa. They’re criminals. These guys have been committing crimes against the other illegals and others because they’re not working. They’ve been committing crimes. But guess who’s going to tell on them?
We’re going to have whistleblower laws by the illegals that are now got these cards that they’re going to say, “Hey, this is the crimes these guys were doing.” Now you’re, they’re at the police, and they’re calling them out. They’re getting arrested, and they’re getting the heck out of our country.
So with this thing, in less than six months, within a year, you’ve cleaned up a whole city that everybody, you know when you have ICE coming into a city, and and you know like Minnesota, we had the two tragedies. People are out there, “They’re going, oh, they’re shipping out legals, illegal people.” No, they’re shipping out illegals, but they’re good illegals. They haven’t done anything. They might have lived here 10 years. They’re not getting the ones we want gone.
And now, what I would do is, I would take money that we’re going to get from these crooked employers. We’re going to, and I’m going to put these crooked employers, that raises, like I said, $800 million itself. You take some of that money and you put it into getting people that are standing in line to come here legally, which could include those people with those papers.
But right now it’s very expensive, $5,000 to $15,000, to stand in line. Well, people don’t have that money. So, what you do there is you make it a lot cheaper or even free, and you get these people vetted and moved through.
Now, here’s the last thing I’ll tell you: This makes your city with the illegals pretty much crime-free because if the other, if any crime is committed, and you’re out there and you’re looking for evidence, now because they’ve been fingerprinted, you know who did it. You know who did it.
… And it’s just, it’s the biggest, most common-sense solution to this problem we have in this country. I told that on a station up here, Esme Murphy, and she said, “Well, Mike, the Republicans aren’t going to like that, and maybe the president won’t like it.” And I said, “I don’t care.” I said, “This is going to work.”
In Minnesota, this is about all citizens, helping all citizens. Helping bring back our cities and making them safe again, and providing millions of dollars that these employers are stealing from us. And so that’s just one thing. And I know I told you the long version. I’m putting that in bullet points tomorrow night. It’ll be aired on, I think CNN’s coming or whatever, and I’m going to put it in a very descriptive, easy-to-read bullet points, and then, but I’ve got many, many like that.
Washington Examiner: I’m looking forward to following that tomorrow. Now, when you say these “two tragedies,” I assume that you’re referring to the Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good shootings. Am I right about that?
Lindell: Yeah, any people dying is tragic. I’m sorry, that’s the way I am. That’s who I am.
Washington Examiner: How would you take steps as governor to make sure that that doesn’t happen in the future?
Lindell: I just told you the biggest step because when ICE doesn’t have to come in, and all they have to do, you cooperate with ICE, and you say, “Hey, we’ve got in our county jails and our prisons. Hey, we’ve got more to pick up.” They never have to go into the neighborhood then because you’ve got your whistleblowers. You’ve got everybody. They’re policing now, the illegals that get the good illegals. They’re gonna say, “Here, these guys are bad guys.” Nobody wants rapists in their neighborhood or whatever. Vet those people that they’re looking for, these really bad illegals, will be out, and you would have a pickup station at all the jails like it’s supposed to be.
The other thing I will do in Minneapolis is Minneapolis has the strictest, I believe, has the strictest protest laws in the nation. Now you wouldn’t know that, would you? You know, we let Black Lives Matter block off [Interstate] 35W, our main highway, about eight, nine years ago. You just got to enforce the protest laws that are already in place because you can’t let protesters break laws while they’re protesting. I firmly believe in protesting, but you certainly do not get to break laws, impede people from getting [from] Point A [to Point B]. … A lot of them couldn’t get to their houses. They’re going, “Show us your ID, show us you’re not ICE,” and breaking over 100 car windows.
These are things to be enforced. You can’t protest. You can’t burn down buildings in protest. I mean, I mean, these are common-sense things. You gotta. If a protest has to be in one area, you have to get a permit. These are all laws that are on the books, so I don’t have to. All they, all they just have to do is be enforced. And Minneapolis also has, and St. Paul, has many very tragic homeless, like a lot of cities do.
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But we’re really, it’s really getting bad here. We have the homeless, people in addiction in the streets, and people that have mental problems. And for 12 years after I quit crack cocaine in 2009, I spent millions upon millions of dollars, probably upwards of $15 million, helping out the inner cities and these programs with the people in addiction, people that needed mental health, people that needed, that were homeless. People that just had any need. That’s where I was.
I put millions into that, as did my company, so that platform, and I use private sector money. I set up this platform, so we’re all certainly going to use that right away when I’m governor, so we can subsidize these programs and adapt the programs to make sure they work good.