Daily Digest: Immigrants in the workforce

Good morning and welcome to Friday. Hope you had a good week. Here's the Digest.

1. As the White House and others are offering proposals for more restrictive immigration policies, Census data released Thursday shows just how reliant Minnesota is on immigrants for its work force. The numbers show about one in every 10 people in the state's work force was born in a another country. The state's industry leaders say immigrants are needed to grow Minnesota’s economy and address a labor shortage. (MPR News)

2. There's an intra-party fight underway among two Republican candidates for governor. Keith Downey the former state GOP chair, fired the first salvo this week on social media by accusing state Rep. Matt Dean of bailing out rather than trying to kill the statewide health insurance exchange known as MNsure. Downey claims Dean used his position as chair of a committee to “prop up” MNsure by advancing a reinsurance bill last session. The measure provides subsidies aimed at stabilizing the cost of private insurance plans. “He could have refused to hear the bill in his committee,” Downey wrote. “He could have led a charge to vote against passing it on the House floor. But he didn’t.” Dean said Downey got it wrong, because he voted against the final version. Dean also said the reinsurance bill had nothing to do with killing or not killing MNsure. “Stating that MNsure would be eliminated without this program is either embarrassingly ill-informed or telling an outright lie,” Dean said. (MPR News)

3. An investigation into who leaked confidential information about a University of Minnesota athletic official has ended without finding who did it.  The investigation, which was requested by the Board of Regents in May, cost $74,400 and took about 150 hours to complete, the university reported Thursday. But in the end, it failed to uncover who told KSTP-TV that Randy Handel, an associate athletic director, had been disciplined for violating the U's sexual harassment policy. "The results of the review were inconclusive — information reviewed did not identify the source of the private personnel information," the university said in a statement released Thursday. (Star Tribune)

4. A leader in Facebook's civics engagement unit told a Minnesota audience Thursday that the social media company is cooperating with federal authorities probing how the platform was used by attempted election meddlers from Russia last year. Sharon Yang, a manager of Facebook's Global Politics and Government Outreach team, shared limited details during a forum at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey School on the intersection between social media and elections.  Yang said Facebook has deactivated nearly 500 Russian-linked accounts behind ads attempting to sow division in the U.S. presidential campaign. Facebook disclosed last week that $100,000 in ads were purchased through the accounts deemed to be fake. "Even with this small amount we take this very, very seriously and we shared our findings with U.S. authorities that are investigating election-related issues and we will continue to investigate as well," Yang said. (MPR News)

5. A provocative exhibit about the University of Minnesota’s history of segregation and anti-Semitism has prompted U officials to assemble a committee to confront that past. President Eric Kaler announced the formation of the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee on University History. The exhibit unearths long-buried information about the efforts of well-known university administrators to segregate housing, spy on Jewish students and quash student activism. It “highlights actions by some in the past that we condemn today,” Kaler wrote. The advisory committee, he said, will “guide our thinking about appropriate modern responses to historical issues on our campuses.” (Star Tribune)

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