Republican gubernatorial hopeful and MyPillow purveyor Mike Lindell wants to impose a six-month, one-time amnesty period for illegal immigrants living in Minnesota.“I’d like the whole United States to do this, but let’s say I did it here in Minnesota,” Lindell told the Washington Examiner in a Tuesday interview. “Six months, all the illegal immigrants would have to go get what’s going to be called a conditional work visa.”Lindell shared his proposal ahead of a Wednesday forum where he plans to unveil a broader policy platform. The businessman and born-again Christian rose to prominence as CEO of MyPillow, which he founded after a long battle with drug addiction. More recently, he gained a national platform for alleging that election insecurity and fraud riddled the 2020 presidential election.
“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 being re-deported,” Lindell said.Lindell described how he came to understand the intricacies of illegal immigration during trips to California to source cotton for his pillows.“I met with the illegals down in San Diego,” Lindell said. “I met with a lot of them and I heard their stories.”Under Lindell’s proposal, Minnesota would institute a six-month deportation “moratorium,” during which illegal immigrants could register for the conditional visas. The visas would not expire, and they would only be available for applicants with clean criminal histories. Lindell specified that illegal immigrants would be fingerprinted upon registration.“Now, you’re not a citizen,” Lindell said. “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.”
