Doomed to Repeat It
MN-06 Daily: June 26, 2026
Emmer named Italians and Poles as the immigrants who did it right. A century ago, they were the ones the country wrote a law to keep out.
At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference on June 25, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer told the room he was finished worrying about what he’d be called.
“Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe,” he said. “I’m done being even the least bit careful.”
Then, by his own framing — “Do you mind if I go rogue?” — he drew a line:
“Celebrate your culture, I don’t care, Italian, Polish — you know, Somali, OK? But they don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
Then
Ten years ago, Emmer described the same community in the opposite terms.
In a 2016 episode of NPR’s This American Life, he called Minnesota’s Somali population among “the fastest-assimilating populations that we’ve had.” He pushed back, then, on the idea that legal residents could be made to feel unwelcome: when you move to a community, he said, “you don’t get to slam the gate behind you and tell nobody else that they’re welcome.”
Same man. Same community. The word he reached for both times was assimilate.
Now
The two groups Emmer offered as the safe examples — Italian, Polish — were, a century ago, the immigrants the federal government built a law to stop.
The Immigration Act of 1924 set each nation’s annual quota at 2 percent of its population as counted in the 1890 census. The year was not chosen at random. 1890 predated the arrival of most Southern and Eastern Europeans, and a subcommittee shaped by the eugenics movement selected it precisely because it shrank their numbers. The result, for the two groups Emmer praised:
Italian quota: 42,057 → 5,802. A drop of 86 percent.
Polish quota: 31,146 → 6,524. A drop of 79 percent.
The charge then was the same one Emmer leveled this week: these people, it was said, did not assimilate. Italian Catholics were targeted by the Klan. Poland’s quota was pegged to 1890 — a year when, partitioned among three empires, there was no Polish nation to count.
Today pizza is American food, and an Eastern European deli like Kramarczuk’s is a Northeast Minneapolis institution.
The vote
In July 2019, the House passed a resolution condemning the use of “go back to where you came from” language aimed at members of Congress. Emmer voted no.
This week, he used the phrase himself.
Two words
Emmer’s argument turns on a single verb: assimilate. It is worth being precise about it, because it is not the same as the word people often assume.
To integrate is to become part of a whole — to join a society’s civic, economic, and political life as an equal while keeping your own customs, language, and faith. Sociologists describe it as a two-way street: the newcomer changes, and the place that receives them changes too.
To assimilate, in its older and stricter sense, is to become similar — to take on the dominant culture and let your own recede until the difference is gone. Some scholars use the two words interchangeably; others note that “assimilate” has long carried the sharper demand, and at its hardest edge has meant giving up what makes you distinct.
Emmer said he doesn’t care about anyone’s culture — “celebrate your culture, I don’t care” — and then made keeping it grounds for being told to leave. Which of the two words he meant is the whole question.
The other side
The concern Emmer gestured toward is not invented. Parts of Minnesota’s immigrant communities show low English proficiency and high poverty, and a handful of fraud cases have drawn federal charges. The strongest version of his argument is really a case for integration: a shared civic culture can ask newcomers to learn the language, follow the law, and take part in the common life — without asking anyone to erase where they came from. Plenty of Minnesotans who are not bigots believe that, and say so.
What that case does not settle is who gets told to leave once the asking is done — or whether “go the hell back” describes a policy or a people.
What he didn’t mention
Emmer did not say what “assimilate” requires, who decides when it has failed, or where a U.S. citizen born in Minneapolis is supposed to “go back” to. He has not held an in-person town hall in the Sixth District since August 9, 2023 — 1,052 days — where a constituent might have asked.
Questions for the Whip
You told the room you “don’t care” about anyone’s culture, and then said those who keep it should leave. Are you asking immigrants to integrate — to join the country’s civic and economic life — or to assimilate, to shed the culture you said you don’t care about? They are not the same thing.
In 1924 that same test was applied to Italians and Poles, and the country decided they had failed it. Who applies the test now, what is the passing grade, and where does a citizen born in Minneapolis go when he is told to go back?
The calendar
Early voting opened in Minnesota today. Any registered voter in the Sixth District can cast a primary ballot now — 46 days before the August 11 primary.
Minnesota runs an open primary: you don’t register with a party to take part. But once you pick a party on the ballot, you can vote only that party’s candidates — in every partisan race, up and down the ballot. Vote across parties and the partisan side won’t count. In the Sixth, Emmer faces Republican challenger Michael Foley; the winner meets DFL-endorsed Doug Chapin in November.
Santayana’s line gets quoted so often it has worn smooth: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
But the past here isn’t lost. The 1924 quotas are in the record. So is Emmer’s 2016 description of the same community he now says should go home. So is his 2019 vote.
Early voting started today. The question belongs to the Sixth District now: what do you do with a record like that?
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Sources
C-SPAN — Faith & Freedom Coalition Road to Majority conference, June 25, 2026
NPR, This American Life (2016)
Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed); 1921 and 1924 per-country quota allocations, Migration Policy Institute
H.Res. 489, Roll Call 482 — clerk.house.gov, July 16, 2019
Definitions: Merriam-Webster; National Academies of Sciences, The Integration of Immigrants into American Society (2015)
Minnesota Secretary of State — early/absentee voting, first day June 26, 2026; open-primary rules