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BRANDT WILLIAMS: Researchers for the Minnesota Community Project conducted surveys and focus groups that reached over 1,200 Minnesotans living in urban, exurban, and rural areas. The harshest criticism of immigrants were exhibited by some of the white, exurban residents in the focus groups.

A woman from Anoka County said, immigrants, quote, "should stay home." A woman from Scott County said, immigrants, quote, "are only up here to have their babies to get the money." Laurie Dennis did not participate in the study, but shares similar views.

LAURIE DENNIS: I lived here my whole life and paid taxes, and I see so much of our money going to not the people that made the state or kept the state what it is. It's going to all these other people that are coming in.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Dennis is white, 45 years old, and works in a dry cleaners in Downtown Chaska. A sign that says, proud to be an American, sits in the bottom corner of the store's front window. Chaska is located in Carver County, one of the exurban counties examined in the study.

10 years ago, about 250 Hispanic people lived in the county. Today, Hispanic numbers have increased nearly tenfold due largely to an influx of immigrants from Mexico. Dennis says she believes the Mexican immigrants are exempt from paying taxes.

DENNIS: I don't get any handouts. I don't even qualify $8 an hour for any medical assistance. So it's like I've lived here my whole life, and they just come and they just take, and they don't give back to the community.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Dennis says she has Mexican immigrant friends who are undocumented but get around the system by using fake identification and falsely claiming dependence on tax forms. And like some of the participants in the study, she says immigrants, legal and illegal, are a burden on government entitlement programs.

DENNIS: But a lot of the locals, I think, are really angry. And I think it's mostly because there are a lot of elderly and people like that here that can't get help and they feel like, I don't know, they feel like they're being cheated, I think.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: According to the report, 27% of all respondents said immigrants were a drain on public schools. Fewer respondents, 25%, say immigrants are hard working and make a valuable contribution to Minnesota. The authors of the study say some of the attitudes expressed in the surveys and focus groups about immigrants are not Minnesota nice.

MITCH PEARLSTEIN: Well, Minnesota does have a certain progressive, collectivist, communal, up North tradition. There's no question about that.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Mitch Pearlstein is the founder and President of the Center of the American Experiment, a Minnesota-based conservative think tank.

MITCH PEARLSTEIN: When talking about questions of immigration, though, immigration in the state and in this nation has always been very complex, chock-full of tensions.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Pearlstein is a descendant of Eastern European Jewish immigrants. He says unlike the days when his grandparents sailed by the Statue of liberty, today's immigrants have less incentive to assimilate. Pearlstein says that's due in part to what he calls radical multiculturalism, a practice that concentrates too much on celebrating people's differences rather than their similarities. He says that makes people less inclined to learn English and more inclined to separate themselves by race and ethnicity. And he says it's easier for immigrants of today to rely on government assistance.

MITCH PERLSTEIN: You go back to the latter part of the 19th century, early part of the 20th century, to be an immigrant it was real, real tough quite frequently, not that it's a piece of cake now. But without governmental programs if a family could make it, if a person couldn't make it, quite frequently they went back to their home country.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Kathy Fennelly is a professor of public affairs who teaches at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute. Her specialty is immigration and public policy. Fennelly says it's true that many early immigrants did return home because they couldn't make it here. However, she says there's a lot of myths and misinformation about immigrants here in Minnesota.

KATHY FENNELLY: The problem is stereotypes. The problem is that we want to and we often do make statements that are supposed to cover everyone.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: For instance, Fennelly says assertions that Minnesota's European immigrants were more likely than today's immigrants to assimilate are inaccurate. She says it wasn't uncommon for European immigrants who came to Minnesota to never learn English. And some of those groups named their towns after the European cities they came from like New Ulm and New Prague.

KATHY FENNELLY: Thirdly, there is enormous misinformation about the benefits that immigrants get, especially since welfare reform in the 1996 immigration reform and welfare reform, which essentially stripped benefits from legal immigrants, as well as from certainly, from undocumented immigrants.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Fennelly, who has reviewed the study by the Minnesota Community Project, says it appears that most of the survey respondents were confusing immigrants with refugees. For the most part, Hmong and Somalis are refugees because they're fleeing countries where they face persecution and death.

Mexican immigrants, by and large, have come to the US and Minnesota to work and earn better wages than those in Mexico. Refugees receive short-term support from the government. Mexican immigrants who work are not exempt from taxes, says Fennelly. A study done by a researcher at the University of Minnesota in 2000 estimated that undocumented workers contribute $1 billion per year to the state's economy.

If there are ill feelings toward the Mexican immigrant community in Chaska, restaurant owners Miguel and Letitia Jiminez haven't experienced it.

MIGUEL JIMINEZ: Tamales, nachos, tostadas, quesadillas.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Miguel runs down some of the menu items at the restaurant, which he just opened earlier in the week. He's been in Minnesota for 10 years. Before he came to Minnesota, he attended college in Florida. Their children go to school in nearby Shakopee. Miguel says the children like school and haven't experienced any problems there. He says he doesn't speak English well and asks for help from his wife.

MIGUEL JIMINEZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

LETITIA JIMINEZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

MIGUEL JIMINEZ: [SPEAKING SPANISH]

BRANDT WILLIAMS: How is it living here? I mean, are you feel comfortable? Is it easy living here? Is it a quiet town?

MIGUEL JIMINEZ: It's quiet. A quiet town.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: Chaska city officials have made efforts to keep relations between the Mexican immigrant and white communities smooth. They've sponsored public dialogues and panel discussions about race and culture. Members of the police force are trying to speak Spanish.

Chaska barbershop owner Glen Gehring says, for the most part, he doesn't think there's a great deal of inter-ethnic tension in the town. Gehring is white and has lived in Chaska for 32 years. He says there may be isolated incidents of problems here and there. But he says, for the most part, people like the cultural and culinary diversity the Mexican immigrant population has brought.

GLEN GEHRING: But some of the things that I hear as a barber, I just hear people that want-- they want people to, say, conform to, say, I'll just use the term "American culture" as far as that goes.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: And speaking English and that sort of thing.

GLEN GEHRING: Yeah, I think it's natural for people to want that.

BRANDT WILLIAMS: The Minnesota Community Project is holding a public event to discuss the findings of the report tomorrow at the University of Minnesota. Brandt Williams, Minnesota Public Radio.