It's been a busy first week on the job for Donald Trump.
On Wednesday, the freshly inaugurated president took first steps on his "extreme vetting" promises to gridlock immigration into the United States, and signed an executive order to construct a border wall with Mexico. He's also poised to punish sanctuary cities like Minneapolis and St. Paul – potentially halting millions of dollars in funding – that have promised to buck federal laws in order to protect immigrant communities.
On Friday, Trump signed another order barring all refugees for four months, and those from war-torn Syria indefinitely.
It's yet to be seen how these tough-on-immigration policies will play out nationally, but they're almost certain to have dramatic implications for Minnesota's increasingly diverse population.
Over the past 15 years, Minnesota has seen more than 40,000 people move here as refugees, meaning the state is offering humanitarian protection to people fleeing unsafe areas of the world, according to United States Refugee Admissions Program data.
A majority – more than 16,000 – came from Somalia, contributing to Minnesota becoming home to the largest population of immigrants from the Eastern African country in North America. Last year, about 3,000 refugees moved to Minnesota, nearly half of whom came from Somalia.
Beyond refugees, it's much harder to count how many people come directly from other countries to Minnesota through other immigration channels. Many people end up here after first arriving in other parts of the U.S.
But we can measure what share of Minnesota's population is made up of people who were born in foreign countries and now reside here. As of 2015, about 8 percent of the state's 5.4 million residents were born in foreign countries, according to the U.S. Census American Community Survey data.
