LEWISTON, Maine - The Lewiston City Council has voted 6 - 1 to continue paying General Assistance to about 200 current asylum seekers who are lawfully present in the city. But Lewiston also followed the Portland City Council's lead and voted to stop providing GA to new asylum seekers who arrive in Maine.
The action comes after a Superior Court judge upheld the LePage administration's decision to end state reimbursement for municipalities that offer aid to certain immigrants. And it continues a struggle that some say can only be resolved at the federal level.
Lewiston's vote followed an emotional public hearing in which asylum seekers such as Herve Malembee, formerly of the Congo, urged the council not to eliminate their safety net. Malembee says he left his wife and young son and was forced to flee his country after becoming a target of the government.
He arrived empty handed in Maine less than a year ago. "GA pays for (sic) me house, which makes my life pretty better," he said. "Cutting off GA means, 'We don't need you, asylum seeker,' " he said.
As a student rights activist in the Congo, Malembee says he felt useful and needed. Starting over in Lewiston has been challenging, he says, but it wouldn't be possible without support from General Assistance. "GA," Malembee told the council, "is like a mother to me." He says he only needs it for awhile, just until he gets a work permit. In the meantime, as a GA recipient, he's required to do volunteer work in return for housing and food, 32 hours a week.
"First of all they sent me in the Public Works. I was doing - you know, we swept the roads," he says. "We do all stuff they are doing in Public Works to make clean the city, and when they discover some of my background they send me in Trinity Jubilee Center." Malembee is now working as an interpreter and managing other volunteers at the Center. He has a college degree in economics.
And Portland Mayor Michael Brennan says that's exactly why Malembee and so many other asylum seekers and refugees are needed in Maine. Some reports have ranked the state 47th in the country for economic development, and Brennan says one reason for the ranking is because it's one of the oldest states with an aging workforce.
"What we try to point out is that a significant portion of asylum seekers, close to 50 percent, that come to the city of Portland have college degrees and they're under 40 years of age," Brennan says. "So it would make all the sense in the world that we would be doing more things to attract people here as opposed to discouraging them."
"I am all for asylum seekers, if the federal government will either give us an opportunity to make a decision on them, or they fund it while they're here and they're not able to work," said Gov. Paul LePage earlier this week.
Echoing a complaint of many state and local leaders, Gov. LePage told a group of supporters that caring for asylum seekers should be the responsibility of the federal government. Federal law prohibits them from working for at least six months. And being granted asylum is a complicated legal process that can take several years.
But immigration advocates say the Republican governor fuels misinformation and immigrant scapegoating when he makes statements like this one: "And what nobody wants to talk about is 70 percent - 70 percent - of the asylum seekers are sent home," LePage said earlier this week. "That is not the way we run good governance."
"I'm not sure where he's getting those statistics," says Sue Roche, the executive director of the Portland-based Immigrant Legal Advocacy Project, which provides free and low-cost legal assistance to immigrants.
"Last year we represented 164 asylum seekers and we have a 97 percent approval rating," Roche says, "which is certainly not the nationwide percentage, but it's only the people who would be getting ordered deported at the very end of their cases that would actually be sent home. So, I'm not sure where that statistic is coming from but it's certainly a lot higher than the numbers that we've seen."
A spokesperson for Gov. LePage did not respond to a request for comment about the statistic, but Adrienne Bennett did confirm that the governor plans to try to stop the city of Portland from continuing to provide GA to about 900 current asylum seekers. She did not say how.
Lewiston will also continue to assist current asylum seekers, but both cities will no longer offer GA to new applicants arriving in the state. And that's a concern for Portland Mayor Michael Brennan who says the state is turning its back on them.
"We need to continue to work with the federal government because the responsibility truly lies with the state government and the federal government and this is a statewide issue," he says.
Maine is reportedly one of the few states that offers General Assistance to asylum seekers but other states and some municipalities offer a patchwork of housing, food and other assistance to new immigrants. And, in New York, asylum seekers qualify for the state's Medicaid program under state law. Claudia Calhoon, director of health advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition says that protection is important.
"Certainly there are many states that are receiving different immigrant populations who don't have that kind of endorsement or sort of commitment from their state government to provide services," Calhoon says, "and it makes their work much, much harder."
Here in Maine, asylum seeker Herve Malembee of Lewiston is hoping to get his work permit in the next week or two so he can find a job and let go of General Assistance. His experience so far has been worth it, he says: He's in the most powerful country in the world and he feels safe.
