The LePage administration says it's scouring its welfare rolls to ferret out fraud and abuse by immigrants, and to ensure taxpayer money isn't flowing to would-be terrorists. The announcement follows the recent revelation of an Iranian refugee from Maine who died fighting for the terror group ISIS, and a mysterious leak to a Boston newspaper that the man and his family received benefits. Only a small percentage of legal non-citizens use two large welfare programs, but statistics may do little to change the supercharged politics of immigrant welfare.
Shortly after news broke that Adnan Fazeli was killed last year while fighting for ISIS, Gov. Paul LePage labeled President Obama's immigration policies "an utter failure." A day later, the Boston Herald cited state officials in a story that asserted Fazeli received welfare benefits while he was in Maine. And later, Department of Health and Human Services Commisioner Mary Mayhew told WSCH that her department had already investigated welfare cases that led them to call the FBI.
"Several cases include concerns around criminal activity and terrorism," Mayhew said.
Fazeli immigrated to the United States while President George W. Bush was in the White House. His reported receipt of welfare has not been confirmed by DHHS, which is prohibited from disclosing such information and has since denied that it was the source of the leak to the Boston Herald. And last year, the Office of Attorney General successfully prosecuted 36 cases of welfare fraud out of over 100 referrals from DHHS. It's unclear whether non-citizen cases were among the agency's referrals, but none of the convictions, or the over $460,000 in restitution settlements, involved non-citizen welfare recipients.
And so far, Fazeli is the only refugee who has resettled here to ever be implicated in terrorist activities or as an ISIS recruit.
But those facts are unlikely to influence polarized attitudes about immigration, welfare and terrorism, according to Mark Brewer a political science professor at the University of Maine.
"This is certainly one of those times where reality barely matters, if at all," says Brewer. "He (Fazeli) could be the only person that fits out there and it still doesn't matter."
Brewer says, politically speaking, the Fazeli case is a trifecta for LePage and his supporters in the Maine Republican Party.
"It's really like a win, win, win for Republicans," he says.
Brewer says the controversy hits across three key issues that Republicans have successfully used to their advantage. Those issues also happen to be a key to the platform championed by GOP presidential hopeful Donald Trump. He hit three during a recent rally in Portland when he suggested that Somali refugees had taxed that state's safety net in Minnesota while forming an enclave of potential terror recruits. Trump said refugees could be the great "Trojan Horse of our time."
Somalis are a significant immigrant population in Maine. In 2015, over 440 refugees resettled here, most from Iraq and Somali, according to data from the Catholic Charities of Maine.
Native-born Americans represent over 1.2 million of Maine's 1.3 million residents, according to the U.S. Census. Foreign born residents number just over 47,000, about 3% of the population. But concerns about immigrants, as well as welfare run high here.
In 2014, the Republican Governors Association ran an ad that asked viewers if Maine cities and towns should be allowed to use tax dollars to pay for the welfare benefits of quote "illegal immigrants." It put progressive groups and refugee advocates on the defensive, along with the campaign of Democrat Mike Michaud, the former congressman who was attempting to defeat LePage.
The governor convincingly won reelection and Republicans made strong gains in the Legislature. The pundits election postmortem cited welfare — and immigrant welfare — as a defining issue.
Democrats have tread lightly ever since.
Brewer says Democrats lose on welfare. He says the Fazeli case presents additional problems.
"But now, if I want to talk about this, I gotta to talk about welfare, I gotta about immigration and I gotta talk about terrorism," he says.
That dynamic may be why the Democratic voices opposing LePage's statements last week were confined to termed-out legislators, or those in safe districts. It may also be why the most vocal critic of the leak of Fazeli's reported receipt of welfare benefits to Boston newspaper was the Maine ACLU.
It may also be why few are questioning the LePage administration's review of non-citizen welfare recipients for abuse even though immigrants represent the vast minority of beneficiaries. For example, non-citizens represented about half of 1 percent of the families receiving cash benefits under the federal program TANF in Maine. Non-citizen food stamp recipients represented less than half of 1%.
Last year, the federal government published a study examining the barriers immigrants face in obtaining benefits. Among them? The 1996 welfare reform act pushed by former President Bill Clinton. The sweeping legislation a lot of big changes, including ending the practice of granting immigrants the same eligibility to the safety net as native born Americans.
The 20th anniversary of the welfare overhaul is today.
