AUGUSTA, Maine — In debates and on the campaign trail, former Gov. Paul LePage has laid out a simple idea to confront a labor shortage and high food costs: put asylum seekers to work.
But it directly contravenes federal laws that bar them from working for months after their arrival. The Republican has hinted at a confrontation with President Joe Biden on that and even said at a debate early this month that the state could issue its own IDs to expedite things.
None of it would solve the problem. Working without permits exposes migrants to deportation and businesses to fines. While Maine’s congressional delegation has long wanted to change laws to allow them to work faster, Congress has been paralyzed on larger immigration issues.
“They would love to be able to do it in a minute,” Dana Connors, CEO of the Maine State Chamber of Commerce, said of businesses’ reaction to LePage’s idea, “but I can’t imagine that they would want to take the risk or the gamble, knowing that on the other side of that there would be a risk to both the asylum seeker but also the business itself.”
This idea is at the nexus of a few campaign-trail themes in LePage’s campaign against the Democratic governor. He has looked to soften a hard line on immigration that he held during his eight years in office, when he accused immigrants of spreading infectious diseases.
Mills reversed LePage to allow more asylum seekers to get state and local aid, something that has been credited with driving immigrants — mostly from African countries — to Maine over the past few years. It has intersected with a housing crisis in the southern part of the state, where burgeoning immigrant communities have drawn more.
LePage has also touted his work idea when discussing the stark labor shortage that has marked the COVID-19 pandemic here and nationally. At a Tuesday debate hosted by the Bangor Daily News and CBS 13 on Tuesday, LePage brought it up when pressed on an idea to set money aside for Maine farmers in order to boost food production and drive down prices.
If Biden can “violate his oath of office by bringing people from the southern border into Maine,” LePage said, “then we should be able to put them to work.”
While the issue predates Biden, his administration has seen a record surge of roughly 1 million asylum seekers who are allowed to be in the country while awaiting proceedings that take years to finish. They cannot work for at least 180 days after arriving before getting a work permit.
After being asked to clarify LePage’s point, Brent Littlefield, a strategist for the former governor, said he was referring to “ridiculous” border policies that Mills has embraced to allow migrants to “live off welfare.” He referenced Mills’ 2019 move, underscoring LePage’s opposition to it.
“I do not think we are going to have a negotiation between administrations in a newspaper,” he said in response to a way to speed up the work-permit process.
But there is nothing to negotiate over, other than to change federal immigration laws, said Beth Stickney, the executive director of the Maine Business Immigration Coalition.
She noted debate in Congress on a measure that would allow a path to citizenship for farmworkers in the country illegally and is awaiting passage in the Senate, which recognizes estimates finding that roughly half of the national farm labor force is undocumented.
If policymakers wanted to ease things for farms, the state would invest money in processing or housing in agriculture-heavy areas, said Julie Ann Smith, the executive director of the Maine Farm Bureau. The Mills administration awarded $20 million in federal funds to farms in August that she said could have gone further if they were not divided across farms.
At a September forum, LePage clashed with a small group of farmers after saying farms here are not productive enough and prices were too high. Smith said his comments have not recognized that Maine imports roughly 90 percent of food and has relatively small farms on modest profits.
“They’re not making enormous profits even though food is more expensive,” she said.