AUGUSTA, Maine — Maine became the latest state on Wednesday to request a federal waiver that would allow asylum seekers to more quickly seek a job after arriving in the country.
While the push is politically popular, it is not going to work because the authority to change these rules rests with a Congress that has not acted on this issue. It has also been paralyzed for almost a full month by a lack of a House speaker until Republicans finally succeeded Wednesday in picking Mike Johnson of Louisiana to lead the chamber.
If President Joe Biden or his administration tried to waive this part of federal law, the move would face litigation that would keep asylum seekers from benefiting from any changes to work authorization rules, experts said Wednesday.
There is “no doubt that lawsuits would be filed before a single person even had a chance to apply” and the prospects of asylum seekers actually getting permits while lawsuits are worked out would be slim, Beth Stickney, a Portland-based immigration attorney, said.
This has not stopped officials in states including Maine, Massachusetts and New York from asking President Joe Biden’s administration to let them issue work permits to asylees faster than allowed under federal law, which currently requires asylum seekers to wait 180 days after filing an asylum application to receive authorization to work.
While precise numbers are tough to pin down, Maine’s largest city of Portland this year has received at least 1,600 newcomers primarily from Africa, with smaller communities like Sanford also grappling with how to accommodate asylum seekers amid a statewide housing crunch.
“While Maine is a welcoming state, these surges are straining municipal and state budgets and stretching already too scarce housing resources even thinner,” Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman wrote in Wednesday’s letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Maine’s unemployment rate of 2.7 percent coincides with the state facing a worker shortage, especially in health care, education and construction. Maine is also projected to have 750,000 job openings through 2030, and Gov. Janet Mills’ administration wants to attract 75,000 new workers by 2029.
By allowing asylum seekers to work sooner, Fortman wrote Maine could start to handle “the financial and other resource-based issues the state and municipalities face while tackling our workforce shortage and fulfilling the dream of asylum seekers to stand on their own and contribute to our society.”
Fortman’s letter was a result of the Legislature passing a bipartisan resolve this year directing the Department of Labor to seek such a waiver. That was an extension of political agreement in Maine’s congressional delegation.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Democrat representing Maine’s 1st District, introduced a bill to reduce the 180-day waiting period for asylee work authorization eligibility to 30 days. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins, a Republican, and Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, are cosponsoring a bill that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed.
Last year, Pingree signed on to a letter making a similar request to the one Maine made to no avail. The odds of this legislation advancing in Congress are also low. The House speaker debacle delayed work for three weeks and lawmakers must now focus on reaching a new funding package by Nov. 17 to avert a government shutdown.
Pingree’s bill — rather than waiver requests — “provide a better path forward for a state like Maine,” Ruben Torres, communication and policy advocate lead for the Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition, said.
“We hope that with the House having a speaker again, and renewed efforts from advocacy organizations, we can make a push to bring an Asylum Seeker Worker Authorization Act to a vote,” Torres said, referring to the title of Pingree’s bill.
Immigration law experts have said the work authorization timeline cannot get changed without an act of Congress, with the partisan divide between the Republican-controlled House and Democratic-led Senate meaning bills must have broad bipartisan support to pass.
“Given our dysfunctional Congress these days, that is unlikely to happen,” Cornell University immigration law professor Stephen Yale-Loehr said.
Lawmakers in New York, where more than 100,000 asylum seekers have arrived in New York City since last year, are considering going around the federal government to let asylum seekers work sooner. That is similar to an idea floated by former Maine Gov. Paul LePage, a Republican who lost to Mills in the 2022 election.
The Maine Department of Labor had no comment on the legality of the request apart from what was mentioned in Fortman’s letter, spokesperson Jessica Picard said.
“We encourage the federal government to hear those requests from states,” Picard said.
