The BDN Editorial Board operates independently from the newsroom, and does not set policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com.
Last month, the Maine Department of Labor asked federal officials for a waiver to allow asylum seekers in the state to work more quickly.
Currently, those seeking asylum in the U.S. can’t even apply for a work permit for 180 days after their arrival.
This makes little sense. It leaves those seeking asylum dependent on government and charitable support for the basics of their daily lives. At a time when Maine faces an ongoing shortage of workers, asylum seekers, many of whom have skills and work experience, could help fill gaps in the state’s workforce.
In May, lawmakers passed and Gov. Janet Mills signed a bipartisan resolution directing the labor commissioner to seek the waiver.
Although there is no provision in federal law to allow such a waiver, the request strengthens the case for action from Congress.
U.S. Sen. Susan Collins has introduced the Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act in the Senate, and U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of the 1st District has introduced a similarly titled bill in the House of Representatives. U.S. Sen. Angus King is a co-sponsor of Collins’ bill, and collectively members of the Maine delegation have been working on this issue for several years. Both bills would shorten the work authorization waiting period to 30 days.
These are common-sense bills. However, they may be doomed by politics, which have stalled most immigration reforms in recent years.
Given the difficulty of passing immigration-related legislation in the current Congress, pushes from Maine and other states that are struggling with influxes of immigrants seeking asylum continue to draw needed attention to the issue.
“By allowing asylum seekers to work earlier, the state believes that we can begin to address — and mitigate — 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,” Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Fortman wrote in her Oct. 25 letter to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Fortman noted that Maine is projected to have a total of 750,000 job openings in the decade through 2030 and that attracting new workers is a priority in the state’s 10-year economic strategy. That plan sets a target of attracting 75,000 new workers from within and outside of Maine by 2029. It should be clear that not all of these workers would be immigrants, and certainly not all of them would be asylum seekers. One of the plan’s top priorities is to encourage people who are already in Maine but not working to join the state’s labor pool.
In addition to workforce issues, communities, especially Portland, have scrambled to house an influx of more than 1,600 asylum seekers this year. Cities like Portland and South Portland have allocated millions of dollars to house these new arrivals.
It’s a reasonable solution to allow those who fled their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S. to work more quickly, which makes it all the more frustrating that Congress has yet to fix it.
We realize that many people who petition for asylum in the U.S. have their applications denied and some people worry that allowing asylum seekers to work sooner could lead to additional security complications in cases where their asylum is ultimately denied.
But those seeking asylum are here legally and living in our communities now. Allowing them to work more quickly would help them and the Maine communities hosting them.