PORTLAND, Maine — The display case at the front of Ahram Halal Market contains bills from South Africa, Burundi, Pakistan, Qatar and Jordan.
“And this is money from my country,” employee Wally Muhsin said Thursday afternoon, holding a bill from Iraq.
Customers have left the array of money as mementos from their lives before coming to Maine.
In some cases, that old money may be all some new immigrants to Maine have starting in August, if the city does not step in where the state has stepped out: to continue providing about $5 million a year to help immigrants seeking asylum pay for rent, food and other expenses.
The bulk of asylum seekers receiving General Assistance are in Portland, which is why the city delayed setting a budget for the next fiscal year, starting July 1.
The city has about $350,000 in funds for that purpose, which Mayor Michael Brennan said Monday would be enough for one month of payments to around 1,000 people seeking asylum. What comes after that runs out, he said, could be a “humanitarian crisis.”
General Assistance is a program that provides emergency aid for people in need of food, housing, medicine or other essential needs. State and municipal governments share funding responsibilities for the safety net program, which is administered by cities and towns.
Gov. Paul LePage, however, stopped state payments to cover the city’s costs for that program, arguing and winning a court decision about the state’s obligation to pay General Assistance to “legal non-residents” who face a six-month delay or longer between applying for asylum and getting permission to seek work.
A last-ditch effort to extend state funding of General Assistance for asylum seekers received a boost Thursday, when the Maine Senate voted 29-5 for a bill that would allow asylum seekers to retain eligibility for the program for 24 months.
Across Forest Avenue, business owner Aimee Nyirakanyana said she owes everything to having General Assistance during that asylum application period.
Without that, she said, “I would be homeless and not have this business.”
She’s now hoping to grow that business, as she looks to move from retail sales of clothes and goods imported from her native Rwanda and elsewhere in Africa to a wholesale model. She’s looking for space that can support a warehouse and have access for truck deliveries.
Nyirakanyana said the situation with General Assistance wasn’t the primary factor in that change — it was managing 10-hour workdays with two children — but she estimates that about 80 percent of her customers get some form of General Assistance.
But there are other businesses that also benefit from the payments, she said, including landlords who receive rent through General Assistance for asylum seekers and grocery stores.
“If those people go away, all of the landlords will cry,” she said.
Those with friends elsewhere in the country will likely seek help there, she said. For others, like Maurice Namwira, a former manager of a human rights organization in the Democratic Republic of Congo, it could mean the turmoil of being on the streets.
Namwira said General Assistance has allowed him to get treatment for a back problem and stay otherwise healthy while he looks for work.
Immigrant advocacy groups earlier this week stepped up the broader concerns about what the measure would mean for the region’s economy, removing a “bridge” for recent immigrants to find a job and start making a living in Maine.
Chris Hall, executive director of the Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce, said earlier this week that losing that population will have not only personal consequences, but broader economic ones.
“We are worried about losing some of the most talented people in our community,” Hall said.
Coastal Enterprises Inc., which helped Nyirakanyana with financing to start her business in 2011, said in a presentation to the Portland Chamber that evidence suggests the city is not making the most of having new immigrants to the state to employ.
In 2013, CEI found that while the city’s total unemployment rate was 3.6 percent compared with 5.4 percent, the rate of foreign-born job seekers who were unable to find work was much higher — 11.3 percent compared with 6.1 percent nationally.
The same trend held for poverty rates. About 57 percent of the city’s foreign-born population is living below the federal poverty level, compared with 18 percent nationally.
And since 2010, CEI found from census data that immigrants to Maine have much-desired traits for the aging state: relative youth, skills and ambition. The group found the average age of immigrants is 27, compared to 43.6 percent of the U.S.-born population. About 42 percent of those immigrants are enrolled in college or graduate school, CEI found, compared with 27.8 percent of Mainers born in the United States.
And international immigration is entirely responsible for the city gaining population from 2000 to 2013, with foreign-born residents doubling during that time while the native-born population declined by about 3,000.
Muhsin, back across Forest Avenue, did not come to the U.S. seeking asylum or receive General Assistance funds in Maine, but he has gotten food stamps. He said they helped him get through patches without work, but he’s been eager to pay his own way.
“I’m working for myself and try to build myself and am working hard,” he said, noting he hopes to start his own business eventually.
His brother, he said, is working toward becoming a pharmacist. His wife is studying to work as a nurse. And he’s moving up next week, two months after gaining U.S. citizenship and after investing about $4,000 to get a commercial truck driver’s license. He starts work Monday, delivering for Pepsi.
He’ll be able to support his family on the pay he earns in that job, he said, making around $1,000 a week.
Nyirakanyana was confident about her financial future, too, saying she’s working with a few brokers to find a new space for her business. But, sizing up the square footage of the Forest Avenue store she’s vacating later this month, she wished she had more for the asylum seekers who stand to lose state support.
“I wish I could have a big, big home like this and bring them all in,” she said.