Mainers are accustomed to hearing antipathy toward refugees and other immigrants from our state’s top elected official.
Gov. Paul LePage has said asylum-seekers bring disease and the “ ziki-fly,” made fun of Bulgarian and Indian immigrant workers, sought to exclude undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers from receiving state-funded public assistance, and moved to withdraw Maine from the federal refugee resettlement program.
With President Donald Trump now occupying the nation’s highest political office, the level of rhetoric against refugees seems greater than at any point in recent history.
In his first month in office, Trump has signed an executive order temporarily banning all refugees, referred to refugees as “ SO DANGEROUS!” on Twitter, and suggested that Sweden’s welcoming approach to refugees has caused an increase in crime. (Even with recent riots, it has not.)
Despite the rise of such anti-refugee political pronouncements, many Mainers support refugees, as the overwhelming response to a BDN article about the first refugee family to be relocated to a small town in Maine shows.
More than 75 people reached out to the Kaluta family, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, after learning of their feelings of isolation. The article, published one week before Trump took office, chronicled the challenges facing the family as they adjust to life in Thomaston, population 2,781.
Readers offered the family land on a farm in Union, babysitting services, and support relocating to Portland or Lewiston, should the family ever decide to leave the Thomaston area. People also offered to donate books, toys and art supplies, to be pen pals with the family, to host them for dinner, and to teach them how to speak English, drive and row.
The outpouring of support for the Kaluta family echoes the protests that erupted in airports across the country, including in Maine, after Trump signed the executive order temporarily banning refugees, among other groups, from entering the country. Thousands turned up to show their support of refugees and the other immigrants affected by the ban.
There are, of course, many who support the president’s executive order, which courts have since blocked: those who believe refugees are a threat. But they don’t appear to be in the majority.
Forty-nine percent of Americans agreed with the executive order, and 41 percent disagreed, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll from early February. And in early January, fewer than half of the public, 46 percent, said “a large number of refugees leaving countries such as Iraq and Syria” was a major threat to the well-being of the United States, according to the Pew Research Center. About a third considered this a minor threat, while 16 percent said it was not a threat.
What’s been made abundantly clear in recent months — through the airport protests and response to articles like the one about the Kaluta family — is that a sizeable number of Mainers welcome refugees. Perhaps, even, helping more new refugee families feel welcome in our state can be an effective way to resist the anti-immigrant policies of the administrations of Trump and LePage. The best way to counteract hate is to be a good neighbor.
