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Lawrence Lockman of Bradley served four terms in the Maine House of Representatives, from 2012 to 2020. He is co-founder and president of the conservative nonprofit Maine First Project.
Just in time for the advent of the Halloween season, Maine Democrats appear to have seized on a bogeyman they apparently hope will distract voters from Gov. Janet Mills’ plan to accelerate immigration into Maine.
When I called out the fear-mongering about neo-Nazis in Maine in a column for the The Maine Wire, the Maine Democratic Party sent out a fundraising email blast, doubling down on the bogeyman narrative. Then the Bangor Daily News published a column and a letter to the editor by former Democratic state representatives hyping the presence of neo-Nazis in the woods of Springfield as an imminent threat to life and liberty in Maine.
Never mind that Maine’s apparent several dozen (at most) Nazi sympathizers don’t hold any elective offices at the state or local level and are nearly universally shunned whenever and wherever they pop up for one of their loathsome “Sieg Heil” demonstrations. What’s more, one of the two co-owners of the neo-Nazis’ Springfield acreage – besides being an activist for a Democratic candidate in the 2020 election cycle – has felony convictions that may bar him from possessing firearms. The other reportedly says he’ll be voting for Biden in 2024. Somehow these extremists’ apparent ties to the Democratic Party never made it into the pages of the BDN.
Neither of the former legislators who rebuked me for my failure to hyper-ventilate about the supposed dire threat posed by two apparent Democrats with 10 acres in northern Maine addressed Mills’ Office of New Americans proposal to facilitate and increase migrant resettlement throughout Maine.
The governor’s executive order of Aug. 2, and the accompanying press release, call for the creation of a state government Office of New Americans in part to attract new foreign-born workers to settle in Maine over the next five years. Mills says it’s part of her plan to bring 75,000 people into the state’s workforce, but take note that she hasn’t proposed creation of an Office of Young American Families Who Work and Pay Taxes to attract English-speaking U.S. citizens to move here.
There’s no mention in the order or the press release of any plans to vet immigrants, much less exclude immigrants who enter the country illegally between ports of entry. And Mills hasn’t said exactly how many foreign-born workers she wants to come to Maine.
In the press release, the governor touts her support for a federal waiver that would allow asylum seekers to obtain work permits within 30 days of filing their claims, rather than waiting the required six months under current federal law. Unanswered is this question: What happens if and when the asylum seekers’ applications for asylum are rejected?
Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice indicate that out of every 100 asylum seekers who claimed “a credible fear” of persecution, which is one reason to petition for asylum, between 2008 and 2019, only 14 were granted asylum.
Given that history, I believe the six-month waiting period for work permits made perfect sense under the Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations. And it makes even more sense today under the Biden administration. Asylee status was never intended as a fast track to landing a job in the United States.
Who believes any significant number of the immigrants who ultimately lose their asylum claims will self-deport when their asylum request is denied? They’re often here to stay.
And regardless of whether they’re working or receiving public assistance, where are they supposed to live? The Portland Expo? Unity University dormitories? Probably not. More likely in new apartments like the 52 units in South Portland where asylum seekers were given first-in-line preference for occupancy and two years of free rent courtesy of Maine taxpayers
So let’s have a robust debate on the governor’s plan, without being distracted by the bogeymen in the north woods.