MAINE’S NEWEST IMMIGRANTS

A new requirement for services in Lewiston because Somali immigrants have chosen it as a place to make new lives has created pressure on the city’s budget for lack of money and pressure on the immigrants for the abundance of malicious rumors about them. Solving the former, a state and federal duty, should quell the latter.

The issue in Lewiston gained national attention over recent weeks because the city’s mayor, Laurier T. Raymond, wrote a letter saying the city no longer had the resources to help more Somalis: “We have been overwhelmed and have responded valiantly. Now we need breathing room. Our city is maxed-out financially, physically and emotionally.”

Given the initial reaction to the letter – that its author was a racist – Mayor Raymond may wish that he had not written it. But the secondary reaction – including a strong defense of the mayor and his motives – was just what was needed. The mayor’s letter, perhaps inadvertently, emphasized as few other acts could the need for more assistance from Augusta and Washington.

Maine is in budget difficulties now, but no decent lawmaker should look at Lewiston, turn his empty pockets inside out and shrug. New bureaucracy isn’t needed. But a few hundred thousand additional dollars from the state would make a direct difference in Lewiston and would declare publicly that these immigrants are welcome in Maine, as they surely are. Federal support is needed too, and Sen. Olympia Snowe properly announced Tuesday that she would find ways to help the Somalis and the city.

The senator’s office points out that in September, Lewiston, Portland and Catholic Charities of Maine shared a $200,000 federal grant to help. Coastal Enterprises Inc., based in Wiscasset, received $155,000 to build entrepreneurship among the Somali new arrivals. And the city of Lewiston received $700,000 from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees aid for secondary immigrants, including the Somalis. And while that money will not buy the fancy cars, expansive apartments and other perks the Somalis are falsely rumored to be getting to the detriment of needy Mainers, it will with other support help these new arrivals assimilate and thrive here.

Maine cities like Lewiston have been losing population for decades, and 1,000 people moving in barely reverses the trend. Maine has room, and then some. And as Somali representatives have said, in addition to pointing out that many of them are American citizens, they are helping Lewiston’s economy by moving into apartments that otherwise would remain vacant and opening stores. Even if in balancing out costs for job and language training and welfare, this is not true now, it almost certainly will be in a short time, as the new residents and their children make Lewiston their hometown and add their own ethnic identity to the city, just as did those who came before them.

The strain is in the transition. No civil society watching Somalia in recent years would deny refugees from there a safe haven and no one thinking about what that means would assume it could be done for free. It costs for several years initially, but the benefits of welcoming them here will be returned to Maine for generations.