Lewiston should be proud of the way it has embraced Somali immigrants. There have been some missteps – careless words, angry reactions – regarding the sudden, unexpected arrival of more than 1,000 strangers of different race, religion and culture, but the overall and overwhelming response has been that these fellow human beings who had the misfortune of being born in a place ruled by poverty and murderous warlords are welcome to make new lives for themselves in a city in central Maine.

Threats, however, remain to the better angels of Lewiston’s nature. The National Alliance, a West Virginia-based white supremacist group, has warned the community that it will “plant its flag” there, pseudo-military code for spreading racist poison. Any doubts about the National Alliance’s intentions are erased on the main page of its Web site, which offers for sale a computer game based upon genocide with this ad copy: “No, you can’t shoot these pesky sub-humans in real life – but you can in Ethnic Cleansing: The Game. Enter the virtual race war!”

The best response the good people of Lewiston could have to this ugliness is simply to look away.

The good people of Lewiston are aware, painfully aware in these times of economic stress, that this surge of immigration has associated costs, real costs that come from increased demands for social services and education. These costs are not nearly as high as anti-immigration hysteria claims – not even one-half of 1 percent of the city budget, barely $20 per property taxpayer, much of it is temporary – but there are costs nonetheless. The federal government is starting to help out with grants to ease this difficult transition, the state perhaps in time will see the wisdom of doing the same.

This is good news for Lewiston; the even better news is that evidence is growing that the increased costs they are experiencing are, in fact, transitory and that it does not take much time for a large influx of immigrants to begin not only paying their own way but also to provide the host community with a good return on its investment.

A relevant case study is from Schenectady, N.Y. Like many cities in Maine, Schenectady is a former manufacturing center settled by European immigrants that in recent years has lost a lot of jobs and people and, as a result, gained a lot of empty buildings. It now is marketing itself to a new generation of immigrants and a rebound in under way.

These immigrants are from Guyana, a small and poor country on the northeast coast of South America. A small group of Guyanese, just a few families, moved to Schenectady from New York City about a year ago. After watching this small group of newcomers energetically renovate an abandoned Catholic church into a temple for their Hindu faith, Mayor Albert Jurczynski got the idea of actively recruiting more.

So last spring he began weekly bus trips from New York City’s jam-packed Guyanese neighborhoods for daylong tours of Schenectady, 150 miles away, with local businesses covering the transportation and meal costs and with the mayor himself serving as guide. So far, more than 2,000 Guyanese have moved to town.

The payback for Schenectady has been considerable. The Guyanese have bought up dilapidated or condemned houses and fixed them up, abandoned storefronts are turning into restaurants and shops, jobs – like construction laborers and nurses’ aides – that used to go unfilled now are being taken, allowing existing businesses to grow. The city has practically eliminated its entire list of condemned properties – buildings that would have cost taxpayers $16,000 or more to demolish now are refurbished and back on the tax rolls. A horribly depressed real estate market, with nice working-class homes not selling even when priced in the teens, is rebounding handsomely – 72 such houses have sold since last spring, housing values have increased by about $10,000.

Schenectady had some advantages that make such a quick assimilation possible – Guyanese speak English as their primary tongue, the large, established neighborhoods in New York City help make this mass recruitment easy. But with some help – continued assistance by federal agencies and a more cooperative approach by an immigrant advocacy group that now threatens to sue the city over deficiencies in services for non-English speakers – Lewiston can serve as a model for other parts of the state where the population dwindles, it can send the message that Maine welcomes immigrants, but it has no room for the National Alliance.