Democrat lawmaker Chellie Pingree called for less border security and advocated for more migrants to be bused to her state, claiming there aren’t ‘enough locals to fill jobs.’
The Representative from Maine, who has served as Maine’s 1st congressional district since 2009, spoke for over two minutes during a House Appropriations Committee debate on the fiscal year 2025 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Appropriations bill.
She expressed support for a Democrat-proposed amendment that would redirect $600 million from border fencing construction to a FEMA-administered municipal emergency shelter program, the Shelter and Services Program.
The program would pay for migrant housing and expenses.
‘This funding is particularly important to one of the cities that I represent, the city of Portland, Maine,’ said Pingree. ‘You know, we all talk about big cities like New York, and we all have all kinds of concerns about this, but let’s be clear: In my state, this funding is critically important to supporting our city, which has been very welcoming to asylum seekers.’
Pingree noted that asylum seekers have been arriving not only since Joe Biden became president but also during the previous administration.
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‘And they [the asylum seekers] didn’t just come since Joe Biden became the president,’ Pingree continued. ‘They were coming across the border, getting into buses, in the previous administration.’
She went on to emphasize that Maine it is the ‘whitest and oldest state’ in the nation, with a significant worker shortage, and challenged her colleagues to talk to their local chambers of commerce about the difficulty in finding enough workers for available jobs.
‘Some of you may not have been to Maine, but it is the whitest state in the nation, it’s the oldest state in the nation, and we’ve had a tremendous worker shortage,’ she said.
‘And I challenge any of you to have a meeting with your chamber of commerce, and not have people say to you my ‘biggest issue is getting enough workers to come to work for the jobs that we have available.”
Pingree pointed out the millions of case backlogs in US Immigration Courts, with about 1.3 million pending asylum cases.
As such, she introduced the Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act to reduce the wait time for asylum-seeking migrants to obtain work permits to 30 days.
‘These are not illegal people, they are in our state legally seeking asylum,’ Pingree added. ‘Yes, they have to apply for asylum, and then they have to wait for six months to get a work permit. So, in the interim time, our cities have to support people because they can’t get to work — and believe me, they desperately want to go to work.’
Pingree claimed the program will ‘move people from the congestion at the border to cities all over our country, and it is way to support that going on.’
‘So as far as I’m concerned, this is just a common sense way to deal with the number of asylum seekers who want to come into our country today, and we should continue to support it,’ said Pingree.
Ronald Russell of Kennebunkport defeated Andrew Piantidosi of Cape Elizabeth in the 1st Congressional District Republican primary on Tuesday, as reported by The Associated Press.
With 99 percent of votes counted on Wednesday, Russell secured 57 percent of the vote and will challenge US Rep. Chellie Pingree in November’s election.
Maine’s first congressional district is the geographically smaller of the state’s two congressional districts, and covers the southern coastal area of the state.