Paul LePage's first major move as governor was issuing an order aimed at denying state services to undocumened immigrants. LePage, who made welfare reform a centerpiece of his campaign, said he wanted to "take care of Mainers first." But there are questions as to how much of an impact the governor's order will have.
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Public assistance programs, ranging from food stamps to Medicaid health coverage, already require proof of citizenship, says Ana Hicks of Maine Equal Justice Partners. "We don't think it will make any change on how much the state spends on public assistance because people who are undocumented citizens can't get public assistance as it stands now," she says.
State officials say that, indeed, they are already checking for legal status. In fact, the state Department of Health and Human Services denied about five percent of some 1,700 claims filed for public assistance in December because applicants were not able to prove they were in Maine legally.
But Barbara Van Burgel, the DHHS director overseeing public assistance, says that the governor's executive order does serve a purpose. "It just makes it very clear and reinforces to our staff and to others that this is a priority, that individuals need make sure those documents are there and that it's a priority for us to make sure that we're doing the best job that we can do."
Van Burgel says that might mean taking a second glance at paperwork now and then. But advocates say the order does nothing but create a hostile environment for immigrants, regardless of their legal status.
"It reflects a xenophobic mindset that is out of sync with a state that abhors such intolerance," says Ralph Carmona of the League of United Latin American Citizens of Maine. "There's no question that there is going to be a major response to that."
Carmona says that the governor's order will be publicly addressed by state legislators and city councilors in Portland, Maine's most racially diverse city. It will also be a focus of upcoming Martin Luther King Day events.
Carmona says the order sends the wrong message to immigrants considering coming to a state that is among the country's whitest and oldest. "We need immigrants and we have a governor who is now pushing an executive order that closes the door on any potential future growth of human capital."
On the other side of the issue is the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or FAIR, which wants to reduce immigration to the U.S. FAIR applauded LePage's order. Bob Dane is the group's spokesman.
"Local jurisdictions recognize that if there's no jobs offered, no benefits to those illegal aliens, those illegal aliens won't come; and if there's no government subsidies, they won't stay," Dane says. "And legal U.S. taxpaying residents ultimately benefit."
FAIR estimates that Maine has about 5,000 undocumented workers. That's similar to an estimate in a 2009 report from the Maine Economic Policy Center on Maine's Hispanic population. The think tank took the U.S. Department of Labor's estimate that 65 percent of agricultural workers in Maine are undocumented, and came up with 3,500 to 4,000.
Dane says Maine ends up spending $71 million in health and other services for undocumented workers. "The vast majority of it--and it's not a lot different in Maine than anywhere else--is educating the children of illegal aliens."
But as Randy Capps at the Migration Policy Institute notes, federal law requires that all children, regardless of legal status, are educated, and that most of the children were born in the United States themselves. Capps worries that the executive order by LePage will deter undocumented immigrants from getting the benefits that their children are eligible for.
"If they aren't able to get the children insured and the children get sick and something happens to them, it could be a real disaster for the family financially," Capps says. "They could even wind up in the hospital and that could wind up eventually costing the public a fair amount of money."
There was no comment on the governor's order and state spending related to undocumented immigrants from the Maine Heritage Policy Center, a conservative think tank, which says Mainers are the country's most welfare-dependent. Economist Scott Moody says the issue is important, but not one the group has studied.
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