The Margaret Chase Smith Library has announced the topic of its 19th annual essay contest: immigration policy. The competition is open to Maine high school seniors. Entries are due by April 1. Prizes ranging from $50 for five honorable mentions to $1,000 for first place will be announced on May 1. For more information, or to enter, contact John Taylor at the Margaret Chase Smith Library, 56 Norridgewock Ave., Skowhegan, ME, 04976, or by telephone at 474-7133.

The topic was selected because of its timeliness and urgency. Although a nation of immigrants, the United States currently finds itself sharply divided by this issue. Like most Americans, Margaret Chase Smith believed in the ideal of the melting pot. Her maternal grandfather was born in Quebec and immigrated to Maine in the mid-19th Century. As Smith entered public life, immigration policy was marked by the rigid national ethnic quotas of the 1920s, followed by economic concerns about employment competition during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and then by fears of foreign infiltration and communist subversion during the 1940s and 50s. Against this historical backdrop of alternating cycles of welcome and wariness toward foreigners, the Margaret Chase Smith Library invites students to weigh in with their opinions on what federal immigration policy should be in the 21st Century.

Located in Skowhegan, the library is owned by the Margaret Chase Smith Foundation and operated under its auspices by the University of Maine.