At the Portland Community Health Center, I am privileged to meet people every day who tell me personal things about their lives – sometimes things that even their spouses, children or parents do not know. Many of these people are new Mainers who have nowhere else to turn for medical care.

I cannot divulge anything that I am told in an exam room – that sacred space where people can open up about what has happened to them – but I would like to ask you to do something my job requires me to do every day: Take a moment and imagine what it would take for you to leave everything.

What would it take for you to leave your family? Your house and belongings? Your profession? How many years did it take you to get to where you are now?

It would take an almost unimaginable tragedy for me to leave all that I know in my life, all that makes me who I am. And so it is for these new Mainers. They have witnessed and experienced unspeakable things. Many of them have lost the very same things that we can’t imagine losing: homes, good jobs, family members.

When I ask them what they did for work in their home country, I hear: “I was an infectious disease doctor.” “I was a hospital administrator.” “I ran a transportation system for dignitaries.”

My experiences treating these patients in the exam room do not match up with the narrative that I hear from certain policymakers in Augusta. I hear unsubstantiated claims about the diseases that new Mainers are bringing into the country and the sense that they have nothing to offer and are taking resources away from other, more deserving community members.

I have no doubt that there is vital work to be done to improve the health, education and welfare of all Mainers, but comments like these do not match up with my experience. I can only hope that the upcoming decisions made by policymakers that affect asylum seekers will be based on facts and evidence rather than rhetoric and the desire to score political points.

Jean Paul is one of our new Mainers who will be affected. He is a 26-year-old man from Rwanda who speaks four languages and worked at Butaro Hospital in northern Rwanda.

There, he was employed by Partners in Health as the health information system coordinator for the entire district. He worked his way up in this organization over seven years, but he was beaten so badly that he feared for his life and needed to leave.

Now, in Maine, he is unable to work because by law he must wait at least 180 days to get an employment permit, though he volunteers at the Portland Community Health Center. He is very savvy about the process, but there are not enough lawyers to get people through the process, so the waiting period for work is often longer than the standard.

If policymakers decide to stop providing aid to asylum seekers, Jean Paul will lose the housing and food vouchers that have helped him survive. And he is not alone: Five hundred families – over 900 people – will be similarly affected.

Maine is the oldest state in the nation, and we are a state built by immigrants. We need more young people, and we need more jobs. And here we have these new Mainers, many of whom are highly educated – why don’t we see their arrival as a great opportunity?

While some among us argue about whether these new Mainers should be supported in any way – including that most basic form of help, General Assistance – we are missing the opportunity to help asylum seekers quickly become active, productive members of our community.

We are missing the opportunity to let history repeat itself, in a good way, for each successive wave of immigrants to become citizens who are given a chance to work, to support and rebuild their families, to be changed by this great place, and also to change it, and us, for the better of all.

Copy the Story Link