The city of Portland on Tuesday said it will stop providing public assistance to nearly 90 of 222 immigrants who have been receiving public assistance from the city without having applied for asylum, unless those immigrants can provide proof of legal immigration status.

The change was announced as part of a statement providing new details about immigrants who have expired visas and have not yet applied for asylum, a group that has become the latest focus of a partisan debate about the use of General Assistance funds.

City officials said in the statement that 123 immigrants receiving aid in Portland have overstayed their visas but are still within the one-year eligibility period to file their applications for asylum. Portland city councilors on Monday are expected to discuss whether those people qualify for city aid as part of a program set up for asylum seekers.

Another 86 individuals, however, are not eligible for asylum because they have overstayed their visas and been in the United States for more than a year without filing an application. The city is now denying additional aid to those people unless they can provide documentation of legal immigration status, the city said.

There are an additional 13 individuals who are ineligible for asylum but are being considered separately because they are the parents or siblings of children born in the United States, the city said.

A MAJOR POLITICAL ISSUE

The debate about whether to continue providing emergency financial assistance to immigrants who have been described as asylum seekers has become a major political issue in Portland and statewide. After the LePage administration cut off state funding for General Assistance to that group a year ago, the Portland City Council created a program to continue providing emergency vouchers for housing and basic needs for those immigrants already relying on the assistance.

That aid was expected to cost about $2.6 million for the current fiscal year, or roughly $3,000 per individual in the program.

Portland city councilors will discuss the details of that program on Monday, including whether an active asylum application is needed to be qualified.

Advocates for the poor have said that some immigrants with expired visas are working on filing asylum applications before their eligibility expires, so should qualify for city aid as asylum seekers.

Asylum applicants must provide documentation and material to support their claim that they could face violence or repression if they are forced to leave the United States and return home. Many of the asylum seekers in Portland have come from war-torn or politically troubled nations in sub-Saharan Africa and arrived in Maine with temporary visas that allow them to visit, work or study on a temporary basis.

Portland became the target of a new round of criticism after the Portland Press Herald first reported Monday that as many as one-third of the people identified as asylum seekers may have overstayed their visas but not yet formally applied for asylum. Those preliminary numbers had been provided to Portland city councilors, but without the detailed breakdown.

Maine Health and Human Services Commissioner Mary Mayhew said in a statement Monday that the new details about asylum seekers showed the General Assistance program had misused taxpayer money.

“Money does not grow on trees and our elderly and disabled Mainers have been paying the price when programs such as General Assistance in Portland dole out taxpayer-funded benefits to illegal aliens,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Maine Republican Party issued a statement criticizing Democrats, liberals and the city of Portland for providing the aid to illegal immigrants.

The city said the news report on Monday overstated the number of immigrants receiving aid who had not applied for asylum. The overall numbers provided Tuesday were mostly consistent with the preliminary count, although they provide more clarity about the differing circumstances of those immigrants.

However, Portland reduced its overall estimate of the number of asylum seekers living in the city and affected by the loss of state funding for assistance. While it previously had estimated the number to be about 900 people, the statement on Tuesday said the correct total as of June was 779 people.

The 222 immigrants who have not applied for asylum represent 28 percent of that group. The city determined that as many as 557 of the 779 immigrants may be eligible because they have applied for asylum.

A PRACTICE ‘ACCEPTED FOR YEARS’

Until last year, city and state officials looked only at financial need when determining General Assistance eligibility. In June 2014, Gov. Paul LePage stopped reimbursing communities that provided GA for undocumented immigrants – a move that cost Portland $5 million last fiscal year.

“It is important to note that the reimbursement of asylum seekers was a practice that was accepted for years, including all four years of the governor’s first term,” the city said in its statement Tuesday.

City Manager Jon Jennings said in the statement that the city was confident it has accurate baseline data to move forward with details of its aid program.

“However, this information changes daily as each case is unique and the road to asylum is anything but linear,” Jennings said. “The next steps are to determine whether there are individuals who are currently GA eligible, but during the course of the next 12 months will become eligible for the Community Support Fund, and then project an annualized cost of benefits which will inform the Community Support Fund program guidelines.”

Although new arrivals to the city would not be eligible under this program, immigrants already receiving General Assistance could shift into the city’s new program if their visas expire in the next year.

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