Re: “Maine Voices: Anti-immigrant bias isn’t just hypocritical, it’s bad business for Maine” (June 18):

Sara Gideon may be a state representative and House majority whip, but she is not in touch with her state.

I am not against supporting the immigrants of today, but two years of housing support is too much. Native Mainers are on a housing list for more than five years.

When the Polish people left their homeland in 1980, the national Episcopal Church, in each state, helped find them housing and jobs.

I know this for a fact – I stood in line for the men in our family trying to get them jobs. We never applied to the state or the town for anything. It was all private help.

Sara Gideon’s Armenian grandmother came to this country because her family or the Armenian Greater Benevolent Association paid for her passage, found housing and helped her get a job.

When my father died when I was 16, over 50 years ago, my Armenian grandfather, a refugee from the Armenian Massacre, told his unmarried son that he was to take care of his sister and her child, when they were left with nothing. He did until his sister passed.

This is a federal problem and should be subsidized by the federal government.

Sara Gideon should stop fighting the governor and look at the length and time that people who were born here are on the housing wait list. She should not use her Armenian grandmother as an example unless she’s read everything there is about the Armenians.

The governor was elected by the people of Maine, who do not want handouts given freely. Use common sense.

Barbara Sahagian Carlson

Alfred

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