“How do they have a place for them but not for us?”
(A homeless woman in Maine)
I can’t believe my eyes. A local media outlet has dared to publish this news and it comes at a time when the national media is dumping on the President who says Americans should come first when it comes to public assistance!
150 African asylum seekers have jumped ahead of 18,000 Mainers who have been on a waiting list for years for Section 8 housing!
Portland welcomes Africans. No charity for their own American homeless? Photo: https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-06-17/portland-maine-turns-crisis-opportunity-african-migrants
I-Team: Homeless Mainers feel left behind as asylum seekers get housing
PORTLAND (WGME) – Nearly 200 asylum seekers have to be out of an emergency shelter at the Portland Expo by this Thursday as the Red Claws move back in.
While state and city leaders scramble to find them housing, some homeless Mainers say they feel left behind.
The I-Team found more than 18,000 Mainers are on a waiting list for Section 8 and that’s just one program to help low-income families get affordable housing.
Many of those people are homeless and hungry and have already been waiting years for their number to be called. [Am I dreaming? I can’t believe any media in America would report this news!—-ed]
Zanetta Smith said she’s thankful for a storage shack in the woods where a friend is letting her live.
She said it’s not much, but it’s better than living in her car where she’s been for the last 5 years.
“It was pretty tough in the winter,” Smith said.
She lost her apartment after she got sick and couldn’t work anymore.
“You fall into bad times, and sometimes it’s hard to get out of it,” she said.
She’s trying to get a place of her own with a toilet, shower, and running water, which her temporary housing doesn’t have.
She said she’s been on the waiting list for a Section 8 voucher for years.
According to Maine Housing, the statewide Maine Centralized Section 8 waiting list is now up to 18,316.
Dan Brennan says it is only short term assistance for asylum seekers until they become “self-sufficient.” Yeh right!
“It’s years, unfortunately. We just don’t have the supply and stock,” said Dan Brennan, director of the Maine State Housing Authority.
Brennan said it could be five years to get a voucher to help pay for rent, and even if you get one, there’s no guarantee you’ll find a place.
“There simply is not enough supply of units available for people who need them,” Brennan said.
Local housing authorities also have waiting lists for public housing.
In Portland, for example, we found nearly 1,400 people waiting for a unit to open up, which could take as long as three years.
“Of course when the asylum seekers come up here they offered them free housing. How do they have a place for them but not for us?” Smith wants to know.
At last check, more than 150 asylum seekers who arrived in Portland since June have moved out of a makeshift shelter at the Portland Expo and into units in Bath, Brunswick, Lewiston, Portland, and Scarborough.
See all of my previous posts on the DR Congolese migration to Maine, here.
BTW, yesterday I told you that over 11,000 DR Congolese were legally admitted as refugees to the US in the first ten months of this fiscal year. This bunch in Maine came illegally and are now jumping the line for taxpayer supported housing!
First they want the 30,000 they believe they were promised for this year (FY19).
See my post yesterdaywhere I explain we are likely to reach that number by September 30th.
However, in a recent letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo they say they want 95,000 next year.
Hereis the news at from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs:
167 Jewish Organizations Urge U.S. to Meet Refugee Goal
JCPA, a network of 125 local Jewish community relations councils and 17 national Jewish agencies, has joined with 166 national, state, and local Jewish organizations and institutions in urging the United States to meet the refugee resettlement admissions goal of 30,000 for fiscal year 2019 and to return to historic norms next year.
In a letter delivered to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on Wednesday (August 7th), the group explained, “The United States has historically distinguished itself as a beacon of hope and as a safe haven for those who most need it. For nearly 40 years, the refugee admissions target averaged 95,000 per year, with actual admissions averaging 80,000 refugees per year. Despite this, the Administration set the admissions ceiling to a historic low of 30,000 refugees in FY19. Resettling zero refugees in the U.S. in FY2020 would effectively gut the refugee resettlement program, violate our values as Jews and Americans, and abdicate the American promise of freedom and opportunity.”
Not mentioned in the short news story is the request for the CEILING for 2020 to be set at 95,000. See the letter with its 167 signatures. This is a paragraph from near the end.
We urge the Department of State, in partnership with the other implementing agencies, to restore our country’s refugee admissions cap to at least 95,000 for FY2020.The values of our nation and the safety and well-being of tens of thousands of refugees and their families depend on it.
Don’t miss the list of those that signed the letter, here.
What do they mean by restore the cap to 95,000?
In the last ten years (mostly Obama years!) the cap was no where near 95,000 until Obama set it at 110,000 in September 2017 as he was getting ready to vacate the Oval Office.
Why didn’t he set it at 110,000 or even 95,000 in his previous opportunities to set the CEILING?
I didn’t see these same groups attacking the sainted Obama for his much lower caps in his previous 7 years in office!
They make it sound like we have been admitting that extreme number in the years prior to the arrival of Donald Trump. We have not!
See the last ten years of CEILING data at Wrapsnetand then the actual number of admissions.
And, remember this: in the early years of the refugee program which began in 1980, we were not being invaded by tens of thousands of asylum seekers (wannabe refugees) at our borders as we are today.
I couldn’t manage to get the whole chart on the screen, but the part I want you to see is the column for the CEILING. So what do they mean by claiming the CEILING must be RESTORED to 95,000! Compare the CEILING column to the actual admissions and you will see that Obama’s numbers were high, but not as high as they are demanding that Trump’s should be!
