While Maine Rep. Chellie Pingree is to be congratulated for seeking to allow asylum seekers to work sooner after their arrival (“Let asylum seekers work,” May 21) – both for their own benefit and ours – we must be cautious in developing such policies to avoid the exploitation of immigrants and children in the sweatshops, dark satanic mills and fetid canneries of the past.

Significantly, Pingree lauds Luke Lobster’s processing facility in Saco and American Roots’ clothing factory in Westbrook, two of Maine’s principal 19th-century industries before those industries closed and went south, leaving Maine and Mainers behind. Such work was neither ennobling nor enduring, as we have learned over the course of the 20th century in having to deal with the rotting mills and stagnant economy they left behind.

In contrast to 19th-century immigrants, current asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East are often well educated and skilled members of the middle class fleeing oppressive regimes.

To welcome them exclusively as factory fodder does both them and us a disservice. Let us be sure to develop good, well-paying jobs for able workers rather than falling back on the exploitative practices of the past.

Thomas Spear
Arrowsic