The most disturbing element in the presidential debate was Trump’s repeated insistence that immigrants account for a “Biden crime wave” of massive proportions. Unfortunately, the facts don’t bear him out. According to the FBI, not only has crime gone down nationwide since Trump’s time in office, multiple studies have confirmed that immigrants commit crime at significantly lower levels than American-born citizens. As for foreign governments emptying jails and mental institutions, the only instance of this practice occurred back in 1983, when Castro sent 22,000 inmates and people with mental illness to Miami via the Mariel boatlift.

Here in Maine, the nation’s whitest and oldest state, we suffer from an acute shortage of workers across a wide spectrum of occupations: nursing home staff, electricians, plumbers, farm workers, even lobstermen. Providing asylum seekers with temporary housing and educational support, especially when they’re not allowed to work for six months after their arrival, is a commonsense investment.

It’s not, as state GOP leaders contend, a squandering of public funds. It is instead an essential step in helping individuals hungry for opportunity become contributing members of society. We need the energy and drive of these people who frequently struggled to get here, many enduring the horrific danger and privation of the Darien Gap and crime gangs in Panama. Threatening them with the prospect of arrest, confinement in huge camps and deportation is not only inhumane, it’s an act of economic self-sabotage. And for what? Lunatic ravings about a nonexistent threat.

Will Holland
Freeport