A report published last week by the left-wing dark money-funded think tank the Maine Center for Economic Policy (MECEP) advocates for increased immigration and the expansion of taxpayer-funded social services and housing for non-citizens to combat the state’s “plateauing workforce.”
The MECEP report, entitled “State of Working Maine 2023: Boosting Maine’s Workforce,” suggests policies including the removal of immigration status restrictions on the state’s MaineCare health insurance, subsidizing English language proficiency courses and scholarships for immigrants, and allowing illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses.
MECEP receives funding from the Hopewell Fund and the Maine People’s Resource Center, two of many nonprofit organizations in the network of left-wing “dark money” giant Arabella Advisors.
The author of the report is James Myall, described by MECEP as the think tank’s “lead on the inclusive economy, including research on labor issues, gender and racial equity, and health care policy.”
Myall also serves as a commissioner for Maine’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous & Tribal Populations (PCRITP), a state commission charged with addressing “structural racism” in Maine.
[RELATED: Maine Racial Equity Commission Banned White People from Talking at Lewiston Public Meeting…]
The problem laid out in the report is Maine’s workforce shortage — the number of Mainers in the workforce has increased by 6 percent over the last 20 years, below the national average growth of 20 percent, according to the report.
Without increasing the size of the state’s workforce, Myall argues in the report, Maine will experience smaller growth or declines in state tax revenues and rising costs for services like health care.
The purpose of the report, Myall writes, is to identify policies that will help the state accomplish its goal of attracting 75,000 new workers into Maine by 2030.
“Unfortunately, while the economic plan and other documents recognize the scale of the problem, there has been less focus on solutions and concrete policies to accomplish the goal,” Myall writes. “State of Working Maine 2023 aims to fill this gap by identifying policies to both boost workforce participation by current Maine residents and policies to increase the size of the state’s working-age population through migration.”
First among the issues tackled in the report is how to boost labor force participation among Maine’s existing population.
This problem, Myall argues, will be partially addressed through the state’s Paid Family and Medical Leave program, which was signed into law by Gov. Janet Mills earlier this year and will become operational in 2026.
That plan will levy a new one percent payroll tax on Mainers who work, making it the largest tax increase in Maine in decades.
Additionally, Myall advocates increased state subsidies for child care and health care programs, expanding the state’s free community college program to public four-year universities, and protecting older Mainers from age-based discrimination when applying for jobs.
“Important as it is to boost labor force participation among existing Mainers, mathematical and demographic realities mean there is only so much potential among this population,” Myall writes, segueing into his proposals for increasing migration into Maine from out of state and abroad.
Myall suggests programs like Paid Family and Medical Leave will help attract and retain working-age Americans, and urges lawmakers to recognize the professional licenses and credentials for immigrants from overseas.
“Maine also needs to be a welcoming place for all who want to call it home,” Myall writes, stating that “Mainers of color” are more likely to leave the state than their white counterparts.
This Myall partially attributes to discrimination, and suggests that the state establish an “Office of Civil Rights” at the Attorney General’s Office “to aid in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes.”
“New Mainers arriving from overseas, especially those seeking asylum, face unique challenges in entering the workforce,” Myall writes.
Myall proposes letting asylum seekers obtain work permits immediately upon arriving in Maine, rather than having them wait six months as federal law currently requires, and argues that the state should grant them access to taxpayer-funded food, health care, and housing programs.
Furthermore, Myall proposes allowing immigrants who are in the country illegally to receive driver’s licenses, arguing that this move “not only allows immigrants of all backgrounds to participate more fully in economic and civic life but also results in more state revenues and improved traffic safety.”
“Lawmakers must be aware of the specific challenges facing New Mainers who are also immigrants or asylum seekers,” he writes. “While it continues to petition the federal government for changes to US immigration law, the legislature can help asylum seekers prepare for entry into the labor market by supporting equitable access to education, immigration services, health care, and driver’s licenses.”
Myall also advocates for “publicity campaigns aimed at reaching potential Mainers from all backgrounds.”
To address the state’s housing shortage, Myall suggests amending local zoning restriction “that discourage density and ultimately make housing more expensive,” to increase funding to the state’s general assistance program, and to implement a state housing assistance program.
Lastly, Myall argues that “lawmakers need to build on existing efforts to
increase and diversify Maine’s construction workforce so housing projects can be completed on time and at cost instead of facing costly delays.”
That Maine’s construction workforce is 90 percent male Myall attributes to a “toxic culture that can dissuade women, LGBTQ people, and people of color from joining or staying in the workforce.”
In addressing this “toxic culture,” Myall applauds apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs in Maine “that are tailored and directed at underrepresented demographics in the industry.”
1. Maine’s employee shortages are low paying seasonal or stepping stone jobs. Think seasonal ski resort, seasonal blueberry picker, snot wiper for autistic clients, “wilderness” guide for lgbt scouts, pharmacy clerks that don’t work in the actual pharmacy booth and truckers that need to pass security clearance and drug tests. Maine has a shortage of careers in engineering, science nursing (covid vax) and male pastors.
2. Maine DIE and vaccine policy actively discouraged applicants.
3. No one is a Mainer that wasn’t born here and Maine is cold and dark 6 months of the year. Persons of color from equatorial regions not sticking it out IS NOT racism. It makes sense. Maine is an acquired taste.
I don’t have that many to begin with but I certainly lost a few I.Q. points reading about this useless Leftist tool, Mayall, and then visiting the MECEP website. Like certain drugs, this article should have had a boxed warning on it at the beginning to prevent serious adverse reactions from reading it.
White guys have trouble in the construction workforce that is dominated by cheap hispanic labor.
Good article, pointless headline. Does the Maine wire or any conservative group have any constructive proposals to deal with the workforce and housing problems? I assume not since you have never presented such proposals and I am a regular reader of your website.
We are going to increase labor force participation by a one percent payroll tax? Yes that makes a lot of sense 🙄
Myall is delusional and his creed is…MONEY IS NO OBJECT AS LONG AS ITS SOMEONE ELSES MONEY WE’RE SPENDING. Do conservatives have solutions? Yes. Stop bringing in ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS. Close the border. Arrest people consuming illegal drugs. This whole situation is utterly insane. As far as the housing crisis, stop voting for anyone who’s a democrat.
The fact that this is coming from a dark money group tells any thinking person that we should have nothing to do with them. Maine certainly doesn’t need more welfare, we need much less. The fact that businesses can’t find help tells us that welfare benefits are too easy to get, too generous and payments last too long. Cutting the current overly generous benefits and returning the money to working taxpayers would help boost our terrible economy.
@Robert Peale. Hello fact checker. The Maine Wire greatly appreciates your patronage. To answer your assumptions, yes conservative groups have several solutions to the housing and workforce issues.
First the housing. Stop taking in 1000’s of fake asylum seekers every year. Stop expanding asylum programs. Stop building new single male only migrant shelters.
Ban Catholic Charities from all immigration services both legal and illegal. Imagine if 200,000+ people who have no right to be here and the 75,000 (plus their families) Mills wants to import didnt require housing. That would alleviate some challenges.
Stop funding free 2 and soon 4 year college degrees for illegal non citizens. Remind landlords that covid is over and $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom isnt realistic and ease property taxes to convince the greedy land barrons.
Workforce. Severely punish via fines, suspension of licensing, and jail for every business, especially construction and farming, for hiring illegals and non-citizens. Name them publicly. Increase wages across the board, while offering small businesses tax breaks and occasional subsidies as they will have some difficulty meeting a sudden increase in pay compared to mega corps and govt entities. Free 2 and 4 year college for authentic Mainers. Paid apprenticeships for electrician, plumbing,hvac,line workers,logging, construction, etcetera. If my tax dollars are going to pay for “free” anything I’d be happy to support fellow Authentic Mainers.
Basically reverse course on destructive liberal social policies and put financial pressure on capitalist vultures taking advantage of cheap imported labor.
As for the “pointless headline”, thats just to mock people who are 100% not serious in their proposal so we can just point and laugh. Bunkbeds in an already crowded with asylum seeker homeless shelter? Buying all the hotels with Maine tax dollars? Decriminalized trespassing and tent cities? MORE immigrants? I think youre just salty because its become so transparent and “racist ultra mega nazis” isnt working anymore.
From Bernstein and Sondheim in West Side Story:
I like to be in America,
Okay by me in America,
Everything free in America
For a small fee in America
From Thomas Sowell in “The Quest for Cosmic Justice:”
“In politics, the great non-sequitur of our time is that (1) things are not right and that (2) the government should make them right. Where right all too often means cosmic justice, trying to set things right means writing a blank check for a never-ending expansion of government power.”
“…..and bringing back the old idea that some are booted and spurred to ride others. That they are reading with a heady sense of moral mission and personal gratification only makes them more dangerous.”
If you know any small business owners well enough, you should have heard stories, as I have, of not being able to find workers, but when you do, in a few weeks or less they tire of ‘hard labor’ and decide to go back to government financed couch surfing.
Which is why “entry level job” pay is on its way to $20/hr, for people with no demonstrable skills and no apparent work ethic.
Gee; I wonder how that happens?
Hurry up Raganrok
It didn’t take much digging to find the jew that has had control over almost all of it. His name is Lee Bodner. Thanks to the Maine Wire, this info was very easy to find and this subversive jew was easily identified.