A year ago this month, over one hundred asylum-seeking migrants unexpectedly arrived in the city Sanford seeking welfare benefits and free housing, forcing the city to expend more than $300,000 more than their allocated General Assistance budget for the year.
Migrants were transported from the Portland Exposition Building to Sanford in private cars, Ubers, and some vehicles purporting to be DoorDash drivers, after they were given misinformation that Sanford would offer them better housing and better benefits than Portland.
The asylum seekers, most of whom were unable to speak English, were left outside City Hall and the Post Office with no food, water, or housing accommodations.
“We’re tapped. We’re out. We’ve hit capacities that our staff can no longer keep up with,” Sanford City Manager Steve Buck told the Maine Wire last May. “We’ve been overrun.”
Buck recently told Maine Public that prior to the pandemic, the city allocated about $150,000 annually for General Assistance, the municipality’s welfare program. This year, the city is budgeting $1.3 million, as more migrants continue to arrive in the city.
[RELATED: Sanford’s Migrant Disaster, Explained…]
Now, those “new arrivals,” mostly from Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo, are starting to get jobs — including at the York County Jail in Alfred — according to a report from Sanford Springvale News.
Published in March, the article covers the stories of several migrants who arrived in Sanford who now are trying to find employment.
Under federal law, asylum-seeking migrants are prohibited from obtaining work permits for a period of six months after filing for asylum.
Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (ME-01), a far left Democrat, has introduced the “Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act,” which would reduce that wait time down to just 30 days.
Abel Nimi, who was an engineer in Angola, told the outlet that he is in the final stages of getting hired as a corrections officer for $22 per hour at York county Jail in Alfred.
“I am feeling very excited and very proud,” Nimi told Sanford Springvale News. “If I compare myself with many other (immigrants), many spend four or five or six years without getting a job.”
“I am happy to do something else. In our life, we must learn how to face other career opportunities and paths,” he said. “We’ll be dealing with human beings. I like that. In my life, I have learned if you help others, you help yourself.”
Nimi said the jail is allowing him to work a flexible schedule while he volunteers as an English-language instructor at a local church.
The Director of Recruiting and Training at the jail, Lt. Mike Perry, told the outlet that “Hiring new Americans” is a goal, to help reduce chronic understaffing.
“There’s a large pool of them. We’ve created a process for recruiting,” Perry said, adding that the biggest obstacle to hiring more of the asylum-seeking migrants is English proficiency.
“English proficiency is essential because one hundred percent of the job is communicating with each other and with [inmates],” Perry said.
Two more migrants recently hired as corrections officers at York County Jail are included in the article’s featured picture.
[RELATED: Asylum Seekers Staying in Sanford Inn Will Soon Have to Find Another Place To Stay…]
Rachel Phipps, Assistant Director of Economic Opportunity at York County Community Action Corporation, said that the number of migrants in Sanford from Angola and Congo has reached 240 since last spring.
Another employee at the nonprofit said that as of March, ten of the asylum seekers had obtained jobs.
York County Community Action has a bussing service that has been helping the migrants commute to their jobs.
Sofia Ngudimbuta, a recent hire at the Sanford Walmart from Angola, told Sanford Springvale News that she relies on the nonprofit’s buses to get to and from work.
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="28256 https://www.themainewire.com/?p=28256">17 Comments
Helllllllllllllllllllllllllll No!
These are NOT asylum seekers! They have been brought to the United States to bring it down. True asylum seekers would go to the FIRST country to seek help, not one over 300 miles away. Getting here required flights, or an ocean voyage that someone had to pay for… NGO’s and Soros along with the Biden Administration. Real Mainers need work and housing, why is it that illegals get preferential treatment?
Not much of a surprise. Have people that broke the law to be here now watching criminals. The deputy commissioner of MDOC called Inmate’s victims, Randall Liberty (another moonbat) the MDOC commissioner has stopped guards from using the word Inmate in favor of resident under threat of punishment. Criminals guarding criminals whatever could go wrong.
Pingree needs to step down
I”m a born here Mainer and thoroughly disgusted at the lack of interest by the majority of Mainers on subjects like this, where these are in fact ILLEGALS that we maine taxpayers are and have been paying for. I want to see Maine bleed red instead of blue before we are completely overtaken by illegals and CCP drug operations. Mills, Talbot Ross,Pingree and Bellows, you suck. The only things you have been real good at is turning my state into a hazmat site.
So, let me get this right … if that’s even possible…
A criminal …. uh, I mean, an illegal…. uh, I mean, a “new arrival” from another country without the legal right to work in the USA or Maine breaks into our country via the southern border “through the bathroom window” and is then offered a job in Maine by our “leaders” to rule over and dictate the lives of “legal” Maine criminals who physically broke into someone’s home or business….
Isn’t that a situation called “the pot calling the kettle black” ????
Hiring people who routinely break our laws to work law enforcement.
Sanford is now the Idiocracy of Maine
I would happily support any illegal who could take pinhed pengrees job. Couldn’t be worse.
Suzannah, unless one reads MW people have no knowledge of what’s going on.
Local tv and the phony papers run cover for the state destroying leftists. You see more news from out of state from those sources than you do news from ME.
Pingree- How many illegals have you hired at your costal company?
VOTE HER OUT!
American or Democrat, you can’t be both.
Sheer insanity. Try going illegally to any other country and see what happens to you.
What Sanford should have done is rented a bus and put all these illegals on it and dropped them back off at the Portland Expo.
Bet these ILLEGAL ALIENS ( That is the right term Maine Wire don’t be so WOKE !)are still getting “Freeloader Money” from the Tax Payer … Tell me how did they pass the Criminal Background Check … ?
I have a relative that left the employment of York County Corrections. She was saying that many of the immigrants that have been hired there have little English language skills and rely on translation apps on their phones to communicate. This should end well if there is some sort of emergency situation.
New Americans? Are you fucking kidding me? These people are illegal aliens.
It’s shocking. Many of these migrants were never vetted. Some come here from prisons or committed crimes in their country. So you maybe working with a killer, rapist. I Just found out that the city paying the migrants rent for 2 yesrs. 😲