The city of Portland, Maine, is nearly 3,000 miles from the closest point along the Mexican border. You would think that kind of distance–the width of the continent and then some–would be enough to protect against a migrant crisis.
You would be wrong. The Center for Immigration Studies is reporting that Portland is struggling with the same migrant surge confronting places like El Paso and Eagle Pass, Texas.
In an article titled “The Migrant Crisis — in Portland, Maine,” published earlier this week, CIS’s Andrew R. Arthur says that in May the city’s Health and Human Services director wrote to the CBP and other immigration authorities that “there is no further shelter OR hotel capacity” in Portland and asking that no more migrant families be sent there. If sent, the migrants will find that they “are no longer guaranteed shelter upon their arrival.” Yet they have kept coming.
In spite of its distance from the southern border, Portland has become a magnet, primarily for African and Haitian migrants, owing to its generosity toward illegals in the past. Three years ago, the city rolled out the welcome wagon to 450 African migrants. After that event, word spread of Portland’s generosity on the Internet and via cellphone among Africans and Haitians to the point that many decided Portland was their American destination of choice.
Arthur notes that DHS estimates that once Title 42 is abandoned, up to 18,000 illegal entrants per day will cross the border. If only 5 percent head to Portland, that city of 69,000 will see 328,000 new arrivals annually. That’s not a crisis; that’s an unmitigated catastrophe.
Thus, Portland is learning the hard way that showing generosity can have its drawbacks. Now the city government is asking for no more migrants and a lot more cash. We’ll see how that works out for them.
For more, see CIS.org.