The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Chellie Pingree represents Maine’s 1st Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
As I write this, I am watching news reports from a crowded subway station in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where hundreds of women, children and their families are taking shelter from an unprovoked Russian attack. In the days and weeks that have followed since Russia invaded the sovereign democracy, millions of Ukrainians have been confronted with unimaginable hardship, and a life forever changed. My heart breaks for the millions of civilians who are now in search of safety, shelter and refuge from this unjust war.
I recently had the honor of inviting Yanina Nickless, a Ukrainian woman living and working in Kennebunkport, to be my virtual guest at President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Nickelss’s family is back home in Ukraine, where she says they will remain “to the end.”
Maine has a rich history of welcoming people fleeing conflict. But easing their transition into our communities is a long and complicated process.
It doesn’t have to be.
In 2018, Innocent Ilunga fled his home country, the Democratic Republic of Congo, seeking safety and freedom in the U.S. Ilunga is now living and working in Portland, but his journey to true freedom and independence took more than a year because of our arbitrary work authorization waiting period.
Ilunga tried to stay busy. He took English lessons in the Hope House English Language Program, as a student and then as a volunteer assistant. But he said he had nothing else to do but wait — all the while staying dependent on federal and local assistance.
Under a federal law passed in 1996, asylum seekers were required to wait at least half a year after filing an asylum petition before being able to obtain authorization to work. This law required that, once a person filed an asylum claim, he or she must wait 150 days before being able to apply for a work authorization, which could be granted no earlier than 180 days after the filing of the asylum claim. Often, because of technical issues and delays in processing work authorization requests, this time period could be much longer.
In 2020, the Trump administration more than doubled the period asylum seekers must wait to apply for work authorization. Because of this extreme change, people like Ilunga had to wait 365 days to even apply for work authorization here in the U.S.— not allowing them to gain work, be self-sufficient as they establish roots in their new community, or contribute to our recovering economy. Thankfully, the Trump work authorization rules were recently overturned by a federal judge, but asylum seekers are still held to the previous 180-day waiting period, which is still far too long.
My Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act offers a commonsense fix to our counterintuitive system by reducing the waiting period for work authorization eligibility to just 30 days and allowing an asylum seeker to apply for work authorization as soon as their asylum claim is filed.
Not only will this help assimilate independent asylum seekers into our communities and unburden social resources, but my bill will also boost our economy and help local businesses as they face a dire worker shortage.
Ilunga now works at a credit union in Portland and sits on the Hope Acts board of directors. But he says he has friends still waiting to join the workforce.
“It’s been over a year, and they are frustrated,” he recently told my staff.
Why should skilled workers be denied the means to support themselves because of an arbitrary waiting period? Why should businesses continue to struggle to hire workers because of an ineffective system?
Asylum seekers want to work. They want to be independent and prosper in their new communities.
Businesses need employees.
My Asylum Seeker Work Authorization Act is the solution.