In Maines Tight Job Market, Businesses Look to Immigrants

(cross post from GD)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028290315

PORTLAND, Maine—Hiring manager Cindy Caplice didn’t rely on job postings to fill 100-plus vacancies over the past year at Sigco Inc., a metal and glass fabricator outside Maine’s largest city. Instead, she took a recruiting outing to the Portland Adult Education center, where refugees and asylum-seekers from several African nations polish their English.

“We cannot grow our company without the immigrant population. We simply can’t do it,” said Ms. Caplice, who now bustles around the 130,000-square-foot factory waving to hard-hatted workers from Burundi, Uganda, Egypt, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and beyond.

While refugee resettlement and immigration more broadly is a divisive issue in some states and cities, Maine business leaders are sending a different message: Please, take our jobs.

The New England state, best known for supplying most of the nation’s domestic lobsters, faces a demographic conundrum. It has the oldest median age in the nation and was one of only two states, the other being West Virginia, where deaths outnumbered births between July 2014 and July 2015. State economists forecast that by 2024, employers could wrestle with a net decrease of 28% of people in the prime working ages of 35 to 64.

And with Maine’s unemployment at 4.1%, employers already talk about trouble finding workers. A September report co-authored by the Maine State Chamber of Commerce recommended that new and engaged legal immigrants be a “key component” of the state’s economic strategy. Only 3.5% of Mainers are foreign-born, versus 13.1% for the U.S., according to the U.S. Census. Unauthorized immigrants were less than 0.3% of Maine’s population in 2014, according to Pew Research Center.

“Simply put, our city will not survive without immigrants,” Portland Mayor Ethan Strimling told business and community leaders in late October, at the city’s first-ever summit about integrating immigrants into the economy.

Some politicians have sounded less eager. Republican Gov. Paul LePage in early November said Maine would stop facilitating the federal refugee resettlement program, following similar moves by officials in at least three other states. Mr. LePage said he had lost confidence in the vetting of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries and noted the case of an Iranian refugee who moved to Maine around 2009 and died last year allegedly fighting overseas for Islamic State. Maine’s governor also said refugees were burdening social services in the state.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-maines-tight-job-market-businesses-look-to-immigrants-1479319201