Maine State Housing Authority budgeted nearly $3.5 million to cover the rents of 60 migrant families in five buildings in Brunswick for two years.
They are expected to eventually get permission to work and start earning to pay their own way.
The state is also allocating $100,000 to help dozens of Brunswick migrants process their asylum applications and secure work permits.
A bus service is in the works to help the migrants get into town.In other words, the Maine State Housing Authority and other official bodies are providing a bald-faced example of government picking up the social costs of that cheap labor some businesses love so much, especially those in the construction, agriculture, retail, and hospitality industries.
California has gone a giant step further and, starting last week, will enroll all undocumented immigrants in Medi-Cal, California's version of the federal Medicaid program for people with low incomes. Even states that haven't taken that step are nevertheless facing financial collapse due to their own mandates to provide emergency room treatment, primary care, dental care, and childbirth to illegal migrants.
Some state hospital systems, such as Denver's, are now asking for federal government bailouts to rescue them from their own decisions. Or, phrasing it more generously, to share their compassion with taxpayers in all 50 states.
I suspect that the 22,000 illegal migrants whom Denver reports used its hospital system without charge in the past year just might be employed somewhere or other. Perhaps we might ask those employers to share a bit of that compassion before passing the bill along to the rest of us?
Say, wasn't there once a great ruckus raised by the populist left over businesses that dumped the social costs of low-wage jobs on to the taxpayer? I believe there was.
Socializing costs to maximize private profit was once an issue. For example, this:
“When big companies use the Walmart loophole to force workers on to Medi-Cal, taxpayers pick up the tab,” said California Labor Federation head Art Pulaski. Medi-Cal is the state’s health care program for the poor, elderly and disabled.
“Today we are putting legislators on notice that it’s time to hold big corporations accountable to pay their fair share for health care like the rest of us.”That fine statement was issued back in 2013. You could say the same thing today only now the problem is coming from our elected officials instead of Wal-Mart.
