Portland responded to a critical emergency this summer, as hundreds of asylum seekers arrived from Africa, mostly fleeing from the war-torn countries of Angola and Democratic Republic of Congo, in the space of a few weeks.
The city declared an emergency and opened the Portland Expo as a temporary shelter with services.
(Asylum seekers come looking for protection in their host countries. They cannot be economic migrants, in search of a better standard of living and are not allowed to work for six months).
Portland and the entire southern Maine region worked to integrate the migrants into the community. And the crisis hasn’t ended. A recent wave of asylum seekers came in December, arriving unprepared for Maine’s cold winter.
