Catherine McKenna lives in Yarmouth.

Mainers have good reason to be proud of the way we have welcomed folks from (really far) away into our state in recent decades. It hasn’t always been easy, but for most part, we have proven ourselves to be generous and fair-minded. I like to think this is because small town living keeps us grounded in reality.

Ideological arguments about immigration aren’t particularly helpful when we’re trying to figure out who’s going to drive the buses, take care of our elderly neighbors and keep our small businesses running. We need decent and reliable people to do these things, and no one but the most out of touch ideologue would claim that Maine doesn’t need more young, motivated workers — wherever they come from.  

And at the same time, no one who has seen how much time and money it takes to integrate immigrants into our communities would seriously advocate for uncontrolled immigration. People in Portland and Lewiston and smaller towns like my own have spent countless hours helping thousands of new Mainers learn English, find jobs and apartments and get their immigration papers and asylum appeals filed. We have often struggled to feed and house and educate all the immigrants who have found their way to our towns. 

Because immigration has been such a prominent topic of discussion in Maine in recent years, most of us understand that the question of how to manage immigration — how many people to accept, from where and under what circumstances — is complex and morally difficult.

It’s the kind of complex, morally difficult problem that our elected leaders are supposed to solve for us. The problem is, they haven’t.

For decades now, our immigration system has been shamefully unfair and inefficient. It has left many millions of people in legal purgatory. It is America’s shambolic immigration system that has put us all in this miserable situation where people who support immigrants are all but forced to be anti-ICE, and those who support enforcement of immigration laws are often accused of being anti-immigrant or worse. 

Recently, I was talking with a group of gray-haired Unitarians about the impending surge of ICE enforcement in Maine. The word these mild mannered, peace-loving folks used to describe their feelings was “rage.” Most of them had spent years helping and befriending new Mainers. People they have personally helped navigate our agonizingly slow immigration and asylum system, people who have done nothing wrong, are now facing the threat of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. And they can do little to nothing about it. Rage is not a surprising reaction to such injustice. 

What was surprising, though, was the empathy those enraged Unitarians were able to find for the ICE officers who have been sent to our snowy streets. These officers, many of whom are young veterans attracted by large signing bonuses, were called upon to round up criminals and enforce our immigration laws. Now they find themselves not enforcing the law as much as terrorizing and intimidating innocent people.

Somehow, my friends found the wherewithal to reject the false binary of pro-immigrant/anti-ICE and to see that we all — citizens and non-citizens alike — are suffering the consequences of a catastrophic political failure. Unjust, arbitrary enforcement of an unjust and arbitrary system harms everyone involved. 

Workable immigration reform has been repeatedly torpedoed by conflict entrepreneurs who insist that one party is anti-immigrant and racist and that the other supports open borders and unlimited immigration. These peddlers of false binaries profit by polarizing us and paralyzing us. Let’s not let them bring their polarizing poison to Maine.

The only way out of this mess is to set aside partisan animosity and to demand that our leaders do the hard work of building a just immigration system that works for all of us.