Trump’s Executive Order on travel raises concerns about utilities
There have been wide ranging conversations about the President’s Executive Order prohibiting entry or reentry to the United States of individuals from certain countries for a period of ninety days — as well as a blanket prohibition on refugee resettlement – and much remains uncertain and in flux.
I have no mechanism of knowing how many customers of Pennsylvania’s utilities may have been affected by this Executive Order. However, there is a strong likelihood, given the diversity of Pennsylvania’s population and as there are half a million legal permanent residents from the identified countries residing in the United States, that some of our neighbors and students at our universities may have been temporarily detained or be unable to return to their homes.
This order has the potential to affect employment, education and communities throughout the Commonwealth. Financial stress may well be no small part of the resulting impacts — making it difficult for those affected to remain current with payments to the utilities providing their households with essential services. I am also concerned that language, cultural barriers and, potentially, fear might well inhibit those in need from reaching out — as well as our ability to readily identify and attend to these needs.
I encourage all of us, including the Commonwealth’s regulated public utilities, to recognize and attend to those customers and families who have been adversely affected by this federal directive and to provide assistance, whenever possible, to minimize the risks to essential utility services.
I am an immigrant, as are members and children of my staff, many staff members of the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and many of my former colleagues at EQT Corporation and Carnegie Mellon University — including many from the seven countries identified in the Presidential Order.
I argue that we have a shared responsibility to ensure that members of our communities are able to remain in their homes and maintain utility services during this time that they are unable, by this unforeseeable change in circumstance, to lawfully re-enter or reside in the United States or during the time that their families must manage without them.
Andrew G. Place
Vice Chairman,
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission