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Healey declares state of emergency over rapid increase in number of migrant families
By adamg on Tue, 08/08/2023 - 11:07am
Gov. Healey today declared a state of emergency because the state is running out of room to house all the migrants coming here - we're currently at 20,000 individuals in state shelters.
State employees and our partners have been miracle workers throughout this crisis – going above and beyond to support families and using every tool at their disposal to expand shelter capacity by nearly 80 percent in the last year. But in recent months, demand has increased to levels that our emergency shelter system cannot keep up with, especially as the number of families leaving shelter has dwindled due to a lack of affordable housing options and barriers to securing work. I am declaring a state of emergency in Massachusetts and urging my partners in the federal government to take the action we need to address this crisis by streamlining the work authorization process and passing comprehensive immigration reform. Many of the new arrivals to our state desperately want to work, and we have historic workforce demands across all industries. I am also calling on all of our partners – from cities and towns to the faith community, philanthropic organizations, and human service providers – to rise to this challenge and do whatever you can to help us meet this moment.
Healey said there are currently some 5,600 families in emergency shelters, up from 3,100 a year ago. Part of the problem is a lack of affordable housing means it's becoming harder to find permanent housing for them, she said.
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Comments
I have to ask
Why are they coming here? If people are coming in large numbers, there must be a reason behind it.
Also
Yeah but what about housing, lady? Lots of people in this state have jobs and cannot afford the housing here. Lots of those people make well above minimum wage, yet still have housing issues, so why do you think people making low wages will have any better luck?
Did you read what Adam posted?
The housing bit is in there:
Time for the state to act like a state - snob zoning, extreme minimum size and acreage requirements and single family zoning need to go. Time to expand transit and to expand sewer and water systems so that outlying areas can densify as well.
I'd be happy to expand my home to a two family if the zoning changed. Our neighborhood was initially laid out for 3-family zoning, as evidenced by the house numbering system.
As someone, who could not
As someone, who could not find an apartment when my lease ran out, we have a huge deficit in housing in the area. We need to build build build. I am looking at you, suburbs and my hometown, where there is big opposition to apartment buildings that would ruin the character of the town. As if it had a character besides being a super fund town.
I did
I did. But I think my point is that housing issues are an ongoing problem.. but all of a sudden shelters are overflowing and NOW it's a mega problem.
So why no action until now?
Why are they coming here?
Leaving the politics of the border out-
1. There's a receptive, established Haitian diaspora in the region. People know people who live here. The history of foreign immigration to Massachusetts shows that when an ethnic group gets established, others follow. As for the Venezuelans, this is less of a reason, but then there's reason 2.
2. They have found out that the state will house them for free. We're the only state that does that. You could live in a tent in Texas or California or live in a motel in Massachusetts.
Time to secure the border
Time to secure the border between Texas and more progressive states.
sounds cute
How does that sound if you rephrase it as "stop trans people from moving to places where they can get health care" and "stop pregnant people from going somewhere that doctors aren't afraid to provide good medical care"?
How about securing the border between the USA and Mexico?
Really, Trump was not wrong about "building a wall."
Securing your border is a core of national sovereignty. Not securing it is national dysfunction.
And before the "Walls don't work" crowd pipes up, there are several examples where walls have worked to cut migration from a torrent to a trickle.
Where’s your family from?
Mine came from eastern europe.
They came with immigrant visas or passed through Ellis Island
As I presume your ancestors did. We still have the passports and documents
A legal process.
Legal immigration desirable. Open borders are insane. There are still places on the southern border where you can walk across without a barrier.
We don't have an open border
We have laws. They are enforced.
Not even the Border Patrol union believes that
"Millions enter unapprehended"
https://bpunion.org/featured/the-border-crisis-will-continue/
hahaha
Not even the brownshirts in the Border Patrol Union?! That's not a shocker, friend. They want more money and more guns.
Border Patrol are lying brownshirts (they do wear brown shirts)
yet somehow the Governor saying Massachusetts is in a "state of emergency" over migrants is telling the truth.
High degree of cognitive dissonance there.
Where are these people coming from?
Border Patrol are not neutral arbiters on the immigration issue
This is not a contradiction to the Governor saying MA is is not prepared to deal with the amount of refugees the state is currently seeing.
You should look up "cognitive dissonance" in the dictionary.
Cool.
So let’s make legal immigration possible instead of slamming the door in the face of desperate people fleeing an international crisis over which they have no control
A legal process
That process is highly restricted today, and we need to loosen the policy. You can argue about walls all you want, but the fundamental problem is that we have a very narrow and nearly impossible path for legal immigration. If you favor legal immigration, which you say you do, then we need to open up that option. Look at the threats to our national economy right now -- they mostly involve not being able to find workers. Those workers would love to come here and work, but walls and wall related rhetoric leave our hospitals and construction industries understaffed.
we need a list
list them or they never happened.
careful not to let atrocities against specific ethnic populations get in the way
common sense
barriers stop or deter people from crossing
The border barriers that Hungary installed on its southern border with Serbia and Croatia in 2015 a recent effective example.
Austria did the same thing.
Spanish territories of Ceuta and Melilla and Morocco
Built to keep people in rather than out, but Israel's West Bank walls, the China/Hong Kong barrier, and the old inner-German, Berlin Wall, Czech/German barrier effective
Favorably Citing the Berlin Wall?
Yeah, lets put automatic machine guns on the wall and shoot whoever comes over. Lets mine no man's land. Lets arrest escapees' families back in the home country because their children had the nerve to try to escape. That's just monstrous.
Aside from the fact that the wall was built to keep people in, not out. Why don't you mention North Korea while you're at it?
don't understand your position here
Hundreds of thousands of people cross the border illegally every month. Yes it is a federal offense to enter the USA without passing through immigration controls, just as in other countries. In parts of Arizona there is no barrier at all.
Nobody knows how many succeed in evading the Border Patrol, or who they are. There are millions here.
Undocumented workers are at the mercy of employers. Their low wages depress wages for US citizens and legal residents. Casual carpenters and other building and service workers wreck living wages for people legally here.
The people that come are self-selected rather than being selected by the USA in the best interests of the American people.
Are you saying this should continue?
There will be no comprehensive immigration reform without securing the border. Border can't be secured without physical barriers. There will be no amnesty or relaxation of legal immigration criteria without a border wall. That is a political reality.
My Position
Treat People Humanely. Make it Easier to Immigrate "Legally".
There absolutely can be amnesty and comprehensive immigration reform without a bigger, dumber wall than we already have. It almost passed during the W admin and could be passed now without the xenophobia stirred up by the literal psychopaths on the right.
i don’t understand *your* position
you claim Trump was right, yet you list all the reasons he will actually do nothing.
there is no “common sense” approach to a complex issue like immigration.
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