Gov. Healey may do herself and Massachusetts a whole lot of good if she regionalized the state’s critical immigration downside.
If she doesn’t quickly get a deal with on the immigrant invasion of the state, it can bury her administration.
It is not going to be straightforward, however nothing is with regards to coping with the inflow of Immigrants from all over the world — each authorized and unlawful.
They have flocked to Massachusetts to partake within the state’s beneficiant welfare insurance policies, insurance policies which have overwhelmed the state’s skill to look after them.
The coverage was written forty years in the past to cope with homeless Massachusetts residents however has been liberally interpreted to incorporate homeless immigrants from all over the world.
It is as if the state hung a “Welcome to Massachusetts” signal round its neck. So they’ve come, and are nonetheless coming. Why not? Everything is free in Massachusetts.
Except that the Legislature, quickly stymied, will applicable one other $250 million to assist pay for the housing, feeding and education of the immigrants. And, regardless of Gov. Maura Healey’s “cap” on the 7,500 immigrant households already residing in motels, motels and shelters, extra are coming.
Future immigrant households will likely be positioned on a “waitlist” which, translated, implies that the state will deal with them anyway. No immigrant, authorized or in any other case, will likely be denied help or advised to return to the place they got here from.
Because President Biden is not going to present states like Massachusetts with the funds to cope with the immigrant downside he created when he opened the borders, Healey might quickly want to lift taxes to pay for all of it.
And since Healey can’t depend on the ineffective Massachusetts delegation to Congress, all Democrats, to wrest funding out of the Democrat Biden administration, Healey should start to hunt assist elsewhere.
One means Healey may search aid from the federal authorities is to point out management by making the immigration downside a regional challenge. She may do this by reviving the New England Regional Commission or creating one thing related.
The nonpartisan company, created in 1967, was made up of the governors of the six New England states with a complete of 12 U.S. senators. Its objective was to stimulate and promote financial growth, together with the funding of infrastructure tasks, offering monetary and technical help, in addition to offering non-public and public challenge boards.
It had clout in Washington. However, it was abolished throughout a budget-cutting marketing campaign by smaller-government President Reagan in 1981, though its sister fee, the Appalachian Regional Commission, survived.
That is as a result of the Appalachian Regional Commission, made up of 13 states, starting from New York and Pennsylvania all the way down to Georgia and Alabama with 13 governors and 26 U.S. Senators, had extra clout. It is the recipient of thousands and thousands in federal funds.
Healey has already proven a willingness to cooperate with fellow New England states. Early on in her administration she joined the opposite 5 states in a regional method to obtain federal funds for power transmission.
Early in October she joined with Connecticut and Rhode Island to coordinate offshore wind procurements, setting pointers for offshore wind ventures.
Immigration is totally different, after all. It is a sensitive and dear challenge that, if not correctly handled, can are inclined to destabilize overburdened communities, which is why Donald Trump has crowds roaring when he vows to ship unlawful immigrants again to the place they got here from.
It is unfair, however true, that the immigrants are despatched to motels and motels in typically working-class communities like Lowell, Woburn and Taunton and never Brookline, Newton or Weston.
It can be a given that people in neighboring states would possibly balk at accepting immigrants bussed in from Massachusetts with out accompanying causes, plans and monetary incentives.
This is the place a revised New England Regional Commission, or one thing related, may are available in and play a job. She ought to set up one.
Instead of biting across the edges, Healey has a possibility to step up and develop into a regional chief on the difficulty.
After all, we’re all on this collectively. Aren’t we?
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
