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IMMIGRANTS FLOOD
BEACON HILL, OUTLINE BROAD LEGISLATIVE AGENDA
By Jim O'Sullivan
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, APRIL 7, 2005��For one day, Beacon Hill
felt like Ellis Island with a policy bent.
More than 1,000 immigrants and their advocates from across the state
packed the capitol's largest auditorium, stumping for legislative
priorities that centered on measures to expand immigrant access to
health care coverage, education, driver's licenses, and welfare.
"We need it to be known that this is an immigrant community,
Massachusetts is, and we need to speak loudly so people listen to
us," said Bishop Filipe Teixeira, the pastor of St. Martin de Porres
Church in Brockton, who led a group of 25 Cape Verdean and Angolan
youths from Brockton High School.
Meeting with legislators and their staff in a series of regional
gatherings, immigrants spoke of the challenges posed by a large and
unfamiliar country, whose primary language many don't grasp.
Financial hurdles to health care and education make the American
paradigm of upward immigrant mobility harder to attain, many said.
The ninth annual, day-long "Immigrants' Day" served as a forum to
highlight those challenges, organizers said, and a preview of a
statewide tour beginning April 15 aimed at building support for a
law that would provide undocumented immigrants with financial aid to
in-state public colleges and universities.
In his morning keynote address, Senate President Robert Travaglini
(D-East Boston) told immigrants: "The only difference, between me
standing here with this microphone and you sitting out there, is
time."
After his speech, Travaglini told the News Service, "It's the same
issues that's confronted all of the immigrants that have ever come
to this country. There's familiarity, there's inclusion, there's so
much for them to learn, and we understand the obstacles they face
because they're the same ones faced by our grandparents."
Organizers expressed annoyance that some lawmakers did not meet with
constituents from their districts during the day. "We were
disappointed with the legislators who didn't show up when people
travel so far to meet with them," said Michelle Rudy, a legislative
organizer for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy
Coalition (MIRA).
According to the 2000 Census, Massachusetts is the nation's seventh
most popular state for immigrants, who comprise more than 12 percent
of its population. Children from 119 different countries attend
Boston Public Schools, with similarly diverse student bodies in
urban school districts across the Commonwealth.
Immigrants offered personal testimony in support of several bills
before the Legislature. Eva Millona, policy director for MIRA, said
the group's primary goals this year are expanding MassHealth
benefits, extending in-state financial aid to immigrant students who
graduate from local high schools, boosting adult basic education,
and legalizing driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants.
Health Care
Two bills would fully restore MassHealth benefits for 10,000 special
status legal immigrants, among them 3,000 elderly and disabled
people whose benefits lapsed in 2004 and was restored in 2004, but
is currently in danger, according to MIRA. Both Senate 698 and
Senate 738 - a more comprehensive health plan with a MassHealth
provision - would amend coverage that was pared back in 2003 for
legal, non-citizen residents who do not qualify for federal
Medicaid. A similar bill (House 2773, Senate 697) would provide full
MassHealth coverage for the 3,000 eligible elderly and disabled.
As the governor and Senate president reveal features of their health
care reform proposals, MIRA said "special status" immigrants pay
taxes and deserve basic health coverage, which nearly 10,000 of them
lost in July 2003 when MassHealth cuts made it too expensive for
many to receive care or obtain prescriptions. "Special status"
immigrants are not citizens but live legally in the U.S. while their
citizenship status is pending or in flux, or who have been deemed
refugees.
Furthering health care for indigent immigrants would lead to net
savings for the state, said Ying Hu, of the Greater Boston Chinese
Golden Age Center. Supporters of the bills argued that broader
access to health insurance would lessen the strain on the state-run
pool that pays providers who care for the uninsured.
Education
Kelly Hernandez wept while talking about her hope to attend college.
"When I came here I suffered many things," the Salvadoran immigrant
said through tears. Now 19, a mother living in Revere with a
boyfriend whose illegal immigrant status prevents him from working,
she told the Governor's Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants
that she finished high school but can't pay for college.
"I have to support me, my boyfriend, and my child. And I can't
support my college," she said, urging support for the in-state
tuition bill (H. 1230, S. 764), which would allow legal immigrants
who have not received citizenship status to pay the same rates as
Massachusetts citizens at public higher education institutions. The
students must have attended a Massachusetts high school for three
years, and graduated.
Currently, those students must pay tuitions that sometimes triple
the in-state rates, according to Elsa Rivera, a school-to-college
liaison at the Latino Education Institute of Worcester State
College.
Teixeira named education the top challenge facing immigrants. "My
goal is to send them to college so they can come back and help us in
the community," he said, pointing to the students from Brockton
High. "Education's the central issue because if these young men and
women don't go to college, don't go to high school, they get
involved in drugs, in violence, and the problem multiplies."
Millona and other advocates praised Gov. Mitt Romney's decision to
boost adult education line item spending by $8 million over a
five-year period, and implored the Legislature to follow suit.
Selam Aklog said immigrant students who take
English-as-a-second-language classes should not be held to the same
standard on the MCAS test as other students. The 15-year-old
Ethiopian native that she takes "regular" classes, but said many of
her fellow immigrants aren't literate in their own language, and
fall further behind when faced with a test in a foreign language.
All students should be required to take the test, but different
standards should apply.
"They take a different class from kids who take regular classes, and
I don't think it's fair," the Cambridge Rindge and Latin sophomore
said.
While public schools can offer a range of foreign language
assistance for students, the "low-instance" languages spoken in many
nations often prove difficult for teachers and students, said Nyal
Fuentes, a state Department of Education refugee specialist.
Driver's Licenses for Undocumented Immigrants
After it faltered in 2003, a proposal to give driver's licenses to
undocumented immigrants has returned to the Legislature, with its
proponents arguing the state would improve public safety by
improving competence, and benefit financially in the long term
because immigrants could more easily commute to jobs.
Jacek Czekaji, a Polish immigrant living in Belchertown, said a
friend of his "has not driven for six years. She's worried about
that. She needs advice."
Standing with a group of immigrants from western Massachusetts, who
met informally with state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (D-Amherst) on a
stairway near Nurses Hall, Czekaji said immigrants who hail from
countries where automobiles are less a part of life have difficulty
growing accustomed to their centrality in the U.S.
"Here everybody has a car, and everybody should have a car, because
everything is far away," he said.
Rosenberg said he would support expanded immigrant access to
driver's licenses, with the "proper controls," but did not elaborate
on what those were.
In 2003, a similar bill gained some support in the Legislature
before public opposition mounted and Romney spoke against it.
Welfare
A welfare reform bill (Senate 71) would extend "transitional cash
assistance" for low-income immigrant families who do not meet
federal guidelines.
At a meeting for Worcester-area immigrants and their legislators,
immigrant advocate Barbara Paul said the state's Department of
Transitional Assistance needs to loosen its restrictions on families
who qualify for welfare, and do more to offer translations for
immigrants who do not speak one of the languages offered at the
office.
"There really is no state support here for refugees once they get
here," said Paul, of the Lutheran Community Services of Southern New
England. In a room with several Somali refugees from Worcester, with
whom Paul said she works on a regular basis, she said the city's
public transit system is insufficient for immigrants who don't
qualify for driver's licenses. One man she knows, she said, walks
one mile to class each day, on an artificial leg, because he can't
afford the commute and receives no transportation subsidy.
"Where is the state of Massachusetts, the liberal state of
Massachusetts, who welcomes immigrants?" she asked.
"A Slow Rebuilding"
In the day's last formal session, the Governor's Advisory Council on
Refugees and Immigrants met to hear from education and legal
experts. The council, conceived in 1983 under Gov. Michael Dukakis,
exists to assimilate testimony from the immigrant community and
present policy recommendations to the governor, and state law holds
that the committee should never comprise fewer than 15 members.
But committee chair Westy Egmont, president of the International
Institute of Boston immigrant services agency, said only "eight or
nine" members sit on the committee now, after the one-year terms of
all the members lapsed in 2001 under acting Gov. Jane Swift. The
governor is charged with selecting committee members, who serve
one-year terms but can be re-appointed.
Since Romney took office in 2003, he has made no appointments,
although the committee continues to meet.
Egmont called "this administration very slow in the process of
making appointments," and said the body's shrunken ranks had drained
its efficacy.
"We've been in a slow rebuilding since he was elected," Egmont told
the News Service after the meeting. Gathering independently, and
unofficially, members have sought to re-establish a state plan,
rather than serving as merely a forum for immigrant grievances,
according to Egmont.
"I think it's a missed opportunity," he said of the lapsed
committee. "I think right now it's much weaker than it has to be."
News
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