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Massachusetts senators say taxpayers may be unfairly footing bill for migrants with financial sponsors

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on

Published in News & Features

A group of Massachusetts senators are demanding that the governor review how many migrant families being supported by taxpayers entered the U.S. on the condition of having their expenses covered by a sponsor, and that she make those people pay up.

Eleven state senators, led by Democrat Michael Moore and Republican Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, sent a letter to Gov. Maura Healey and Housing and Livable Communities Secretary Edward Augustus, calling for accountability for those who have made commitments to provide financial support for migrants under the federal Humanitarian Parole Program, “but have not fulfilled that commitment.”

“In the absence of any action from the United States government to support communities providing housing, food, and support to migrant families during the recent immigration crisis, Massachusetts taxpayers have been footing the bill,” Moore said in a statement Monday. “It is plainly unfair that taxpayers are supporting individuals who are here under a program that requires, under penalty of perjury, a specific person or organization commit to financially support them.”

In the letter, the lawmakers point to the steady influx of migrants taxing the state’s overflowing emergency shelter system, and the roughly $1 billion the state was on track to spend in fiscal year 2024 and is seeking to budget in the new fiscal year that began Monday, “to house, feed and support” the nearly 7,500 families — half composed of migrants — in that shelter system.

The senators assert that some of those migrant families may have a financial sponsor, and the state, and by extension taxpayers, should not be footing the bill for their stay in the U.S.

Their letter calls for the Healey administration to gather statistical information on any such cases, and to seek reimbursement for the public dollars that have been spent to support those individuals, expenses that “should have been covered by their financial sponsor.”

“We appreciate the pressure you have placed on the federal government, and we continue to hope that Congress will act,” the June 25 letter states. “However, we ask that you also seek to hold to account those who have legally committed themselves to provide financial support for these migrants.”

 

Established by the Biden Administration in January 2023, the Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans provides pathways for up to 30,000 nationals from those countries to live and work lawfully in the United States for two years. In exchange, the applicants are required to obtain a financial sponsor to pay for their housing, basic necessities, paperwork, health care and schooling, Moore’s office said.

“Our immigration system needs to have integrity and that means transparency and accountability for commitments made for financial support,” Tarr said in a statement. “Ensuring that the people who make those commitments follow through not only secures integrity, it also provides critical resources for a system this painfully overburdened.”

The governor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Healey administration sent a five-person team to the southern border in Texas to “educate” people of the shelter shortage in Massachusetts, and last week banned migrants from sleeping on the floor at Logan Airport, effective July 9.

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