Bad News in Massachusetts

It's not just that Senator Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer. It is also that the state of MA has decided (again) not to allow instate college tuition for DREAMERS.

These two events do not bode well for DREAMERS. Kennedy has always been one of the DREAMERS greatest champions. The latest denial of instate tuition will keep hundreds of graduating high school seniors from attending college.

Tuition aid to illegal immigrants falters

Patrick declines to act on behalf of graduates

By Maria Sacchetti, Globe Staff | May 22, 2008

Governor Deval Patrick has decided against taking action to allow illegal immigrants to pay resident tuition and fees at state colleges and universities this fall, an administration official said yesterday, crushing advocates who were counting on the governor to deliver on a pledge to support the students.

Earlier this year, Patrick said he was considering ways to offer illegal immigrants in-state rates, such as issuing a regulation, adding that it would be "the right thing to do."

The governor declined to comment yesterday, but an administration source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Patrick decided that there were "significant legal impediments" to that approach. The governor will still support legislation on the matter, but on Beacon Hill the issue is widely viewed as dead this session.

The decision is a blow to church pastors, school counselors, and advocates from Lawrence to Springfield, who had pressured Patrick to act before high school graduations in the next few weeks. Now several hundred seniors are again facing college tuition and fees that are more than double the resident rates, as high as $21,900 a year.

"This would be slamming the door on hundreds of students who are graduating this year," said Loren McArthur, staff director of the Merrimack Valley Project, a group of churches, labor unions, and others who sent Patrick 300 letters this month urging him to act now. "If this is his decision, it's unfortunate. But we will be urging him to reconsider."

Advocates had hoped that Patrick, who often touts his own background as a civil rights advocate whose life was transformed by education, would build support for a relatively small group of students. The Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation estimated that if students could pay in-state rates, as many as 600 illegal immigrants would enroll in college a year, out of 160,000 in the public system, bringing in about $2.5 million in tuition and fees. The group estimated that only about 100 such students were enrolled in 2006.

"We had hoped that the governor would honor his commitments and his promises to make education access fair for all Massachusetts students," said Shuya Ohno, spokesman for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "He understood that it was a question of fairness. What he couldn't articulate is that it actually makes money for the state."

In recent weeks, hundreds of supporters were intensifying pressure on Patrick, peppering him with calls and letters on behalf of the students. Some wanted Patrick to sign an executive order allowing students to pay in-state rates. Others urged the Board of Higher Education to change its regulations to allow it. Patrick considered that option, but the board said it did not have that authority, said Eileen O'Connor, a board spokeswoman....

for complete Boston Globe article click here

thanks to citizenorange.com for alerting us to this article

MassHealth Commonwealth Care Available for Immigrants

Healthcare initiative reaches out
Boston Globe
By Tanya Pérez-Brennan, Globe Correspondent | November 8, 2007


Rosa Ventura, a Salvadoran immigrant, was told she could not qualify for MassHealth because she could not produce paycheck stubs. For three years, going to the doctor meant paying as much as $50 per office visit. When her eldest son, who has cerebral palsy, needed special leg braces, she had to scrape together $2,000.

Then last year, a community healthcare initiative called the Latino Health Insurance Program helped Ventura apply for MassHealth, Commonwealth Care, and the state's subsidized health insurance program, and helped her get disability benefits for her son.

"It changed my life," Ventura said during a recent interview conducted in Spanish. "I even cried."

The program is run by the Boston University School of Public Health and administered in East Boston. Organizers, who want to start a similar program in Framingham to serve the town's large number of uninsured Latinos and Brazilians, have enlisted the support of 25 local church congregations and 15 volunteers.

Latinos are less likely to have health insurance or a primary care physician and more likely to use emergency care services for routine problems, according to Milagros Abreu, a postgraduate fellow at the BU School of Public Health and the pro gram's director.

"It is necessary and mandatory for people to receive care for easily preventable diseases," she said. "Clinics and hospitals have an obligation to the community."

More than 230 people obtained health insurance through the East Boston program, Abreu said.

The program's objective is to increase the number of Latino and Brazilian residents enrolled in health insurance programs, and to promote preventive care through monthly workshops. Abreu partnered with a local activist group in Framingham, the Brazilian American Association, to enlist community leaders to be trained as case managers and help enroll people in eligible state programs.

Organizers are trying to meet the state's Dec. 31 deadline for residents to obtain mandatory health insurance. The program has applied for a grant from the MetroWest Community Healthcare Foundation.

According to the most recent Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an annual survey that tracks national health trends, 22.6 percent of Latinos in Boston's western suburbs lacked health insurance.

And a 2001 study by the Wayside Youth & Family Support Network found that 93 percent of Brazilians in Framingham, Marlborough, and Milford had no health insurance.

Ilma Paixão, an activist with the Brazilian group, known as BRAMAS, said access to healthcare has been an obstacle for the local community because people aren't aware of programs for which they might be eligible.

"Some people would pay for insurance if they just knew how to apply for it," she said. "It's a lack of information."

Although the state's health insurance programs are not available to undocumented immigrants, other programs, such as Health Safety Net, or Free Care, do not consider immigration status, Abreu said. As such, the state cannot penalize those people if they cannot obtain health insurance, she said.

For Brazilian patients, the biggest barriers to care are language and lack of insurance, said Janet Yardley, medical director of the Framingham Community Health Center and chief medical officer of the Great Brook Valley Health Center of Worcester.

At the Framingham clinic, 56.6 percent of the patients are Brazilian and 22.6 percent are Latino, according to Yardley. Of those, 69 percent of the Brazilians are uninsured, as are 20 percent of the Latinos.

Latinos might find it a little easier than Brazilians, with Portuguese as their native language, to access the healthcare system, Yardley said.

"There's more people who speak and understand Spanish," she said. "More of the Latinos are eligible for health insurance because they've been here longer."

For Marie Aldana, a Framingham volunteer, helping the uninsured is something she wants to do to give back for the help she and her family received.

"The program is very important because we're helping people get health insurance," said Aldana, whose husband spent 15 years without coverage. "The program is worth supporting."


http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/11/08/healthcare_initiative_reaches_out?mode=PF

Immigration Policy: More Complicated Than We Think

Yes, Immigration is extremely complex. It's not about doing something illegal unless you are smuggling people across the border. But if you are one of those who is crossing, you are not a criminal, because entering the U.S. without a immigration visa is a civil offense (big difference).

People in the U.S. are having intense and rabid reactions to this issue. They want undocumented people to leave the country. They say they don't mind paying more for lettuce.

But the truth is, few people have all the information on how integral undocumented labor is to the American economy. The U.S. sends out cowboy ICE officers to terrify immigrant communities while at the same time having a society of workers and companies that needs immigrants - and actually thrives on their labor.

The most insidious aspect of all this is the underlying hatred for Latinos in general - it doesn't matter if they were here before the Mayflower... People keep denying this, but how come undocumented Irish immigrants don't get blasted by the Minute Men.

I look forward to Shelton's Part II on immigration.

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October 08, 2007

Immigration policy reform, part 1: A world of confusion
The Sommerville News

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Few, if any, topics evoke as much heated commentary on the Somerville News Web site as that of illegal immigration. Regardless of which “side” of the issue one comes down on, most Americans, and most Somervillians, have a sense that the system is broken. Most intuitively understand what Confucius observed 2,500 years ago: rulers who pass laws that they cannot or will not enforce undermine their own authority and weaken the society’s moral fiber.

We like to say that we are a nation of immigrants. True enough. But I don’t think that we want to be a nation of fugitives, hiding in the shadows, feeding a black-market economy, and estranged from full participation in the community. I think most people understand that we can’t simply throw open our borders to all comers, just as they feel that continual integration of new peoples, their culture, ideas, and innovations, has kept our society vibrant.

Between these two broad points lies an enormous territory filled with emotional appeals, misinformation, and honest confusion. Those who have easy and passionate answers amaze me with their ability to either sort through, or more likely, ignore, enormous complexities. I haven’t attempted to write about immigration because I haven’t felt smart enough to say something worth listening to. But, just as I derive simple satisfaction from untangling a badly snarled ball of twine, I’ve been trying to work through my own confusion.

Part of what makes this challenging is that I see at least three levels of confusion. The political coalitions around this issue are disorienting, their arguments are provocative and often hypocritical, and the issue’s underlying substance is complex.

On one side, I see diversity-for-diversity’s sake liberals allied with let’s-keep-wages-low Republicans. On another side, I see damnation-to-anyone-who’s-getting-away-with-anything cultural conservatives allied with don’t-give-away-my-job poor blacks. And then there are unions who have been back and forth on the issue.

To be fair, for almost a century, unions were consistent. Samuel Gompers, American Federation of Labor founder and an immigrant himself, said in 1892, “We realized that immigration is, in its fundamental aspects, a labor problem.”

Right up through passage of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, most unions passionately advocated for reduced immigration and strict enforcement. But Congress dropped strict enforcement provisions from its final version of the 1986 law. Critics who say that it failed to stop or even slow the flow of illegal immigrants are simply stating historical fact.

In response, some unions decided that if there were to be no stopping of illegal immigrants, they should organize them. This has produced mixed results. An illustrative example was the much-publicized drive by Service Employees International Union to organize Los Angeles janitors. The organizing campaign was a success, but the resulting contracts specified wages substantially below those of the 1970s. In those days, LA’s janitors were highly unionized and mostly black. The large influx of illegal immigrants in that decade undermined their bargaining power.

Beyond the vertigo-inducing coalitions around the immigration question, inflammatory charges that they hurl distort and distract from the complex underlying reality. The charge that someone is a racist simply because they believe that laws should be enforced, should discredit anyone making it.

And evoking emotion by holding up vile crimes by immigrants, such as those in Newark and in Foss Park, obscures the hard evidence that illegal immigrants are disproportionately responsible for much less personal and property crimes than are American citizens. They come here to work, not to loot and shoot, and they can’t work if they wind up in the criminal justice system.

The horror of the cultural right toward undocumented Latinos is, to me, another amusing example of its confusion of symbol for reality. Latino immigrants are more family oriented, get fewer divorces, and regularly attend church more often than U.S. citizens. They are much less willing to abort pregnancies. And immigrant and citizen Latinos, together, enter the U.S. military proportionately more than any other ethnic group.

If one can penetrate the confusing politics and loopy hyperbole of the immigration question, the underlying reality is equally confusing in terms of understanding what would be best for the nation as a whole, as opposed to specific interest groups. I’ll share my efforts to unsnarl this for myself in my next column.

And in our own lives and that of our nation, we must ultimately make choices. No matter how confusing, we have to take our best guess, based on all that we know, and then pay attention to the results. I’ll tell you what my best guesses are.

Posted at 07:00 AM in Commentary by Bill Shelton

for link to article click title of this post

Was the GOP Playing with the Votes in Mass.?

Niki Tsongas won a Congressional Seat in a special election in Massachusetts. Tsongas supports the DREAM ACT. Her opponent who still had a strong showing stated that her victory margin was so low because she supported the DREAM ACT.

The author of the essay below says this should be a warning to both parties.

Is he in agreement that Tsongas should not support the DREAM ACT? Sounds like that. His comment at the end of the article maker me wonder:

"But Tsongas's victory was harder than it should have been. Any Democrat complacent about 2008 should go over the returns from Paul Tsongas's old district."

Is he implying that that the Republicans almost stole the election? After all, they are known for doing that.

Either way, congradulations to Niki Tsongas and thanks for supporting the DREAM ACT and shame on Jim Ogonowski for being so narrow-minded about education.


_____





Test Run For 2008
In a Special Election, Lessons for Both Parties
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Washington Post
Friday, October 19, 2007; Page A21



The narrow victory of Democrat Niki Tsongas in a special congressional election in Massachusetts this week offers warnings to both Republicans and Democrats for 2008.

Her victory on Tuesday speaks to the continuing unpopularity of President Bush and the war in Iraq. But her less than robust margin over Republican Jim Ogonowski -- she won 51 percent to his 45 percent, with minor-party candidates taking the rest -- tells Democrats they cannot assume that Bush's low standing will turn the road to next year's elections into easy street. Individual candidates can still trump party affiliation, and sleeper issues can catch politicians by surprise.
In Massachusetts's 5th Congressional District -- a collection of mill towns and affluent and blue-collar suburbs north of Boston -- the surprise issue was illegal immigration. Ogonowski made it the centerpiece of an anti-Washington campaign. An Ogonowski news release, for example, accused Tsongas of being "committed to giving cheap college to illegals at taxpayer expense."

Tsongas, a community college dean, favored granting in-state tuition rates to the children of undocumented immigrants. In Ogonowski's translation of that, Tsongas believed that "Massachusetts taxpayers should foot the bill for the college tuition of the children of illegals."

Republicans think the immigration issue helped Ogonowski, so the country may be in for a lot more of this sort of thing next year. "Everywhere we went, people wanted to talk about immigration," said Matt Wylie, Ogonowski's general consultant. "It was just coming up over and over again..."


for complete essay click title of this post