The US state of Massachusetts declared an emergency over a record number of migrants arrivals into the state and asked the federal government to expedite the resolution of related bureaucratic issues, Governor Maura Healey said on Tuesday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th August, 2023) The US state of Massachusetts declared an emergency over a record number of migrants arrivals into the state and asked the Federal government to expedite the resolution of related bureaucratic issues, Governor Maura Healey said on Tuesday.
"I, Maura T. Healey, Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, do hereby proclaim that there now exists in the Commonwealth a state of emergency due to rapid and unabating increases in the number of families with children and pregnant people � many of them newly arriving migrants and refugees � living within the state but without the means to secure safe shelter in our communities," Healey said in a letter to US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
At the moment, there are more than 5,500 families living in shelters, many of whom are migrants to Massachusetts, according to the letter.
According to Healey, the situation with the number of migrants has deteriorated sharply over the past six months. While the state received about 68 families a day in March, that figure skyrocketed to more than 100 families a day in July, more than four times its March 2022 figure.
At the same time, the cost of maintaining such shelters has grown to $45 million per month, the governor added.
"We need federal partnership, federal funding, and urgent federal action to meet this moment and to continue to serve some of our most vulnerable families," the letter said. "I urge you to continue pressing Congress to take meaningful legislative action and ... use all available executive power to remove the burdensome barriers keeping people from getting work authorizations, address our outdated and punitive immigration laws..."
