About 480,000 working-age residents in Massachusetts have limited English-language proficiency, an issue that has surfaced as the state is being flooded with migrants.
The problem also comes as taxpayers are fleeing to more affordable states, the Boston Herald reported on Wednesday:
The roughly 480,000 residents with limited English proficiency represents approximately 10% of the state workforce, and may be a significant undercount, due to reliance on 2022 census estimates, according to a new analysis released Wednesday by MassINC and the UMass Donahue Institute.
The analysis places the blame on state and federal funding that has not kept pace with growth in the state’s limited English-speaking, or foreign-born, population over the past two decades, which it says has led to large gaps in access to high-quality English-as-a-second-language services.
WGBH noted Wednesday that approximately 20,000 migrants in Massachusetts are waiting to get into classes to learn to speak English.
In January, Massachusetts leaders began asking private homeowners to house illegal aliens as the state ran out of places to put them, according to Breitbart News:
Massachusetts is the only state that has a state-wide ‘right to housing’ rule for homeless families. And with that rule in mind, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey (D) has repeatedly asked legal residents to open up their homes to illegal immigrants for whom officials are having a hard time finding beds.
Following that report, a growing number of the state’s residents indicated that “migrants/immigration” is the top issue for its leaders to address, Breitbart News noted in April.
In May, Healey began turning a former correctional facility into a temporary shelter for migrants in Norfolk, per Breitbart News. However, Massachusetts State Sen. Becca Rausch (D) expressed concerns about how the move would affect the town, which has about 11,500 residents.
“I hope no one would want to see pregnant women, children, and families without shelter,” she said in a statement. “At the same time, the impacts of an influx of more than 400 people, including many school-aged children, to a town with a population of only 11,500 must be managed carefully and responsibly.”
