Democrat Governor Declares State Of Emergency Over Biden’s Border Crisis

 Massachusetts Democrat Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency on Tuesday as President Joe Biden’s border crisis has overwhelmed the state’s services.

Healey said that the number of illegal aliens pouring into Massachusetts has “stretched” the state’s shelter system “thin.”

Healey said in her letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that the state of emergency was caused by “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.”

The letter noted that federal immigration policies were part of what was driving the problem, but Healey also claimed that “burdensome barriers keeping people from getting work authorizations” was part of the problem. Migrants being able to access better opportunities in the job market would likely serve as magnet for more migrants to continue coming to the state as its resources become more scarce.

Healey continued:

Over the past six months, the demand for emergency shelter has skyrocketed. In March of this year, 68 families per day were coming to our field offices seeking assistance. By July, that number had jumped to over 100 families per day. By comparison, in March of 2022, only 25 families per day came to our offices to request help. Currently, shelter entries per month are more than double the number of entries per month during the pandemic and roughly one-third higher than pre-pandemic levels. At the same time, the number of families leaving emergency shelter for safe, permanent housing has dwindled. The number of families exiting shelter has declined by nearly two-thirds since 2019. These trends are driven by many factors, including a confusing tangle of immigration laws, an inability for migrants to obtain work authorization from the federal government, an increase in the number of people coming to Massachusetts, and the lack of an affordable housing supply in our state.