Speaker DeLeo Discusses MA State Budget Crisis; Budget Advocacy Efforts Essentail

Speaker Robert DeLeo discussed the budget crisis today, as covered by the Boston Globe. With the dire budget situation, advocacy becomes increasingly important. The MIRA Coalition, through a variety of feedback mechanisms (survey, one-on-ones, conference calls, etc.), developed its state advocacy agenda for 2009. All legislators at the MA State House have received a copy of the agenda and a letter detailing MIRA's budget priorities.


In terms of the budget, MIRA continues its advocacy efforts on the following budge items:

• Maintain funding for the Citizenship for New Americans Program (line item: 4003-0122) at $650,000;

• Fund Adult Basic Education (ABE) and English for Speakers of Other Languages (line item7035-0002) at its FY’08 level of $30.1 million;

• Implement the Dedicated Fund for Workplace ABE and ESOL, as recommended by the MA Workforce Investment Board, including full funding for the Workplace Training Fund;

• Fund the Refugee and Immigrant Safety and Empowerment Program (within line item: 4513-1130) at $300,000 with no change to the FY09 line item language;

• Fund MassHealth Outreach and Enrollment Grants (line item 4000-0352) at $3.5 million; and

• Continue support for the New Americans Agenda.

If you are interested in getting involved in advocacy efforts with MIRA, please contact MIRA's State Legislative Director. If you would like to contact your legislator(s) to support MIRA's budget priorities, you can find there information by visiting here. For an analysis of the impact of the Governor's House 1 budget on immigrants and refugees, click here.

Stay tuned for action alerts in the coming weeks.

Another Successful New Americans Agenda Meeting - March 18th in Fitchburg

The sixth and final New Americans Agenda (NAA) community forum took place on Wednesday, March 18th in Fitchburg, MA. Over 150 people attended the lively meeting, which saw testimony from immigrants, immigrant advocates, elected officials, and other testifiers, including the chief of police in Fitchburg, who spoke of the need to provide undocumented immigrants with driver's licenses to increase public safety.

The series of meetings has been well attended with people from all over the Commonwealth providing a broad range of recommendation to ease the integration of immigrants into all facets of life in Massachusetts. The result of the public and policy expert meetings will be a report delivered to Governor Patrick in July with actionable recommendations for departments and agencies across state government. The NAA is the result of an executive order signed by Patrick in July of last year.