It is one of the richest states in the United States, where residents of its most luxurious zip code enjoy red brick apartments valued at $3 million.
But an alarming new study says Massachusetts’s future is yet to come.
The 50,000 illegal immigrants who have entered the state since Joe Biden took office are putting costly strains on schools, health care and other services.
Jessica Vaughan, author of the Report for the Center for Immigration Studiessays that the State is destined for bankruptcy.
That’s because immigrants will drain state coffers by a staggering $1.8 trillion over the next two years.
Migrants from Haiti and elsewhere board a van in Boston bound for a shelter in Quincy, Massachusetts
Although some illegal immigrants will work and pay taxes, these earnings will not come close to covering the cost of social services for all 355 million of them, Vaughan says.
“These immigrants represent a looming fiscal disaster for Massachusetts taxpayers,” Vaughan told the Mail.
“Even if they work, they are not equipped with the skills and education to avoid being a burden on the public coffers.”
The report comes amid a tense 2024 presidential race in which Republican candidate Donald Trump is using immigration as a weapon against his rival, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
Migration expert Jessica Vaughan
Republicans are calling Harris a failed “border czar” who was tasked with tackling the root causes of migration from Central America even as illegal border crossings were at record levels.
Still, the number of illegal entries has fallen in recent months to levels not seen since the Trump administration, and it remains unclear how the issue will influence the vote in November.
Trump, for his part, has promised to launch mass deportations if he returns to the White House.
Although located more than 2,000 miles from the southern border, Massachusetts has seen about 50,000 newly arrived illegal immigrants since January 2021, the study says.
Some reunited with relatives, others looked for work in Boston, Worcester, Springfield and other large cities.
Some used buses provided by border officials, and a few dozen were controversially flown to the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
At first, they were welcomed with open arms by a blue state that offers “sanctuary” protections to immigrants.
Hundreds of people rallied in Boston, Massachusetts, in May, demanding an end to border crossings, sanctuary cities, and housing for undocumented immigrants.
Migrants can no longer sleep overnight at Boston’s Logan Airport
A taxpayer-funded computer class for the influx of immigrants in Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood
More than half of Americans want to see mass raids and deportations of undocumented immigrants
However, in recent months the mood has changed and become more frustrating.
Gov. Maura Healey recently announced that immigrants would no longer be allowed to sleep overnight at Boston’s Logan Airport, after dozens of families had been sleeping there for months.
Migrants slept in the emergency department at Boston Medical Center until last year, when they were told to stop.
Still, new arrivals continue to appear at the facility and have been seen resting on benches outside.
Plans to build a shelter for migrant families on Cape Cod have met with strong opposition from residents, who called the proposal a “nightmare.”
The Republican-led city of Taunton was so angry that state officials sent migrants to an emergency shelter at its 155-room Clarion Hotel that it sued the owners for safety violations.
Vaughan’s report also documents abuses committed by immigrants breaking the law in Massachusetts.
Among them are a Dominican cocaine trafficker, a Russian fraudster and a Guatemalan who was arrested for child rape.
But the most shocking case involves Haitian migrant Cory Alvarez, 26, who is behind bars fighting charges that he raped a disabled teenager at his shelter at the Comfort Inn in Rockland.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, has called for action at the border and for funding to be provided to services running in her cash-strapped state.
A few dozen migrants were controversially flown to the island of Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts by Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
About 30 migrant families were found sleeping in Terminal E at Boston’s Logan International Airport in January.
The influx of migrants has further strained social services in a state already grappling with alarming levels of homelessness.
Massachusetts already spends $1 billion each year on emergency shelters, but Vaughan says this hides the true cost to taxpayers.
The influx of new arrivals under the Biden administration, including some 10,000 children, 8,500 of whom traveled without an adult, is putting further strain on education, health care and other social services, it added.
Over the next two years, the combined cost of food stamps, education, health care and public safety could reach a staggering $1.8 trillion, Vaughan says.
That “fiscal time bomb” is nearly three times the state’s entire economy, which was $615 billion last year.
In January, Democratic Gov. Healey joined eight of his counterparts from other states affected by immigration in calling on the White House and Congress to take action at the border and provide billions of additional dollars to keep services running.
But even an emergency grant won’t solve Massachusetts’s spending problems in the years ahead, Vaughan said.
Instead, state lawmakers need to cut welfare payments to immigrants and get tougher on employers who hire undocumented people, he said.
They should also end sanctuary policies that prevent immigration officials from launching deportation raids, and even from “seizing” the remittances migrants send to their families abroad, he added.
The governor’s office did not respond to our request for comment. The White House and other immigration experts have argued that newcomers often work hard, pay taxes and help grow the economy.
