MASS. MOVES TO HELP MIGRANTS GET WORK
But even with assistance, getting a permit is a complicated job all its own
With the number of migrants soaring in Massachusetts and maxing out emergency shelters, their need to find work has never been greater.
But the wait for permits can be excruciating for those crammed in shelters and not allowed to earn the money they need to move out. It takes three and a half months for federal immigration authorities to process temporary employment authorization to most applicants from one major category of migrants here legally, according to current government estimates. But for many it takes far longer.
Crisler Thelemarque, 32, who is from Haiti, arrived in the United States a year ago, just as the Biden administration expanded the criteria for migrants from that country to enter the United States legally. Thelemarque has been waiting for his work permit since March — so long that the one-year period he was allowed to stay — and work, if authorized — will likely expire before he gets his permit. A pending asylum application will allow him to remain in the country, but if he wants to work, he has to reapply.
Nationwide, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, has nearly 1.6 million pending applications for work permits, which are granted only to those with permission to be here.
Efforts to improve the slow, cumbersome process are taking shape. Massachusetts has launched what it says is a first-in-the-nation program to provide legal assistance, case management, and other services for new migrants, sending legal professionals into shelters to help people apply for permits and holding two weeklong clinics in Reading in conjunction with federal authorities. Free job training for those waiting on work authorization is also taking place, including one initia
‘There’s a million ways for things to go wrong’
JILL SEEBER, executive director of Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice in Boston
tive partnering with local employers that will pay shelter residents a $325-a-week stipend during the three- to six-month program.
Similar clinics have been held in New York, Chicago, and Denver. These endeavors to solve multiple problems at once — getting migrants into the workforce, out of overflowing shelters, and onto the payrolls of employers desperate to fill jobs — are part of a push to address the broken immigration system.
“We’re doing all that we can to make up for the failings of federal immigration law,” Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kim Driscoll said during a visit to the clinic in Reading in November. “People can’t wait to work and we’ve got employers that are hungry for workers.”
There are more than 228,000 open jobs in Massachusetts, many of them in health care — more than twice the number of unemployed people in the state.
Federal immigration authorities said that as of Oct. 1., they accelerated the application process for migrants who use the Customs and Border Protection app or come from certain countries, including Haiti. In those cases, the median processing time has dropped from 90 to 30 days, USCIS said. The agency said it “adjudicates each [employment authorization document] application fairly, humanely, and efficiently on a caseby-case basis,” but did not say what accounted for otherwise long wait times.
Earlier this month, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell and a coalition of state attorneys general sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security urging more action, including allowing migrants to apply for work authorization at the same time they request permission to enter the country, granting provisional authorization to work at the time they apply, eliminating fees, and automatically renewing their ability to stay in the US if their allotted time expires while they’re waiting for work permits.
But these changes are mostly aimed at new arrivals. Those who came earlier this year are still waiting six months to a year for their work permits, which must be continually renewed. And without authorization, migrants are in limbo; they can’t enroll in most training programs or English classes geared toward getting a job.
Thelemarque, who has been waiting nearly nine months for his permit, has been staying with a cousin in Mattapan. He studies English and practices his trombone, which he played professionally in Haiti, and watches his cousin’s daughter. But he’s frustrated he can’t do more. “It’s very difficult for me as a young man full of strength,” he said in Haitian Creole, through a translator.
Applying for work authorization — which, without a pending
‘Those people are assets to the government, not liabilities.’
SUSAN CHURCH, Chief operating officer, State Office for Refugees and Immigrants
green card or asylum, typically lasts no longer than two years — is too complicated for non-English speakers to do on their own, immigration specialists say. Migrants have to fill out a sevenpage form outlining their arrival details and eligibility status, and if someone forgets to check a box or accidentally selects the incorrect eligibility category, they may have to apply all over again.
“They get rejected for tickytacky things all the time,” said Jill Seeber, executive director of Mabel Center for Immigrant Justice in Boston. “There’s a million ways for things to go wrong.”
Applicants must find a way to Revere or Lawrence — or possibly Rhode Island or New Hampshire, depending on where they’re living — to have their photographs and fingerprints taken at a predetermined time. If they don’t make the appointment, their application could be denied. Something as simple as changing their mailing address, not uncommon among migrants without a permanent home, could further delay the process.
For most new arrivals, the application costs $410, which can be waived by filling out yet another form, this one 11 pages long involving household income, assets, and poverty guidelines. “There’s a lot of math,” Seeber said. The biometric information — photos and fingerprints — cost an additional $85.
Migrants streamed into Massachusetts this year, many fleeing violence and poverty, escalating the state’s longstanding housing crisis. The influx is being felt nationwide, punctuated by migrants being involuntarily shipped north from the southern border, including two planeloads of Venezuelans who were sent to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas last year.
In August, Governor Maura Healey declared a state of emergency due to the skyrocketing shelter numbers — more than 5,600 families at the time, roughly half of them migrants. In October, she announced a capacity limit of 7,500 families, which was quickly hit, causing people to be turned away for the first time. In a letter to the US secretary of homeland security, Healey cited the “burdensome barriers” facing migrants seeking work authorization as a primary reason for overloaded shelters.
During the clinic at a National Guard facility in Reading in late November, migrants in winter hats made their way around a cavernous room bustling with Red Cross volunteers, immigration lawyers, and translators. A National Guard member in camouflage fatigues blew bubbles for a toddler pushing a folding chair along the floor.
In addition to serving as a one-stop shop for applying for work permits free of charge, including biometrics, the clinic offered vaccinations, child care voucher applications, registration for the MassHire employment center system, and driver’s license information.
Most of the 2,000 migrants bused to the clinics from around the state were Haitian, including a couple who appeared to have been duped by a “notario” who showed up at their shelter at a Residence Inn in Worcester. Notarios, based on the term for legal professionals in Latin America, charge migrants for providing services they aren’t qualified to perform. The couple, there with their 3-year-old son, thought their work authorization was in process, but clinic volunteers determined it had been done improperly and helped them refile.
Several migrants at the clinic may have been defrauded in this way, based on the number of rejected permits from the same shelter, said Susan Church, chief operating officer of the state’s Office for Refugees and Immigrants.
“This is a monumental change, the role that the state is playing,” said Church, who has been an immigration lawyer for more than 25 years.
Pastor Dieufort Fleurissaint, executive director of the nonprofit True Alliance Center in Mattapan, has never seen such an intense need in his two decades helping Haitian migrants. Following the Reading clinics, he said, he knew of at least several dozen people who got their work permits within a few weeks.
“Those people are assets to the government, not liabilities,” he said.
One migrant he’s assisting has been caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare trying to get her work permit. Claire Petion first applied for temporary protected status, or TPS, and a work permit in August of 2021, and finally got both more than one year later.But her Social Security number wasn’t issued, forcing her to apply for that separately in order to work legally. While she was waiting, her TPS and work permit expired, so she applied again. Her Social Security card finally arrived a few months ago, but her new TPS and work authorizations have not.
A former straight-A student, Petion, 21, lives with an aunt in Randolph. She wants to apply for jobs and health care training, and was accepted to several colleges, but can’t attend because of her paperwork problems.
When she called up her case on the USCIS app, there were no red flags: “Last update: 264 days ago,” it read.
When she dialed the automated number (which some immigration attorneys derisively call 1-800-USELESS) and tried to connect with a person, the recording said: “If you continue to ask for an agent, I will need to disconnect the call.”
And then it did.