For Sasha Chanoff, making sure the refugees and immigrants who seek shelter and a new home in the Greater Boston area isn’t just a humanitarian mandate.
It’s a matter of dollars and cents.
With both Boston and Massachusetts as a whole bleeding tax revenues, Chanoff, the founder of Boston-based RefugePoint, argued these newcomers should be greeted for who and what they are: A badly needed spark to Massachusetts’ economic engine.
“The bottom line is that refugees and immigrants contribute immensely to the economy of the Greater Boston area,” Chanoff told MassLive earlier this week.
And while the dominant public image of Massachusetts’ costly and still unfolding migrant crisis is one of people sleeping rough on the floor at Boston Logan International Airport, or of the dormitory-style housing at the Melnea J. Cass Recreational Complex in Roxbury, Chanoff said there’s another, less-told story.
And that’s of the communities across Massachusetts who have willingly opened their doors to refugees fleeing violence and chaos in such nations as Haiti and Afghanistan, providing them with the tools and support they need to successfully start over in the United States.
That nuance often has been lost in the debate over how to meet the towering cost of Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system — now projected to sail past $900 million a year over the next two years — even as the Democratic Healey administration continues to open overflow sites to deal with the deluge of people
“They are needed,” Chanoff said of the Bay State’s newest arrivals. “We need to figure out good pathways to get here, so they can arrive in communities that can accept them and support them.”
First, the numbers about the economic impact that newcomers are having on Greater Boston’s economy. And they’re tough to deny.
A recent study, co-authored by Boston Indicators, the research wing of the Boston Foundation, and the nonprofit Immigration Research Initiative, provides the hard numbers to back up that assertion.
Immigrants, both documented and undocumented, annually contribute $103 billion, or 21% of the Greater Boston region’s GDP, which is equivalent to their share of the population, the two groups’ research showed.
More than six in 10 (61%) of Greater Boston’s immigrant workers — documented and undocumented — who have full-time jobs earn at least $49,000 per year, which is considered middle-wage earning level for full-time work, according to the report.
At the same, those immigrants are “disproportionately likely to be in low-wage jobs, with 38% of all immigrants in jobs paying less than $49,000 a year, compared to 24% of native-born citizens, the data show.
Even so, these newcomers also own and operate the “Main Street” businesses that many Bay State residents frequent and depend on every day — from nail salons and car washes to convenience stores and restaurants.
In fact, four in 10 such businesses are immigrant owned in the Bay State, the research showed.
The two groups’ research also shows that immigrants have helped offset population loss, as rising costs and a lack of affordable housing have prompted other Massachusetts residents to leave the state.
For Chanoff, those numbers tell the story of what the refugees who enter the nation through official channels, and those who have sought shelter in the commonwealth’s shelter system eventually can become — a vibrant part of the Bay State’s future.
And that’s why, he said, it’s important to highlight the efforts of private citizens, who organize into groups through a federal program known as the Welcome Corps.
“There are communities coming together to say what can we do to support immigrants broadly.” Chanoff said. “One person told us, ‘We don’t distinguish between refugees or immigrants who are already here. We just try to help people.’”
That includes such communities as Arlington, in suburban Boston, where residents have banded together in the past to welcome refugees from such nations as Haiti and Sudan.
It’s an effort that has taken on particular urgency as lawmakers on Beacon Hill try to reach agreement on a compromise funding bill for the state’s emergency shelter system, and as Congress remains deadlocked on fixes to the nation’s immigration laws.
“It’s a huge tension point — so many people have arrived unplanned,” he said. “We weren’t necessarily expecting them to be here. The shelters have filled up. And we’re draining resources to support them. So what do you do about that?”
“There are no simple answers to this — one of the answers is to create legal migration pathways for people,” he continued. “Because when you have legal migration pathways, because it is a planned process, with supports in the community.”
Even as she’s called for increased action from Washington, Democratic Gov. Maura Healey has touted the state’s partnership with federal authorities to obtain work authorizations for migrants in the shelter system.
The faster they’re out and contributing to the economy, the better off they, and the state will be, Healey has said.
Chanoff sees it much the same way.
“We have to, as a nation, and this applies to Boston, ask how we can continue to expand legal pathways, while we look to address the increased arrival of people who are here unplanned,” he said. “It’s a way for people [fleeing violence] not to lose their lives. They can come from wherever they are.”
