AG Andrea Campbell calls on feds to speed up work authorizations for migrants

Long processing delays for newly-arrived migrant work authorizations have placed an “increasing burden” on states, their social safety net programs, and shelter systems, Attorney General Andrea Campbell said Wednesday in a letter to the federal government.

Campbell penned the letter with 18 other state attorneys general to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an effort to prompt action on work authorization permits for immigrants who have been lawfully paroled into the United States.

The letter comes about a week after Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts to deal with the high number of migrants and displaced families seeking temporary housing within the state’s emergency shelter system.

Addressing processing delays, the attorneys general wrote in their letter, will allow work-eligible migrants to become “self-sufficient” as soon as possible and “not be forced to rely on state resources.”

The group said they have seen an unprecedented influx of immigrant families from Latin America, Haiti, Ukraine, and the Middle East. Most of the new arrivals are working-age adults who are “eager to find employment” to support themselves and their families, the prosecutors wrote.

“Many thousands of recent newcomers are eligible for work authorization, but permission to work has been needlessly delayed by inconsistencies in grants of parole and application processing delays,” the letter said. “The lack of work authorization for many thousands who have arrived in our states in recent months has caused many to rely on our social safety nets.”

The message was similar to one Healey delivered last week.

Healey paired her emergency declaration with an appeal to the federal government for funding and to speed up the work authorization approval process for migrants, which she said was one of the primary drivers of the shelter difficulties.

It is not clear how much money Healey is looking for from the Biden administration, but she made a point last week to call out “burdensome barriers” to work authorizations.

“These new arrivals desperately want to work, and we have historic demand for workers across all industries,” Healey wrote in her own letter to Mayorkas.

The 19 attorneys general asked Mayorkas to act in four areas — expedite employment authorization for lawful parolees; address inconsistent lengths of parole and streamline renewal; put in place automatic work authorization renewals; and make fee waivers available online.

The group also called on Mayorkas to “pursue executive action” to increase funding for personnel and administrative efficiency to “address the years-long backlogs in adjudication of asylum and other forms of immigration relief.”

“At the same time, we know that legislative action is needed to effect comprehensive immigration reform that will fully address these problems,” the group wrote.

Campbell and the other attorneys general said many industries — food services, retail, transportation, health care, and hospitality — are struggling to find workers.

Expediting work authorizations, they said, would help meet demands and reduce the risk that migrants are paid subminimum wages, work in unsafe conditions, or have other workplace rights violated.

Many who have arrived are seeking asylum, have been paroled into the country, and are immediately eligible for work permits, the group wrote. But processing delays “leave too many waiting 10 months or more for authorization.”

“These delays are placing an increasing burden on states to support families who would be able to support themselves immediately if given the opportunity to do so,” the attorneys general said.

The letter called out Massachusetts specifically because of its right-to-shelter law, which gives eligible homeless families a right to placement in housing. Massachusetts had to “significantly expand its emergency shelter system over the past year” because of the large influx of migrant families without work authorizations, the letter said.

The Healey administration opened two “welcome centers” in Allston and Quincy to help connect newly-arrived families to temporary and longer-term shelter as well as basic necessities.

“But these resources have been pushed to a breaking point because many newcomers do not have and cannot expeditiously procure the work authorization they need to transition to self-sufficiency,” the attorneys general wrote. “As a result, the numbers of families requiring assistance continues to grow without relief in sight.”

States without right-to-shelter laws “may not experience the same strain on housing resources as Massachusetts.”

“But all states have been affected by delays in authorizing work-eligible adults to work,” the group wrote. “The long delays in work permits for newcomers set us all up for failure and have created a humanitarian crisis in our states and beyond.”