February 1, 2021
By Katie Lannan, State House News Service
BOSTON (SHNS) – East Boston resident Jessenia Espinoza, a Spanish speaker, lost her job at a restaurant last year after the COVID-19 crisis struck and fell into debt, borrowing money to pay rent and buy essentials for herself and her child.
Sharing her story with members of the Legislature’s Health Equity Task Force during a public hearing Monday, Espinoza said she struggled to fill out forms for pandemic unemployment assistance when she could not get help in Spanish and missed out on three months of benefits.
“So I felt pressured to find work,” Espinoza said, through an English translation provided by Rep. Adrian Madaro’s legislative aide Gloribel Rivas. “I went to a factory to ask if they were hiring in Chelsea. I spent a lot of time looking for work in factories in Chelsea, and that’s where I became sick with COVID-19. I have had to borrow money from third parties in order to survive so far.”
Espinoza and Madaro were among the more than 60 people scheduled to speak before the task force in a videoconference hearing Monday. The panel, created under a June 2020 data collection law aimed at addressing COVID-19 health disparities, plans another hearing Feb. 8 as it works toward producing its final report.
Some lawmakers who spoke during the hearing pitched the task force on bills they plan to file this session.
Madaro, an East Boston Democrat, said he represents “a vibrant immigrant community” and has seen many instances where language has been a barrier for families seeking relief during the pandemic, despite efforts the state has made to address the issues.
“If we want to encourage residents to stay home when they are sick, we should not make it this hard for them to get the resources they need for them to do so,” he said. “Language barriers in essential services to recovery make it so that immigrant communities bear a disproportionate burden of sickness and financial hardship during the pandemic.”
Madaro said he plans to “introduce legislation to mandate, standardize and enforce language access requirements for state-funded programs.” The bill, he said, would establish a language access advisory board and require state agencies to translate their websites and documents and provide oral interpretation services.
Rep. Marjorie Decker highlighted a bill she is filing with Sen. Sal DiDomenico that would increase cash assistance benefit levels for low-income families.
Like legislation the lawmakers filed last session, the bill will seek to boost cash assistance grants until reaching 50 percent of the federal poverty level, and Decker said this year’s bill will propose a faster timeline than the pre-pandemic version.
She said the $45.6 billion fiscal 2022 budget Gov. Charlie Baker proposed last week rolls back a 10 percent increase in Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children and Emergency Aid to the Elderly, Disabled and Children grant amounts that was included in this year’s budget.
Baker’s spending plan recommends funding the TAFDC line item at $254.6 million, with $83.4 million for EAEDC.
“I’m asking you to take a principled stand in this task force and say that when we are crafting budgets that we do no further harm,” said Decker, a Cambridge Democrat. “Removing cash from families who have the least is harmful.”
Eva Millona, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Immigration and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, told the task force there needs to be “a more robust response from state lawmakers in order to protect public health and drive an equitable economic recovery that includes immigrants.”
“Reactive and piecemeal responses are not enough,” Millona said. “We can’t wait for a divided Congress to act on immigration. We need state action on an immigration policy agenda.”
That agenda, Millona said, should include an equitable vaccine rollout with targeted outreach to immigrants and communities with limited English proficiency, the passage of legislation to provide stimulus checks to immigrant taxpayers, reinstatement of the state’s eviction moratorium, and passage of a bill making undocumented immigrants eligible to obtain driver’s licenses.
Millona said lawmakers this session should also pass a bill known as the Safe Communities Act, which would bar local law enforcement from inquiring about someone’s immigration status and limit their collaboration with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
That bill, she said, would “end the fears in immigrant communities that undermine their confidence in local institutions,” including hospitals, community health centers, and public health departments.
Sen. Jamie Eldridge, Rep. Ruth Balser and Rep. Liz Miranda plan a 1 p.m. event Tuesday to announce their re-filing of the immigration enforcement bill, which died last session without a vote in either branch.
Miranda is a member of the health equity task force. One of its co-chairs, Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers President and CEO Michael Curry, is also slated to participate in Tuesday’s event.