Parsing the Massachusetts New Americans Agenda

Massachusetts has become the fifth state this decade to attempt to develop and implement a comprehensive approach to immigrant integration.

After a year of work, involving six public hearings, consultations with policy experts and state officials, and a review of available research, the Governor's Advisory Council for Refugees and Immigrants released its New Americans Agenda at a public gathering at the State House on November 17. In his remarks at the event, Governor Deval Patrick embraced the agenda as a useful framework for state action and charged his department heads to produce implementation plans and timelines within 90 days.

The New Americans Agenda contains a staggering 131 recommendations in 12 topical areas: civil rights, adult English language proficiency, economic development, education, public safety, employment and workforce development, access to state services, citizenship assistance, health, refugees, youth, and housing and community development. Some recommendations, such as the passage of an in-state tuition bill, are mirrored in other state-level reports. Others, such as the need to develop creative sources of funding for the expansion of ESOL classes or improving public transit in underserved areas to improve access to job opportunities, are unique to the Massachusetts report and may be deserving of consideration elsewhere in the country.

Although hard to summarize a report of this nature, there are a number of themes that are struck repeatedly throughout the report.

One is the need for improved and ongoing training in cultural and linguistic competence, whether for teachers, police officers, or public servants. Another is the need to recruit immigrants into the ranks of the state bureaucracy, state and local advisory bodies, and civilian employees of local police departments, so as to create strong connections with newcomer communities.

The need for language accommodations is another recurring theme. One recommendation calls for the creation of a "multilingual guide" for parents to enable them to navigate the educational system. Another for the creation of a "web-based clearinghouse of multilingual school-related documents." Another for the translation of drivers' manuals. And still another for "a multilingual resource line...to access information about state services." In a more sweeping recommendation, all state agencies are urged to provide information about basic services in multiple languages, using print, internet, or multilingual staff resources. Finally, the Agenda calls for the establishment of "a centralized state office...for interpreter and translation services" within the Massachusetts Office for Refugees and Immigrants. The office "should develop contracts with community-based organizations as well as with language service agencies to assure availability of a range of language access resources (and) encourage the use of innovative technologies for interpretation."

The question of the costs associated with implementation of the plan is mentioned at a number of points. In taking note of the "constraints of the current financial climate," the authors of report suggest that "the main energy of the recommendations is about utilizing existing funds and programs in more effective and creative ways." Yet, the authors acknowledge that new funding is needed to implement some of the key recommendation in the report, including "full funding" for the Office for Refugees and Immigrants (the meaning of full funding is not fully explained), funding for legal services for immigrants, universal pre-K programs, dual language immersion programs, individual development accounts, and funding for a number of research projects, e.g. an analysis of non-state funded ESOL programs, and a study of the scale and impact of trafficking in Massachusetts,  It would be interesting to test how much savings could be realized through a coordinated and comprehensive approach to multicultural service delivery.

As one ponders the scope and depth of these recommendations, one begins to think that this kind of sustained attention to immigrant integration, while helpful in understanding the unique circumstances and needs of newcomers to our society, also begs a larger issue, the willingness of government at all levels to move away from assembly line approaches to human services. If cultural diversity is normative in global societies, and not necessarily a transitory phenomenon linked to high levels of immigration, then public policy and the human services system in general must deal with diversity as a key element in quality assurance, an approach that will benefit not only immigrants, but other disadvantaged and underserved populations.