the bay state economy expanded by more than 10 percent last decade—8 percent growth on a per capita basis after accounting for inflation. It’s not the Massachusetts Miracle, but given that we were nearing the peak of the tech boom in 2000, and in 2010 we were barely emerging from an even bigger bust, these […]
Immigration
Posted inState House News Service, Uncategorized
Pieces of the Dream
The American Dream knows no borders. The often-quoted lines on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free,” underscore the tradition of open-armed welcome that Americans give to people seeking the political freedoms or economic opportunities denied to them in their homelands. In reality, however, […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
Job action
january 2011 marks the tenth anniversary of MassINC’s New Skills for a New Economy report. The report’s main finding that 1.1 million workers in Massachusetts—a third of the state’s workforce —lacked skills essential to the “new economy” was broadcast far and wide. In one fell swoop, an issue that previously generated very little attention was […]
Posted inPolitics
Milford split on driver’s licenses
Milford Police Chief Thomas O’Loughlin has voiced support for issuing driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants, but CommonWealth magazine’s Bellwether project indicates residents of his own town are split on the issue. O’Loughlin earlier this year encouraged state lawmakers to pass legislation authorizing licenses for undocumented immigrants. He and some other police chiefs say the licenses […]
Posted inUncategorized
End of an exodus
Only a couple of years ago, many of us fretted about the Bay State’s declining population. (See “A Fading Dream?”, Civic Sense, CW, Fall ’06.) We didn’t realize that something was coming that would reverse the tide: a rotten economy. According to Census Bureau estimates, Massachusetts grew by just over 30,000 people from July 2007 […]
Posted inThe Download, Uncategorized
Kennedy, Kerry are no match for US Immigration
Despite the efforts of Senators Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, among others, a popular teacher at Fenway High School was deported over what seems to be his misreading of a government document. (Let those of us who have never been confused by, say, a jury notice be the first to cast stones.) As the Boston […]
Posted inUncategorized
New states for newcomers
Massachusetts has long been losing native-born citizens to New Hampshire. Are we about to start losing immigrants to our northern neighbor too? To be sure, the immigrant population in the Bay State has grown briskly since 2000, based on recent estimates by the US Census Bureau. We’ve moved up to ninth place in the percentage […]
Posted inEconomy
Labor Pains
Daquane Mitchell, Wilkerson Catule, and Steve Dufrene, working at Fenway Park, got a break not shared by many other black teenagers. AS DIRECTOR OF the city of Boston’s job training programs, Conny Doty keeps a close eye on workforce trends and economic forecasts. But some of her best intelligence comes from her own field research, […]
Posted inEducation
Sink or Swim
English immersion students in Brockton:Seyla Nou and Elisia Heak Eunji Gloria Cho Mantzouranis—Ms. Cho to her students —uses a green marker to put on the whiteboard what should be a simple math problem for fifth- and sixth-graders: Find other ways to express 8 x 7. You could, for example, say (4 x 7) + (4 […]
Posted inUncategorized
Counting on new pilgrims
Fall 2005 Of all the media coverage generated in the wake of MassINC’s recent research on immigration, The Changing Face of Massachusetts, none was more poignant than an editorial by the Old Colony Memorial in Plymouth entitled “New Pilgrims.” The editors reminded readers of the Cordage Co., a local rope manufacturer, which a century ago […]