10% of Massachusetts workforce can't speak much English: Report

A new report from two DEI-driven organizations claims that roughly 10% of the workforce in the commonwealth of Massachusetts has "limited-English proficiency."

On Monday, MassINC, a nonprofit that works to promote "inclusive" economic opportunities in Massachusetts, and the UMass Donahue Institute, which wants to "advance equity and social justice" as part of the public and economic outreach for the University of Massachusetts President's Office, published a report calling for better "English for Speakers of Other Languages," or ESOL, services.

'Massachusetts cannot continue to fund the world’s illegal and inadmissible migrants. We simply do not have the capability or the funds.'

The report claimed that the need for ESOL is "urgent" since some 480,000 Massachusetts residents — roughly 10% of the state's workforce — lack important English-language skills. Such language issues prevent these "newcomers" from reaching "their full potential" and from contributing more substantively "to the commonwealth’s social and economic vitality," the report said.

What's more, the report indicated that these numbers might now be passé since they rely on data from 2022. As Massachusetts is the only right-to-shelter state in the union, thousands of illegal immigrants have been transported there from the border in the last few years, causing the migrant population to swell.

The immigration population has gotten so out of hand in Massachusetts that far-left Gov. Maura Healey has begun to offer illegal aliens free flights out of her state. "I want to be clear, particularly to people outside of Massachusetts who may have gotten word that this is a place to come, that we do not have room here in Massachusetts," Healey said on Tuesday.

Despite the ever-increasing migrant numbers, the MassINC/UMass Donahue Institute report fretted that not enough has been done to accommodate them. "While Massachusetts has developed many creative models to deliver these services, state and federal ESOL spending has not kept pace with the growth of our foreign-born population."

The authors of the report also lamented that the state has not catered enough to the needs of migrants, noting that many of them "have limited access to transportation and struggle to find time for classes between work and childcare." Still, the authors believe that increasing migrants' English proficiency by just one level could generate $3 billion in additional earnings, the New York Post said.

Paul Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance is less optimistic about the economic advantages of more ESOL programs and services, claiming that they attract more migrants who then further drain a system already stretched too thin.

"The report proves what many of us have been fearing for a long time, this is not a sustainable way for the state to operate moving forward," Craney told Blaze News. "Massachusetts cannot continue to fund the world’s illegal and inadmissible migrants. We simply do not have the capability or the funds. Massachusetts is the most generous state for welfare benefits for illegal and inadmissible migrants, and Governor Maura Healey needs to eliminate these magnets that make our state a top destination."

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