Letter: Hold sponsors responsible for immigrants’ costs

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October 18, 2012

Letter: Hold sponsors responsible for immigrants’ costs

Anonymous The Eagle-Tribune The Eagle Tribune Thu Oct 18, 2012, 12:14 AM EDT

To the editor:

Current immigration policies require that a foreigner wanting to live in this country have a sponsor. The sponsor promises to assist the immigrant financially. The sponsor is supposed to pay back any public assistance that the immigrant receives. The immigrants are not supposed to be a burden to the taxpayers — that is the reason for their having sponsors. I do not believe that any public agencies in Massachusetts are going after these sponsors to recoup money spent on the immigrants. When was the last time you heard of a public agency announcing how much money they recouped from sponsors?

There are a great number of immigrants receiving public assistance. EBT, housing, job training, food stamps, heating assistance, etc.

I believe the fastest way to get these immigrants off of public assistance is to go after the sponsors.

The sponsors won’t be very happy if they have to pay for the immigrants’ public housing.

Can you just imagine how much money would be freed up in the budget if the sponsors actually had to fulfill their responsibilities and foot the bill themselves? We are talking about thousands of immigrants collecting public benefits.

There is also a lot of fraud going on, and if the sponsors are actually held accountable, then the amount of fraud would be greatly reduced. Granted, immigrants are not the only ones fraudulently receiving benefits, but we could sure make a dent in the fraud if the sponsors had to pay for it.

Just imagine how many school books we could buy. How many bridges we could fix. How many police officers and firefighters we could hire.

Imagine all these things and then do something. Contact your legislators and tell them you want the sponsors to be held accountable.

Judy Berezansky

Bradford