Senator Bob’s Blog

Says state housing guidelines should be toughened to meet federal guidelines that require immigration status check

BOSTON — A Nov. 10 Boston Globe editorial endorsed efforts by Sen. Robert Hedlund to allow public housing authorities to give preference to citizens and legal immigrants over illegal immigrants.

“On its face, it makes no sense to deny low-income citizens or eligible noncitizens access to housing in order to accommodate law-breakers,” according to the editorial. “Republican state Senator Robert Hedlund has filed bills, unsuccessfully, to bring state regulations in line with the federal procedures. That would be fair. If there are legal roadblocks, then the state attorney general’s office should provide an opinion on how to remove them.”

The state Senate has twice adopted language that would accomplish this during its budget discussions. Both times, however, it was not included as part of the final conference committee report.

Sen. Hedlund’s bill, S759, was placed into a legislative study by the Committee on Housing this past May.

It has received renewed attention since President-Elect Barack Obama’s aunt was discovered to be in this country illegally and living in a South Boston public housing complex.

Tags: Boston Globe, Hedlund, illegal immigration, Obama

This entry was posted on Monday, November 10th, 2008 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.