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The news reports that the Jewish Family Services organization has told Mayor Sarno not to worry, they are sending the refugees to Westfield. Really! Would we not have the same concerns? As we have well demonstrated over the last ten years, Westfield is a welcoming city but we too have our concerns. Exactly how many refugees are scheduled and what is the plan for their long term support?. Hopefully our city government has been informed & involved. An answer from our city government would be much appreciated, up-front transparency will help make the refugees we do accept more welcome. We dug into your questions and talked with Maxine Stein, CEO of the Jewish Family Services organization, and there were no indications that they would be sending refugees to Westfield instead of Springfield.
“There was no statement made to that effect at all,” Stein said. “It wasn’t made by Mayor Sarno at all.”
Stein said that their organization, as well as others that help to resettle refugees like the Catholic Charities, aim to put refugees with other family members. This is done to help ease the transition and may explain why you see large swaths of the same ethnic groups in certain cities throughout the Commonwealth.
“The whole intent is to keep families together,” she said.
Stein did say that one family was resettled in Westfield from the Jewish Family Services, though that was due to the above-mentioned reasoning.
“Last week we received a single person from Bhutan and they had relatives in Westfield, and that would be the only reason why we would settle someone in Westfield,” she said.
Regarding Westfield as a sanctuary city, Mayor Brian Sullivan made comments.
“We’re not a sanctuary city and we won’t be,” Sullivan said.
Joe Mitchell, city advancement coordinator, added that housing plays a role in this decision.
“There is a fixed amount of housing that meets the needs,” he said. “We’re accepting but there’s a limit.”
For those unfamiliar, sanctuary cities are cities that do not prosecute unauthorized immigrants for violating federal laws related to immigration, as well as allow them to have access to the same city services as residents do. Local sanctuary cities include Northampton, Holyoke and Amherst. There are maps and lists of sanctuary cities online as well, but they do feature some conflicts as to what is listed as a sanctuary city and what isn’t. This may be at least partially due to the fact that sanctuary cities may be such in practice, while others set laws in place to protect unauthorized immigrants.
The Westfield News attempted to contact Catholic Charities for this but we did not receive a call back
