Boston pays illegal aliens to become political activists

The program is available only to green-card holders, DACA recipients, refugees, asylum-seekers and undocumented residents, Natalie Winters reported.

While the official website says that it will consider applicants “regardless of their immigration status,” it clarifies under the eligibility requirements that “Candidates must be Boston residents, immigrants, proficient in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole and at least 18 years old.”

The program began in 2020 under then-Mayor Marty Walsh and is now in its seventh cohort through the mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement.

The program does not specify the total cost or identify the participants by name. However, it follows Wu's announcement in March of a public-private partnership to help immigrants with legal aid and other advocacy issues that saw the Office for Immigrant Advancement footing $1.3 million of the total $4.5 million price tag.

In addition to offering the payouts, which it euphemistically refers to as “scholarships,” the program promises activists the opportunity to “meet key City of Boston officials.”

It claims that the purpose of the payouts is to help assure “equitable access to government for all residents” — unless, of course, they are native-born.

The language requirements may also limit access to one of Wu’s preferred identity cohorts, the Somalians.

“You cannot talk about any achievement that the city of Boston has had, in safety, jobs and economic development, in education, without talking about the Somali community that has lifted our city up,” Wu claimed last December of the city, which was founded in 1630 and is often seen as a haven for Irish immigrants.

Winters noted that despite Immigrants Lead Boston’s cursory attempt to couch its flagrant disregard for federal civil rights protections and election laws in buzzwords about equitability, a separate profile of it made clear its political agenda.

“This course fosters knowledge, skills, relationships, and practices in the art of politics among diverse community leaders and advocates,” said a description of it via the Local Coalition for Migrants and Refugees.

In March, Boston’s city council floated a resolution to allow noncitizen voting, with Councilor Julia Mejia estimating that 28 percent of the city’s population, based on the 2020 census, the Boston Herald reported.

But the proposed policy, which would grant suffrage to those with “legal status” but lacking full citizenship, appeared to run afoul of state laws passed in the 19th century as part of an earlier push to allow immigrants to vote, according to Axios.

The recent attempt was a direct response to President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, including a lawsuit against Boston for its “sanctuary” policies and threats to withhold federal funding.

“Today, we’re back again because the urgency of this issue has only grown at a time when immigrant communities are facing increasing attacks, harmful rhetoric and fear,” Mejia said in introducing the proposal.

“We have a responsibility at the local level to respond,” she added. “This is about morale and whether our immigrant neighbors feel seen, valued, and protected in the cities that they call home.”

ICE’s enforcement of federal immigration law would not affect those with legal status. Nonetheless, it has been met with staunch opposition by Wu and other Democratic lawmakers in Boston.

Wu’s office previously threatened to hunt down and punish any property owners who leased parking spaces to ICE agents conducting routine immigrant-removal operations.

“We, as a city, will be filing another FOIA request for any responses that have come in for the Boston area so that we know what information they may be sifting through," Wu said in August.