The coronavirus pandemic has somewhat plateaued in Massachusetts, averaging about 200 new cases and 15 deaths a day. What the numbers don’t show is a harsh reality: in immigrant heavy areas across the state and across the country, Covid-19 has burned like a fire through a forest. And that forest fire only added to the many fears they face.
Massachusetts, according to U.S. Census Bureau data, is 12 percent Hispanic or Latinx, but according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that group makes up about 28 percent of known cases.
In immigrant-heavy areas like Chelsea, the numbers are stark. More than 66 percent of Chelsea residents identify as Hispanic or Latinx. About 38 percent, according to a report from the Immigrant Learning Center, are foreign-born. Chelsea’s coronavirus case rate is 7,600 per 100,000 people (about 8 percent of the city’s population) — which is five times the rate for the state as a whole.
These numbers, though, don’t fully represent the situation. According to Marion Davis, director of communications for the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA), minorities and immigrants are getting sick at a far higher rate than that and are not seeking medical attention or tests.
“There's so many people who are falling through the cracks,” Davis said.
Davis has been checking in with students (MIRA runs a scholarship program in partnership with the Boston Teachers Union called the Unafraid Scholarship) including a Salvadoran girl who told her that she was not feeling well; that her dad had tested positive for the coronavirus. Her sister had been sick too. The sisters had not been tested and had not received treatment.
A Haitian student told Davis that he was feeling sick but couldn’t figure out how to get tested. He didn’t know how to pay for the testing, because he did not have insurance. He was not aware, Davis explained, that in Massachusetts everyone can get tested for free. These families are exemplary of many across the state, which is why it is hard to tell how many people in a household are actually sick.
On top of this, the high rate of deaths in the state reflects the older population, but as has been pointed out by doctors across the country, surviving Covid-19 can result in damaged lungs and other life-altering residual problems.
“We’re not seeing the outcomes necessarily to get a sense of what are the conditions that people are coming out with,” Davis said. It is something she’d like to see the state track.
There are many reasons why the immigrant community is disproportionately hit by the coronavirus, but according to a Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) spokesperson, chief among them is racism.
Racism, the BPHC official wrote in an email to M4EJ, has been the paramount social determinant of health — a circumstance in which people are born, grow, live, learn, work, play and age that influence access to resources and opportunities that promote health. Other social determinants of health include housing, education, health care, public safety, food access, income, health and social services.
Racism is a barrier to health equity because it shapes access to resources that create opportunities for health and itself has been a broad-reaching and direct negative impact on individual health outcomes. This is no different with COVID-19, the BPHC spokesperson wrote, as the communities that experience health inequities in Boston overall, are the same communities hit hardest by coronavirus.
Illness spreading through the population is not the only terror immigrant communities face either. The coronavirus has resulted in large-scale job losses and, due to the fears immigrant populations already have, widespread hunger.
Among immigrant populations right now there are two interconnected fears. One is the fear of deportation for undocumented immigrants; the other is the fear of the Public Charge rule leaving immigrants no hope for a permanent status in the country.
According to Davis, families where even one person is undocumented are barred from receiving the stimulus checks that were sent out to most residents of the country.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) implemented the Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds rule on Feb. 24, 2020 (except in Illinois, where the rule remains enjoined by a federal court as of Jan. 30, 2020). The rule stipulates undocumented immigrants that are determined ikely to use public benefits (such as Medicaid, food stamps or housing assistance) at any time in the future can be denied a U.S. Visa or Green Card.
According to Davis, the rule got shorthanded on purpose to stoke even more fear in immigrants and to discourage them from using public benefits at all due to fear of not being allowed to stay in the country.
For these reasons, immigrants have been avoiding programs designed to help, such as food stamps, WIC, food banks, local health centers, unemployment and Covid-19 testing.
The health and economic situation in the country are extremely difficult for any demographic. On top of that you have a climate of fear that is a pernicious added stress for immigrant communities.
“I don’t know how this story ends well,” Davis said.