Melnea Cass Recreation Center in Roxbury normally hosts local activities, but on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 it had beds waiting for illegal immigrants. State House News Service photo by Same Drysdale.
Some left-wing politicians in Massachusetts are totally in favor of housing illegal immigrants – somewhere else.
The latest example: Boston city councilor Julia Mejia, who says she doesn’t want more of them in Boston.
So where should they go?
“Dedham, Wellesley, Brookline – you know, cities and towns that have so much more resources than the city of Boston. You know, people who actually have more financial support,” Mejia told NBC Boston recently.
Now, when it comes to “resources” – public buildings, let’s say – nowhere in the state has more of them than the city of Boston.
Yet what she’s talking about, of course, is per capita income. It’s higher in the towns west of Boston than it is in Boston, goes the logic, so people there ought to make room for illegal immigrants.
“I think everybody needs to be opening up their doors because this is a shared responsibility,” Mejia said.
But how is it a “responsibility”?
And how is it “shared”?
Our government and our society have a responsibility to provide basic public services for United States citizens and for foreign-born non-citizens who are here legally. We do not have a responsibility to take care of all of the needs of all of the world. Nor do we have the capacity to do so.
This is not to blame foreign-born people seeking a better life in a better country than their own. It’s not their fault that they want to exchange a suboptimal situation there for a better one here.
And they might even claim they were invited. They certainly have gotten signals to come – from conniving public officials whose political party benefits when voters and future voters are beholden to the government, and who have little respect for our laws, our customs, and our poor people.
Massachusetts has foreigners pouring into it for two reasons:
1. The people running Joe Biden’s administration effectively opened the Mexico border in early 2021 by processing “refugee” claims on our side of it and then releasing foreign nationals into the country, and have never closed it since
2. The state government promises free shelters to families whether they are U.S. citizens, resident illegal immigrants, or have just gotten off the bus
Add to that the other goodies Massachusetts is offering illegal immigrants — driver’s licenses, welfare benefits, in-state tuition to public colleges – and who wouldn’t pick Massachusetts over states that don’t?
The effects of this madness are just beginning.
In November 2023, the state legislature approved $250 million in emergency shelter spending for the current fiscal year. It helped contribute to our state government’s financial woes that led Governor Maura Healey to enact $375 million in emergency budget cuts; that included funding cuts for more than 30 fire departments statewide, among other essential services.
Governor Healey expects the state will spend $915 million on its emergency shelter system in fiscal year 2025 after budgeting $325 million for it in fiscal year 2024 (before pumping in the extra $250 million). That’s in a state that’s trying to fight off an expected $1 billion budget shortfall this fiscal year because tax revenues aren’t as high as expected.
Additionally, Massachusetts has driven some of its citizens to homelessness. By paying to put illegal immigrants up in hotels on the taxpayers’ dime, the state government has raised demand — and the cost of these rooms. Some Bay Staters cannot afford these higher rates, forcing them to live in their cars.
The migrant crisis has also led to illegal immigrants sleeping on the floor at Logan Airport; to try to deal with that situation, the state converted the Melnea Cass Recreation Center in Roxbury to be used as a shelter for up to 400 people, making its basketball courts and walking tracks inaccessible to the public until at least May 31.
You get what you incentivize, and you pay for it, too.
Boston is a special case. It’s one of eight so-called “sanctuary cities” in Massachusetts that have made it local public policy to defy the federal government when it comes to immigration law.
In August 2014, the Boston City Council adopted the city’s Trust Act ordinance, which limits the ability of the city’s police to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The city council amended the Trust Act in 2019.
Who supports it?
Why, Julia Mejia, of course.
In January 2020, as a new city councilor, she stumped for the city to create “sanctuary safe spaces” for illegal immigrants, which she claimed would protect what she called “civil rights.”
From refusing to cooperate with federal immigration authorities trying to enforce the law, it’s a logical progression to provide free housing for foreigners who do not have a right to be in the country.
If our state officials had common sense, they would abolish the state government’s perverse incentives, enact mandatory E-Verify to disincentivize illegal hiring, and send National Guard troops to the southern border in Texas to help deter illegal crossings.
In the meantime, though, when it comes to housing thousands of illegal immigrants in Massachusetts, why shouldn’t sanctuary cities and towns — Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Amherst, Lawrence, Northampton, Newton, and Boston – be the ones to house them?
About 2,700 years ago, a Hebrew prophet spoke to such situations, in the Book of Hosea, Chapter 8, Verse 9: “Those who sow the wind reap the whirlwind.”
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Melnea Cass Recreation Center in Roxbury normally hosts local activities, but on Wednesday, January 31, 2024 it had beds waiting for illegal immigrants. State House News Service photo by Same Drysdale. 
