Denizens of Martha's Vineyard freak out over 50 illegal migrants
The tony vacation redoubt of Martha's Vineyard is freaking out over 50 illegal migrants, deposited at its door by Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis, who flew them in.
Seems the ritzy sanctuary island in the sanctuary state of Massachusetts is being forced to "celebrate diversity," and people are not happy about it.
According to the New York Post:
The posh liberal enclave of Martha's Vineyard has been thrown into chaos by the arrival of two planeloads of migrants sent there by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to local reports.
Roughly 50 migrants were flown to the famed Massachusetts island — constituting what the local tourism board called a "humanitarian crisis'' Thursday.
"This is an ongoing situation,'' wrote a county emergency-management rep in a statement, noting that local authorities "are actively collaborating to develop a coordinated regional response."
"We have reached out to our State and Federal partners for additional and long term support and assistance.''
Some local pols learned about the new arrivals during a Wednesday night meeting of the West Tisbury Select Board — with Town Administrator Jennifer Rand saying she'd been receiving "furious texts" from residents, the MV Times reported.
...which is what happens when rich, white, virtue-signaling leftists get called out on their hypocrisy.
In some quarters, it's downright panic:
BREAKING REPORT: Martha’s Vineyard Homeless Shelter Coordinator Lisa Belcastro MELTS DOWN AFTER ILLEGALS FLOWN TO HER ISLAND: 'They Have to Move From Here to Somewhere Else'...
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) September 15, 2022
CNN, whose executive suite members certainly "summer" on the island, panicked:
For 2 years residents of Del Rio, Texas have dealt with thousands of migrants everyday. 50 arrive in Martha’s Vineyard and CNN rushes a reporter there. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/BKNhWDLhsN
— David Marcus (@BlueBoxDave) September 15, 2022
There also were the Pecksniffs and assorted morality scolds going bonkers over the migrant arrivals:
“Those planes were filled with actual human beings. People with hopes and dreams. People with names and families. And this Christian man used them as props. He didn’t clothe the naked or feed the hungry. He literally did the opposite.”
— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) September 15, 2022
https://t.co/wSTWKg9m1R
They seem to mistake themselves for Good Samaritans, which is nonsense. In the biblical parable, the Good Samaritan paid the innkeeper himself to take care of the robbery victim. He didn't dump the victim onto the innkeeper and say, "Hey! You take care of him!" which is roughly what leftists are doing as they tut-tut the Texans and Floridians, in order to virtue-signal even as they encourage illegal immigration to border states on the condition that those affected are to pay for it.
Howie Carr at the Boston Globe has some choice words for the hypocrites in his column here.
Martha's Vineyard — so many trust-funders, legacies and members of assorted Protected Classes, all abruptly forced to confront the spectacle of what Deplorables must endure day after dystopian day.
How's that Great Reset working out for you now, David Letterman? Chris Wallace? Spike Lee? Larry David? Amy Schumer? Meg Ryan? Caroline Kennedy?
Why are the Beautiful People so upset? Diversity is strength, is it not?
Massachusetts is a sanctuary state, so obviously the Vineyard is a sanctuary island. Isn't this what the limousine liberals have always wanted ... for us, but not for them?
Most satisfying, perhaps, is that the tony island denizens are starting to eat their own:
I’m in a couple Martha’s Vineyard Facebook groups and they’re all turning on each other. Calling out their friends for not letting migrants in their summer homes pic.twitter.com/igS8dalb5a
— AidanKearneyTB (@DoctorTurtleboy) September 16, 2022
After all, there are some terrifying status and money implications for them:
I like to call them “limousine liberals”. All these wealthy towns with plenty of land need to start building sec 8 housing. The cities are over crowded.
— notyouraverage_biach (@ltm1101) September 16, 2022
As John Hinderaker at Power Line notes:
I'll bet they were furious! Not just anyone can live on Martha's Vineyard. Maybe the Vineyard folks can ship the unwanted illegal aliens to a more downscale location, like the Hamptons. Or else the illegal immigrants, of whom there are only around 50, could all stay at Barack Obama's $12 million estate. There is plenty of room there, and I understand his mansion has 10 bathrooms. That would be more than enough. But don't hold your breath.
The freak-out over 50 migrants is positively Lilliputian, exposing just how little they've been asked to contribute to the massive Biden border surge, as compared to, say, Texas:
Martha’s Vineyard, population 15k, is freaking out over 50 migrants.
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) September 15, 2022
Del Río, population 36k, encountered *28,000* migrants in October 2021. pic.twitter.com/dkc38rNfAg
That hasn't stopped them from encouraging it, through their voting choices.
Being that the Vineyard is a status-y place that's largely run by white liberals, the screaming at the new arrivals from DeSantis has just a whiff of racism, an irony that is completely lost on the Vineyard wokesters.
It's not the money part.
— Ed LaRose (@metaphorsbwithu) September 16, 2022
They're just Democrats.
They don't want certain kinds of people hanging around in their neighborhood. They want them elsewhere.
They stand with them. Just not near them.
— BuckeyeFinFan (@BuckeyeFin) September 16, 2022
Some are reportedly changing their locks.
Then there's their real fear, their animating terror, about the migrant influx: falling property values:
Their absolute worst nightmare is declining home/rental values. This will keep them up at night.
— David Rahnis (@DRahnis) September 16, 2022
There's also the selective outrage about the migrants, depending on who's sending them.
The Democrat-led city of El Paso, TX has been sending its own buses of migrants to NYC, and just approved up to a $2 million contract for 16 months to bus even more migrants out of town. They are also requesting federal reimbursement.
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 15, 2022
El Paso, however, is not being criticized.
It's not just the largely blue City of El Paso. Biden himself has been shipping unvetted illegals in the dead of night to cities of his choosing across the country. That apparently doesn't outrage them; it's only when Ron DeSantis sends them that they get their dander up. The hypocrisies pile on top of hypocrisies in these two little planeloads of unvetted illegals.
What we have here is a smorgasbord of ridiculousness, leftists hoist with their own petard, panicking over 50 migrants, while two million have been foisted onto the border states of the U.S. with no outrage from them whatsoever. If the rich denizens of the Vineyard can't handle 50 migrants, how is the rest of the country, the less well off part, supposed to handle 2 million illegals? That's something they can't answer. But it serves to underline that the main value of the DeSantis experiment has been to take down the hypocrisy of the left on illegal immigration and leave leftists exposed as selectively outraged, cosseted clowns.
Image: Screen shot from ABC News video via YouTube.