BY MARC DION
Massachusetts, a state sweltering in the heat of self-congratulation, is up against it right now. Massachusetts has several "sanctuary cities," which means anyone from anywhere in the world can go there with no ID, no skills and the DEA on their tail, and we'll plop their kids into an underperforming urban school faster than you can say "Che Guevara." We also have a law giving people the right to housing, a law widely ignored principally because no one can figure out how to house the violent drug addicts who make up most of the state's homeless. As long as most of the homeless are junkies, no one is fixing that problem.
Oh, yeah. I live in Massachusetts, in a broke little former manufacturing city whose future can best be explained by noting that there are maybe seven methadone clinics in the city, but the public library has only two branches, and one of them is smaller than a Wendy's.
Southern governors, who have been a pain in the ass ever since we made them turn the slaves loose, have started shipping illegal immigrants all over the country. This is intended to A) Show states far from the border "what it's like" and B) The hell with the Jews at Harvard.
In my city, a few hundred more illegal Guatemalans aren't likely to make much difference, but the suburbs are howling like Colin Kaepernick just got hired as the high school football coach.
Massachusetts is a famously liberal state, but there's a good current of Trumpism here, and it follows a familiar pattern. The whiter, poorer and less educated your town is, the more Trump voters you produce. That's not elitist snark, either. The numbers not only don't lie, but they have no shame, and they're not interested in your delusions of patriotism.
Upset as some of us are by what the papers gingerly call "migrants," somewhere out there, an employer of the "Go to hell, I need a new Mercedes" variety is eyeing this helpless, hopeless, unhoused, undocumented new population like an alligator on Christmas morning.
Wait six months, and a third of the men will be up on a roof, shingling for less than white people would want, even less, in fact, than the last wave of illegal immigrants wants. Chain restaurants have been running light on dishwashers, bus boys and porters, and the new wave of illegals will fit in nicely with the "spicy Bahama wings" and the craft beer.
If you're the kind of employer who pays cash, no taxes, if you jigger the time clock so everyone works 15 free minutes a day, if you just flat-out don't pay overtime, if you hire 13-year-olds for your midnight-to-8, you've got to be happy with our new arrivals.
And you don't have to be white to be that kind of employer. If you speak the language the new arrivals speak, and you've been in America for maybe 10 years, you are in the best position to work them to death for short money.
I don't have a lot of disposable income, but I'm looking at a possible live-in maid, and by "live-in" I mean she'll sleep in the basement. My basement isn't finished, and there's no heat, but the water heater throws enough warmth that you wouldn't freeze to death if you wrapped yourself around it like a newlywed around a particularly muscular husband. Sleep well, Ana, you're cleaning the bathroom tomorrow, and my wife's been sloppy with the hair dye again.
Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle and iBooks.