I don’t see why this is considered appalling. Massachusetts declared itself a “sanctuary state”, one that is welcoming to illegal immigrants and won’t prosecute them for entering the country illegally. Surely asking some illegal immigrants if they want to visit Martha’s Vineyard and putting the volunteers on a bus or a plane is a good thing? After all, if they stayed in Florida they would be subject to arrest at any time.

Border towns in Texas and Arizona are seeing ten thousand or more illegal immigrants per day. We can’t leave them all there or they will starve. If we can’t deport them then we must spread them around. Personally I am more in favor of deporting them (after all, by our standards they have committed a felony), but as long as we have sanctuary states to send them to then surely that is just as good.

Those Massachusetts voters are going to vote on whether they want to bail out homeowners from Florida.

Yeah, next time there’s a natural disaster in these southern states, we can send those who lost their homes to central or South America. Sauce for the goose and gander and all that, right? People should be smart enough by now to stop living where the tides run and the winds blow.

Natural disasters, sure, but I was thinking of the sea, which affects all Florida home owners, and predictably. Not like a natural disaster, which is almost a lottery. You never really know the path of the hurricane. The probability of hurricanes may be rising, but it basically tears up a few houses that won/lost the path lottery, so the cost hits randomly.

The sea isn't like that. Everyone who's bought property in Florida in the past decades knew what's happening, and it's clear that Florida will need expensive new infrastructure to supply those properties with freshwater fairly soon. Who is going to pay for that? Florida's behaviour towards Massachusetts today influences what the voters' answer will be when Florida asks the rest of the union for help with that water.

Someone whose land is going to be submerged by the sea in maybe twenty years, and who's going to ask for expensive help to keep that land livable for those few years, needs to show solidarity. To flaunt solidarity.