The letter Friday night from the state rep began ominously, like an old-time telegram to a soldier’s family during wartime.

“I regret to inform you,” Rep. Marcus Vaughn, R-Norfolk, wrote, and you hold your breath, anticipating terrible news, “that Norfolk has been chosen as a site for an overflow shelter….”

So the rep was alerting his constituents to a catastrophe — another flophouse for foreign freeloaders, dumped into a solidly middle-class community, a Republican stronghold of course, because those are the areas the Democrats want to first destabilize.

It’s going into Bay State Correctional Center — 450 illegal aliens, all on the dole, utterly entitled, non-working, non-English speaking.

What could possibly go wrong?

In such dire moments as this, a leader is supposed to maintain a stiff upper lip, which Vaughn did.

He pointed out the likely “strain” on local public schools, including King Philip Regional High. Then there’s the “likely impact on public-safety infrastructure” — the endless 911 calls, frivolous ambulance runs, fires in the rooms from overloaded electrical grids etc.

Think blood, sweat and tears — yours, not theirs. The only tears they shed are from laughing at the stupid gringos who are letting them wreck the country — while living on the arm.

And if you think things are bad now, just wait. On June 1, the first letters start going out to the non-working classes, giving them an alleged 90-day heads-up before they’re supposedly required to move out.

Of course these recent “reforms” to the Right to Shelter Law are a complete farce. The invaders are going nowhere. To move out, they’d need to be able to support themselves, and that’s not why they drifted into Massachusetts.

Think of June 1 as the date when state-run media can begin running a new endless series of sob stories about these poor “victims.”

On Beacon Hill, the George Soros-type NGO advocates wrote in every kind of loophole to allow the foreign freeloaders to stay on welfare forever.

Looking for a job — you’re in, comrade! Bueno, or should I say, bon, in Haitian Creole. That looking-for-work grift goes back to LBJ days, and it still works, if you don’t want to. Work, that is.

Most of the women are already pregnant, for obvious reasons. But the few that aren’t soon will be — a box-checking bun in the oven buys the undocumented Democrat still more time at the trough, at the no-tell welfare motels.

Have you ever noticed how so few law-abiding young Americans who work for a living can afford to have children? They can’t afford to have more kids.

Yet all these grifting, criminal illegals in the non-working classes can’t afford not to drop more anchor babies — because each one provides them with 21 or so more years of guaranteed welfare.

So the 90-day clock that allegedly starts ticking in June runs to September, then another 90 days takes the freeloaders to December 1… and how can you kick out these wonderful folks during the Christmas season, because, remember, the Holy Family was homeless too.

But Jesus, Mary and Joseph weren’t on welfare.

You’ve heard about the accused Haitian illegal rapist in Kingston? He’s not the only illegal who’s jammed up. It’s just that Kingston happens to be in Plymouth County — the last place in Massachusetts with a Republican district attorney.

The Democrat prosecutors, or most of them anyway, are trying to give a good leaving-alone to all the crime and dysfunction in the 70-plus flophouses.

This newspaper has been trying to pry out one story that has become common knowledge in a city west of Boston.

A teenaged illegal girl has been knocked up, and it turns out that her own father is the main suspect. The local police department did an incident report but claim it can’t be released because it involves a juvenile. The local district attorney is dithering because… Democrats.

Law enforcement knows, so does DCF, and the local schools. But illegals get a pass, on everything. Democrats want to make taxpayers never figure out how their tax dollars are being used to pay for the destruction of their own communities until it’s too late.

Calls have been placed to the state agency entrusted with doing something about this particular unreported crime.

The hacks have been stonewalling us because they think that if they don’t confirm it, we can’t run the story. Their back-up alibi is that the alleged perp has been kicked out of this one program and his family has been transferred to a different flophouse.

All of the illegals remain on welfare of course. Work does appear to be a significant part of their, uh, culture.

The obvious solution would be to deport every one of these blow-ins who add nothing but more dysfunction to our society. Why are all these failed states our problem? Why are we ringing the dinner bell for everyone in the Third World who figures they can squat here and never work again, as long as they vote Democrat?

The Dominican Republic is building ever-higher walls to keep their neighbors from ruining their country. What do the Dominicans know that we don’t know?

Ditto, Egypt and Jordan with the Gazans? If their own co-religionists and neighbors who know them best refuse to have anything to do with them, why do the Democrats want to import even more genocidal-supporting Muslim terrorists into the U.S.?

Good fences make good neighbors. Truer now than ever.

Meanwhile, buckle up Norfolk. Prepare for “strains.”

Right now, it’s MAGA towns being disproportionately “strained” — Kingston, Shrewsbury, West Springfield, now Kingston.

But there aren’t enough Republican districts left in Massachusetts. Uber-woke Lexington just received a huge celebration of diversity recently. The only thing saving Arlington is that the governor lives there with her young gal pal.

Yes, Rep. Vaughn is right. It is a strain. But only on us, not on them. At least for now. Everybody in Arlington just better hope Hold It Healey comes back from her junket to Rome.