Migrating to Prosperity

Michael Clemens, an economist and Senior Fellow at the Center for Global Development, argues that unrestricted migration would add more to global economic output than any other public policy option, a lot more. Even modest reductions in current barriers would add more to world prosperity than complete elimination of restrictions on the free flow of goods and capital.

Clemens says between 40% and 60% of people in poorer nations would move if they could. The able bodied among them would be more productive if they did. He cites studies that suggest total world output could increase by anywhere from 60% to 150%. Partial easing could yield  maybe 24%. That's a lot of trillion dollar bills lying around on the sidewalk.

If Clemens is right we could be talking about an end to poverty once and for all. It could happen. For all the harsh rhetoric of late the US remains one of the wealthy countries most open to immigration today. Europe is more open than it was thirty years ago. Japan is one of the most restrictive, but has an aging population and will most likely be forced to open up more. And mass migration has been a regular feature of the human condition for all of history. The time may be ripe for another one.

Usually when the subject of third world poverty comes up we talk about addressing it with foreign aid. Aid can be helpful but its impact has always been limited and much of our foreign aid is military. Remittances seem to be more effective. Even a low income immigrant sending home a few dollars a month can make a big difference to a poor family. The biggest factor in reducing poverty in recent decades seems to have been international trade. It has made it possible for billions to move into the middle class.

Most economists estimate that completely free and open trade might add about 4% to economic growth. The numbers Clemens throws around are higher by an order of magnitude or two. We should be paying attention. We aren't about to dismantle our border controls and nobody is suggesting we should. But this should be a part of our national discussion on immigration reform.

There are some practical things we can and should do. Our graduate schools have been pleading for years to be allowed to accept more foreign students. We should make it happen. More than a few have stayed and started businesses, creating jobs, well paying American jobs. We have a chronic shortage of medical professionals and from everything I read it is only going to get worse. Why on earth would we reject a visa application from a qualified nurse who happens to be from Nicaragua? Yes, we would prefer to fill those jobs with native Americans (I use the term in its proper sense, not its politically correct sense) but when you need a nurse, you need a nurse.

The issue should be prominent in the international human rights discussion too. The church has a role to play here. Pope Francis was on the Italian island of Lampedusa this month praying for the thousands of Africans who have died trying to make their way to Europe. I can only imagine what he will have to say when he comes here. Rome has been an active observer at international trade negotiations (so has the USCCB,) always advocating for the interests of the poor and vulnerable. A desperate migrant risking his life to get to a place where he can find a decent job would certainly qualify as poor, vulnerable, and in need of an advocate. Some of those migrants on Lampedusa are unaccompanied children sleeping on the ground because there is no shelter.  

Seeking Calm Discussion on Subject of Abortion

What follows is a copy of an email I sent in response to Steve Blow's column in the Metro Section in today's DMN.

Dear Mr. Blow.

You ask if we can have a calm, courteous discussion about abortion and about the Texas bill in particular. I guess not. You begin by saying you aren't going to call anybody names and conclude by doing just that, reviling as hypocrites those who support parts of the bill you don't like.

I don't like your comparison of induced abortion with miscarriage. They are profoundly different things. It seems to me your reasoning leads to the absurd conclusion that a baby is not a baby until it is born, has bonded with its mother, and is taken home from the hospital.

Nor do I care for your appeal to the American way. Americans are not free to choose if the choice is criminal. But most of our society supports abortion on at least some level and since I can't change that I will take what I can get. I support the 20 week cutoff not because it is reasonable but because it is better than 24.

As for the other provisions of the bill, you don't start a civil discussion by impugning the motives of those who disagree with you. Just exactly what is wrong with reasonable standards for sanitation and precautions for when something goes wrong? And things do sometimes go wrong with abortions, especially late term abortions. If you think a different standard is more reasonable, set it out, but you appear to be calling for no standard at all.

A courteous discussion would be helpful. You didn't quite get there.

Best regards

Norman Roberts

Samaritan Inn Relocation and Expansion

Samaritan Inn Relocation and Expansion

Three years ago we had an opportunity to build a second homeless shelter for Collin County. I was disappointed we missed it. It was to have been here in Plano where about a third of the county's homeless originate and the need was serious. Samaritan Inn in McKinney, the only existing shelter in the county that can accommodate single adults and families, was turning away about fifty people every week.

They still do. Last week there were 162 people living at the inn, 62 of them children. They took in four new residents. One person "graduated," completed the inn's program, found a job with a living wage, and is now living independently. One person either left voluntarily or was asked to leave for violating inn rules. For thirty eight, eighteen singles and five families with seven adults and thirteen children, there was  literally no room at the inn.  They were turned away to sleep in their cars, if lucky enough to have a car. In 2012 the inn turned away 3754 people, people who had been screened, were qualified, and would have been welcome had there been room.

Samaritan Inn isn't for everyone. They try to focus on people who will be there temporarily, people who with the right help can get back on their feet, find gainful employment, and become productive, independent citizens again. Some are single mothers, some are two parent households where two incomes can't make ends meet, some are people who once enjoyed six figure incomes. None of them fit the image many of us associate with chronic vagrancy.

The rules are strict; required attendance at counseling, training, work if there is work to be had, diligent job searches when there is no work, and a curfew.  The objective is always to get residents to the point where they no longer need a homeless shelter.

Now Samaritan Inn is planning to relocate and expand. The existing facility was built in the sixties as a nursing home. For several years it served as a jail. It is in constant need of repair. Singles and families are housed together, not a satisfactory arrangement, and besides too few beds, they really don't have what they need for classrooms, computer workrooms, and other common areas to make themselves as functional as they would like to be.

So they have acquired a fifteen acre tract just south of their current location where they will build a modern campus. It will include buildings for common areas, administrative offices, recreation, and new, larger and separate housing facilities for families and singles. The city has embraced them, they have been responsible citizens long enough there isn't a lot of local opposition. The current facility will be sold and probably torn down.

All they need now is money, a lot of money, upwards of $7 million I'm told. Samaritan Inn has always relied for funding primarily on private donations from faith communities, foundation grants, and individuals. Less than 5% of their financing comes from government and they like it that way. They will apply for government grants where they are available but they expect to get most of what they need from traditional sources. I think they will get it. There was a lot of public support for the effort in Plano three years ago, and real disappointment that it was not successful.

This expansion won't address all of the homeless needs in Collin County. There are just too many; teenagers couch surfing with friends, addicts, mentally ill, the list goes on and on. It won't even solve the problem it does address. They aren't going to house the thousands of people they turn away every year. But this move is an unqualified good thing.

Modern Jansenists

There is one group not likely to be happy with our new Jesuit pope. They are the spiritual if not theological heirs of seventeenth and eighteenth century Jansenists. Like their predecessors they have a dark view of human nature. They don't really  believe in universal salvation and certainly don't think Catholics should be out in the world working to achieve it. They want a smaller, purer, more insular church and, like the old Jansenists, are self appointed guardians of dogmatic orthodoxy.

They are powerful voices and unrelenting critics of Catholic Campaign for Human Development and Catholic Relief Services. They have even intimidated a few US Bishops into withholding financial support. That CCHD and CRS are domestic and foreign anti-poverty agencies of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is not recommendation enough. Cooperation with disfavored groups trumps any preferential option for the poor and vulnerable, and negates any aura of approval from the magisterium, the teaching authority of the church.

The original Jansenists held special animosity for the missionary work of Jesuits, and so do the new ones. They see a threat to the faith. Catholics working with non-believers and the marginalized will be contaminated, and bring the contamination back into the church. But the Jesuits and the magisterium held the moral high ground three centuries ago as they hold it today. Jansenists faded into obscurity.

That they are resurgent seems to be for political more than theological reasons, though secular excesses among adherents to Liberation Theology did help bring them back to life in Latin America. In the United States there seem to be two principle drivers. One is the dangerous notion that abortion is the only social justice issue that really matters. The other is a virulent dislike for community organizing. Modern community organizing was founded by the radical Saul Alinsky. Mention his name and you will set a Jansenist's blood boiling. Former community organizer Barak Obama's will set off a torrent of vituperative.

Of course community organizing is what advocates for social justice do. It is an indispensable tool. And finding common ground with others who may disagree with us on important matters of faith is essential if we are to accomplish anything worthwhile. If we can't do those things, there isn't much we can do.

That seems to be the point, though Jansenists generally don't say so, preferring to fall back on guilt by association. Community organizing has ties to Saul Alinsky and is therefore evil on it's face. There is no acceptable common ground with anyone who disagrees with us at any level on abortion.

The good news is the church is fighting back. Pope Francis regularly denounces those who would have us withdraw from the world. Conferences of Bishops everywhere actively lobby for justice. CCHD and CRS both vigorously respond in the Catholic press to their critics. Neither hesitates to set the record straight at the disinformation campaigns frequently directed against them. And New York's Cardinal Dolan doesn't advocate for religious freedom just for Catholics. He was in the news last week at an Albanian mosque encouraging them to stand up for their own faith. A faith commitment serves the common good even if it isn't our faith.

Sometimes it helps if your enemy has a name. It can be a shorthand way of describing a complex wrong headed concept. Jansenist seems a good term to me. If people understand what a Jansenist is, then they can more readily understand who in the church is opposing social justice, why, and that they aren't simply indifferent, they are in active opposition.

The National Catholic Reporter has begun using the term. I hope they keep it up. Maybe Pope Francis will adopt it. We could use some help.

The Devil Wears Pink Sneakers

Wendy Davis' Texas Senate filibuster was a tactical blunder for the pro-abortion lobby. She was obstructing what seemed like reasonable reforms to most of us; prohibiting most abortions after 20 weeks instead of 24, and enacting requirements for sanitary conditions, provisions for medical care when something goes wrong, and protection for viable babies born alive. The raucous demonstrations in the capitol that accompanied the filibuster exposed abortionists as the extremists many of them are.

Do these people really want to keep the discussion going? Public acceptance of legal abortion has always depended on a certain averting of the eyes. The Kermit Gosnell trial forced us, or many of us, to look at the gruesome reality of blood, gore, and murder that is late term abortion. The Davis filibuster put it in the headlines with a main stream media that largely ignored Gosnell.

Most of us are at least squeamish about abortion and oppose late term abortion most of the time. To present it as a women's health issue strikes us as a willful distraction. It rarely has to do with the health of the mother and can present health risks of its own. For many, victims of rape and incest should represent an exception. The health of the mother should too, if the risk is serious and genuine, and those exemptions were included in the proposed legislation. But to suggest a baby is not a baby until the mother takes it home from the hospital is an unspeakable denial of the most fundamental human right.

Kermit Gosnell killed babies that survived abortion by snipping their spinal cords with surgical scissors. Now comes Houston abortion clinic operator Douglas Karpen who is accused of killing them by twisting their necks, much like a hunter would put a wounded dove out of its misery. I don't know if Karpen really does that but it is a serious charge. I am disappointed it took a public exposé to get authorities to look into it. I will be surprised if that investigation doesn't come up again now that we are guaranteed another round of debate in the legislature. It is becoming harder for the media to ignore.

We are reviving a debate that is as old as history. Infanticide was one of the many sins of the ancient Israelites. But what has been missing since Roe v Wade is a reasoned discussion among people who aren't quite sure of the answer. It has been drowned out in a shouting match between those who would always allow abortion at the sole discretion of the mother, and those who would always ban it. What we are discovering is there is a middle ground after all. It is occupied by more Americans than we thought, and we are talking about it.

It would be wrong to simply say it is the result of the Gosnell trial, or of the Davis filibuster. We are also reviving another ancient idea. Early church fathers thought a fetus became a person at quickening. Advances in sonograms and other technology are making more people think they may have been on to something. A fetus looks like a baby very early on. It begins to act like a baby and even have the feelings and reflexes of a baby earlier than we realized. More people are pro-life than in years.

Count me among those in the pro-life community who know we aren't going to get everything we want any time soon and are looking for ways to compromise. Right now we see an opening. Wendy Davis and her allies see it too and are pulling out all the stops. But I don't think this conversation is what they had in mind