Monk

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“I thought the crossing was the worst thing in my life,” she said, sitting on the front step of her home in a village outside of Puebla. “We saw human bones and clothes in the desert. There were robbers there, who would rape the girls and take all the money they could. I thought that had to be worst. Now, I have this.”

-- Marc Lacey, "Mexican Migrants Carry H.I.V. Home", in The New York Times

It was thought that any transmission of disease through Mexican migrants would be from Mexico to here, but it looks like the U.S. is more of the contaminant when it comes to AIDS:

Migrant workers like him go to the United States with dreams of new prosperity, hoping to bring back dollars. But some are bringing back something else as well, H.I.V. and AIDS, which they are spreading in the rural parts of Mexico least prepared to handle the epidemic.

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Robert Putnam has a new study on the effects of immigration that shows that there are significant short-term and medium-term costs to such social change:

Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

... Diversity does not produce “bad race relations,” Putnam says. Rather, people in diverse communities tend “to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television.” Putnam adds a crushing footnote: his findings “may underestimate the real effect of diversity on social withdrawal.”

Mind you, Mr. Putnam is not some right-wing reactionary. Apparently, he has been holding back on releasing his study for fear of its effects on the ongoing immigration debate, and he first wants to be able to offer proposals about countering the negative effects of immigration on communities. Moreover, he does believe that such diversity is beneficial in the long-term. But you can see why immigration is a hot-button issue.


(Source: John Leo for City Journal)

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Victor Hanson writes on the biting incongruity in how Fatah can declaim against Hamas barbarity when they have availed themselves of the same remorseless tactics, and in how Mexico can chastise America for not being yet more open about its borders while it exacts the harshest measures against other Latin Americans who illegally cross into Mexico.

( VDH )

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Victor Davis Hanson has a nice overview of the immigration problem, taking our issues over the Mexican border as part of a global immigration problem. The First World and the Third World - when two worlds collide.

( VDH column )

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Paul Krugman gives us an eye-opening discussion on the immigration-law controversy. I used to think a guest-worker program was the answer, but he shows how that undercuts democracy's balancing institutions, having a class of non-voting laborers. Maybe we should be more focused on just having business play by its own rules and make the jobs more appealing for Americans, but as he suggests, businessmen aren't going to play that game.

( Krugman )

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