Where They're Planted

When you’re at zero—subsistence—with no hope and no help, that can feel pretty desperate. Sometimes that inspires creative invention. But sometimes it just overwhelms.

We talked about that in part of Monday’s discussion. I was thinking about it more this week, especially following a lot of immigration discussion after President Trump suggested, in the State of the Union Address, that 1.8 million illegals who were brought here as children might get a path to citizenship.

I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about the SOTU, but the plan, as he laid it out, was more generous on DACA than the Democrats were insisting on—which was the continuation of Obama’s executive order to fail to follow the law concerning them. The Trump plan, however, also included a strong border, stopping gang infiltration, and getting rid of chain migration—the practice of letting in one, and then allowing all their extended family to attach to them.

So, this puts the opposition in a tough place. They get what they want—and then some—and then they get an end to allowing the problem to keep happening over and over. As Elle Woods would have said in Legally Blonde, “It’s a perfectly brilliant plan!” And yet, they sat on their hands and accused the president of insane racism. Why? For giving 1.8 million a path to citizenship that they didn’t have—against the will of his base, so costing Trump some political capital.

Or maybe they like having the “dreamers” available as a tool to hit their opposition with, and it wasn’t really about helping those young people; it was nothing but posturing.

I can’t tell whether President Trump made a genuine offer, or whether he was setting up the Democrats so he could demonstrate to the American people directly how unreasonable those Trump-deranged Dems are.

I’ll just leave that there.

What I’m thinking about is that zero level poverty—abject and hopeless. And how do we, as civilized people, help solve that.

The immigration debate is relevant here, because so many people come to America in hopes of something better. There’s a gut reaction among compassionate people, thinking, “I feel so sorry for them. We should let them come. Just open our borders. Anyone who doesn’t want to do that is just heartless.”

The problem is, there’s more poverty in the world than we could solve through any amount of immigration.

There’s a video—from 2010, but still pretty accurate—that illustrates the problem using gumballs. I think we need to see this 6-minute lesson, to understand the scope of the problem, before we go ahead with the conversation:

So, if the best way to help people is to help them thrive where they are, that should be the goal.

Foreign aid is another feel-good idea that causes compassionate people to say, “I feel so sorry for them. We should give them our money—whatever they need. Anyone who doesn’t want to do that is just heartless.”

But foreign aid isn’t the answer either. It passes nation-to-nation, so it doesn’t usually get past a corrupt leadership—and if you’ve got a country with a lot of systemic poverty, you can be certain there’s corrupt leadership.

So how about giving humanitarian aid, through service organizations? If they can get past the corruption and get to the people, that’s part of the answer. I wrote this back in 2013:

Sometimes there’s an immediate need to give a man a fish. But that is never a long-term solution to his hunger. You teach a man to fish, and he has the skill to take care of himself. But maybe he also needs the means to make or otherwise get hold of a fishing pole or net.

LDS Humanitarian Services recognized that following the Christmas tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004. Aid workers would interview the survivors to find out what they needed. After meeting immediate needs of food, clothing and shelter, which LDS Humanitarian Services was known for supplying following disasters around the world, what the survivors needed was a way to replace some of what they’d lost, to get back on their feet and self-sustaining. So aid became a sewing machine or two, plus enough for a few starting supplies of fabric and thread. Sometimes it was a fishing boat, or even just a new sail. Enough to get a person or a family back on their feet and independent.

That leads to long-term happiness more than just receiving necessities without hope for self-reliance.

One solution I’ve liked for a long time is microcapitalism. In the book Influencer, the authors talk about combining microloans—typically around $250—with a small group council, to improve the success of fledgling businesses. The example they share is a small village in central India, where a group of housewives meet to discuss ways they can individually develop very small businesses, such as starting an egg business.

And the next step up is small-to-medium-sized loans, which can lead to real economic growth. Here’s their description:

While many organizations have promoted microloans (typically under $250) to start one-person businesses, we are also aware of encouraging cases in which Christians have decided to invest in for-profit businesses in the “small and medium enterprise” (SME) range, where $25,000 to $1 million is required to start a business. Such businesses are crucial for larger economic growth in poor nations, but they are more difficult to launch due to high start-up and due-diligence costs, and the challenge of providing a reasonable risk/return model for investors.

So, there are steps to helping people in abject poverty:

1.       Alleviate starvation and provide basic survival needs.

2.       Help people work together to do small enterprises that will begin to provide a livelihood. These are loans, not handouts, with group help to think fully through ideas to make them work.

3.       With enough people doing small enterprises successfully, communities will develop enough experience to support slightly larger enterprises. These are higher risk, and some will fail, but some will succeed. And more success will follow.

It isn’t heartless to face the fact that we can’t bring everyone here to solve their economic woes. And it isn’t heartless to face the fact that we can’t just pour money on a problem and call it good. Insisting that government take tax money from your neighbors to alleviate your guilt about the poor of the earth isn’t really charity.

If you really care about people, then support good ideas that help individuals and local communities. I like LDS Humanitarian Services, which puts 100% of donations to use—no overhead (which gets covered through other Church donations). They carefully target where and how to help, and they keep learning.

And I really like the microloan idea. If you want to help someone out of abject poverty, try giving a $250 loan.

Inside the catalog of WorldCrafts. I've bought from them,
and I think they are a way to connect local
artisans with buyers around the world.

Or buy what local artisans produce. Let them know they are creating value. That’s a free-market idea, which is the best way out of poverty ever invented. And it’s also the most moral, and the best path to a satisfying life.

Water and Other Basic Needs

I’ve been puzzling over what appears to me an unsolvable problem, related in a way to illegal immigration.

There’s this trailer park, not that far from my neighborhood—it was a bus stop when my kids used to ride a school bus to middle school. It’s a pretty poor neighborhood, a step down from a trailer park just to the east.

This trailer park doesn’t have potable water. I thought it must be in the same municipal utilities district that I am, because it’s so close. But I looked on a map, and my neighborhood is apparently as far north as our district goes.

The trailer park has commercial businesses next door and across the street, which have potable water. But the private property on which the trailer park sits, I am told, does not. It is reportedly because the owner of the park does not want to spend the money to supply the park with municipal water.

About half a year ago, there was a news report about a retention pond right behind the trailer park. It’s green because of natural growth in the water, but it’s also filthy. So this standing water is an additional danger for trailer park residents—risk of drowning, 

The pond on the property, from news report

particularly for children, risk of disease, and greater risk of mosquito-borne illness. When this park was first brought to my attention, I think there was confusion that the pond was their source of water; I do not believe that is the case.

Under normal circumstances, no landlord could rent out a place without providing basic utility services, including water. I think the park has running water—just not clean enough for human consumption. It’s unclear to me how long this has been a problem.

I’ve been in meetings with people concerned about these people, and trying to alleviate some of their needs. My friends are working with other churches, plus the American Latino center for Research, Education, and Justice (ALCREJ). Our church has been donating some bottled water, which other churches and a food pantry are delivering, along with other needs.

But this is crisis help, not a long-term solution. The long-term solution would be to get this trailer park hooked up to a municipal water source.

In normal circumstances, government officials could be contacted, to let them know that a landlord is failing to provide clean water to his tenants. Officials could simply be requested to come out and test the water. Then they could pressure the landlord to do whatever upgrades are necessary, with the threat that they could condemn the park so that he couldn’t rent out the spaces.

But most (possibly all) of the tenants are illegal aliens. They can’t call the government; they don’t want anyone to call the government. Because they are illegal, and government “help” could result in deportation, or at the very least turning them out of homes they can more or less afford, with no place to go.

People want to help, but, as one friend said, “Nobody wants to be on the pokey end of that stick.”

So how do good, civilized people help? And should they?

In civilization, people honor God, family, life, property,and truth. In honoring God, we’re asked to love our neighbor as ourselves. There’s a wide range of what fits here. If we’re going to share our property—our wealth, including money, food, and other things—we have to supply for ourselves plus extra. So, to start with, we shouldn’t give up our livelihood or our basic needs.

We value life, so we would want to provide lifesaving supplies to our neighbors in dire need. We don’t want anyone to die of hunger. But life-sustaining supplies aren’t necessarily satisfying. They’re not meant to be. Nor are they meant to be indefinite in most cases.

It is better to do well in business to have jobs to offer than it is to give freebies.

As far as the water issue is concerned, the people in this trailer park are not seeking indefinite freebies, at least not from churches and pantries. They seem to be simply grateful for clean water. I think they drink the unclean water otherwise.

They have come here, presumably, to have better opportunities than they had in the probably third world situations they came from. Many are hard working. But, as illegals, their opportunities are limited. They’re likely doing yard work, restaurant kitchen help, house cleaning, or, if they’re lucky, construction work. Sometimes their pay is well below minimum wage, because they have no recourse if a boss treats them unfairly—except as everyone has, to quit and find other work.

There’s a question about why they come, if their poverty here is so profound. Maybe that takes some perspective. Certainly it would have been better if they had come legally; then all kinds of possibilities open up for their future. But for many of them, their level of poverty here is not greater than they came from.

Here they have running water, though unclean; they may have come from no running water, and probably unclean, whatever the source. Here they have electricity; they might not have had that. Here they have shelter—and even though it’s pretty poor, that trailer park has been there since before we moved here nearly two decades ago, and has survived hurricanes and tropical storms. It doesn’t look like much, but it’s better than nothing. Maybe better than they had.

Their children have schools here—the same schools my children went to before we pulled them out to homeschool. And they’ll be learning English. That means the next generation, while not as well off as if they had immigrated legally, or with more and better resources, is still several steps ahead of what they left behind.

So, unfortunately, there’s a logic in their minds about the decision to come here illegally. But their decision to do so likely leaves them in poverty for a generation or two—inescapable if they get into drugs or other illegal activities.

If the conditions are truly unacceptable, then it is a greater kindness to them to enforce border laws so that only legal immigrants come, which will mean better resources and opportunities for their future one they go through that difficult process.

We cannot alleviate all of the economic suffering worldwide simply with American largesse. There’s a good video that explains visually why that is:

So, what we need to offer is basic help, so that they can help themselves in their countries of origin. Some of this could be government help, but I suspect that non-governmental organizations are more likely to succeed, going to the people in need, assessing the next step, and offering help in that. It might be developing a clean water source. It might be developing a power supply. It might be upgrading their educational opportunities. It might be providing capital for micro-businesses.

The problem in the trailer park exists because there is an unscrupulous landowner. But such a person gets away with being unscrupulous because he is dealing with illegals.

When there are wrongs done, correcting them is a first step. I don’t know how these people without resources can do that, other than going back home and starting the process legally. That’s a hard thing. Maybe harder than they can even visualize. But it is certainly no kindness to make conditions even worse by inviting more of the poor around the world to sneak in illegally and try to live in the shadows.