Third World Story

One advantage of making a succession of outrageous statements and tweets (even his supporters are occasionally appalled) is that President Trump's past provocations become buried in the 24/7 news cycle. One such example is the reference to s***hole countries in January:

President Donald Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as "shithole countries" during a meeting with a bipartisan group of senators at the White House, a Democratic aide briefed on Thursday's meeting told NBC News.

(Actually, there is some question whether the President used the term, because he purportedly said it at a closed-door meeting, a Democratic aide reported the utterance second hand, and some Republicans present denied that it happened.) Be that as it may, your humble blogger respectfully submits that a derogatory, some-might-say-racist remark should not be used to make policy.

In fact I support the basic meaning behind the President's alleged expletive--that limited slots for legal immigrants means that the United States should admit, say, an engineer from India over a farmer from the Caribbean. Apply the standards that a college admissions office would---which candidate is more likely to succeed? A bad choice doesn't help the college or the admittee; it often hurts the community because of the extra cost in helping the person assimilate.

Red Cross workers after the 2010 earthquake (CNN)

Setting the issue of immigration aside, what does a well-intentioned society do to help an impoverished one like Haiti? There's financial assistance, but pervasive corruption diverts funds from the suffering masses to the ruling few. Consequently donor countries and organizations insist on maintaining control of the relief, which leads to gross waste in the process:

"USAID has spent about $1.5 billion since the earthquake...Less than a penny of every dollar goes directly to a Haitian organization."

A growing reliance on U.S. and other international contractors helps explain why the payoff of foreign aid in Haiti often seems so low. For instance, it cost more than $33,000 to build a new housing unit in one post-earthquake program, a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office said last year. That's five times more than one nonprofit, called Mission of Hope, spends per house, using local contractors.

"International companies had to fly in, rent hotels and cars, and spend USAID allowances for food and cost-of-living expenses"

Even people who donate their own services and money find the task difficult, even dangerous. From July 9th:

But as violent protests over sharply rising fuel prices shook the island nation, a dozen members of North Albemarle Baptist Church still took refuge Monday in an orphanage outside the capital city...Plans to board a flight out Sunday were aborted when the group's Haitian contacts found that armed civilians still barricaded roads and were charging tolls to motorists. The unrest left businesses burned and looted.

North Albemarle Baptist sends mission teams to Haiti three or four times a year, [Pastor Brad] Lynch said, and considers the trips so safe that middle-school students sometimes go. The orphanage's location outside Port-au-Prince and local reverence for the institution worked in favor of his team, which Lynch said was handling the situation calmly.

"We just never saw this coming," he said. "It just completely blew up out of nowhere."

President Trump is alleged to have used an inapt term. Even if he did, he was not wrong.