The May Carolina Journal featured an article about the Center for International Understanding (website here) that is among the many programs run under the UNC umbrella. After reading the article, I investigated further and found that this indeed is another useless bit of government spending.
Now, I’m all in favor of international understanding, but subsidizing trips to Mexico for local government officials is not going to accomplish anything. That’s because the premise of the program is mistaken. The reason for sending officials to Mexico is that when they return, these officials will supposedly want to promote laws and programs that will help immigrants back here. The problem is that public policy should be exactly the same in places where there are many immigrants as in places where there are none. The business of government is to protect people’s rights, not to do things for them. If immigrants want to “assimilate” they will do so on their own, as they always have in the past. And if they don’t want to, as long as they respect the rights of others, who cares? (The Amish don’t assimilate much and that’s perfectly fine.)
There simply isn’t any connection between knowing about how the poor live in Mexico and making law in North Carolina.
