The US and Australia have been rushing to aid the victims of the tsunami. Reason Magazine, while it criticized Westerners for going to Malaysia and spending money, (a free-market way of helping them,) now has a what they think is a better solution: let untold numbers of tsunami survivors come to America.
But there is something more we can do that will have long-term positive benefits for the citizens of tsunami-battered nations—something that will buy us goodwill but cost us almost nothing.
Let them work in the U.S.
When migrants earn money while working abroad and then send it back to their families living in their home country, it's called a remittance. Not many people know that total remittances around the world now add up to $80 billion a year. That's impressive because it's twice the amount of government foreign aid. …
A concerted effort to bring South Asian workers to the U.S. would not only provide tsunami victims with effective aid through remittances, and American employers with needed workers, but would also foster benevolent sentiments toward the United States in this largely Muslim part of the world.
One: America has already got more unskilled labor than it needs. Two: Bring more Muslims to the US will not make the US more popular with Muslims. Three: it is not good for countries to beoverly dependent on remittances. Four: Mexico needs workers more than the US does. Let them go there.