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Entry: The Empty Manger Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_empty_manger#12591 Post contents: Dear Mr. Higdon, I have no personal stake in reducing the fertility of people in foreign countries. I wish them prosperity and peace, and if they can afford to support their kids I wish them large and prosperous households. However, to the degree to which those countries cannot support their children, and they come to America, we have a right to judge, prudentially, whether it's a good thing for our country and its families to admit them. As to how the arrival of large numbers of immigrants affects native fertility... I'd ask you to look at any of the abundant studies published by the Center for Immigration Studies on how the large scale influx of high-school dropouts affects the tax burdens and wages of American families. Who pays for those 20 or more different bilingual programs mandated in public schools in California? How can young American males with only a high school education marry and form families when their wages have stayed flat for 30 years--thanks to the influx of ever more low-skill labor, driving down wages? It isn't the American elites who suffer from this competition, or from the social pathologies that accompany corporate America's shameless grab for cheap labor. It's the American poor and working class. Read George Borjas on this subject (http://www.cis.org/articles/2004/back504.html) and let me know what you think. And yes, it IS the Church's pastoral duty to provide people with the licit means to apply the virtue of prudence--particularly when they are inundated with propaganda for illicit means. That is why Mother Teresa's nuns--whom told me this personally at one of the many pro-life conferences I've attended--teach NFP to peasants in Central America. Sent at: 2008 09 08