Related to: Don’t help refugees, you bastards
A while back I wrote that to know what you as a whole mind really wants, you should look at what you do, not at what the little conscious voice in your head says you care about. We are very good at making ourselves believe we care about things we never do anything about, so we must watch carefully.
On this measure we can be pretty confident we in the West don’t much actually care about the welfare of the Haitians’ whose plight we claim to be distressed by:
“The contrast between the oh so visible US concern and US planes flying around Haiti with loudspeakers warning locals not to try to boat it to the US is quite striking. Clearly at some level US folks realize they could help Haitians most by letting them immigrate. If we (thought we) cared less and were instead eager to gain migrant farm workers and household servants, we might end up helping Haitians more.”
Has your country announced an increased immigration intake from Haiti? No? I guess it (or at least its median voter) doesn’t actually care.
Added: To help Haiti’s earthquake victims, change U.S. immigration laws
Tagged: altruism, immigration, psychology
