Business owners did manage to improve profits.

Why is this not considered an important good result?

Or maybe Grameen doesn’t work well. Nice anecdotes aren’t good evidence.

I’m sure there are a lot of people who would jump at the chance of doing a good controlled study of Grameen Bank’s work. If there’s no study in the works, it’s probably because Grameen doesn’t want it.

So, your asterisk on Robin’s statement does not imply to me that there are many other asterisks (as is often the implicit intention in noting an exception to a rule).

Sometimes I think, if it could be accomplished (and, politically, that seems dubious), the US should just invite Mexico to become part of the US—perhaps doing it a few small regions at a time over several decades to make it less disruptive.

Doubtless, though, there are a thousand objections to this.

In a dictatorship, maybe. Not in a democracy where unassimilated children of immigrants (even illegal ones!) have the same right to vote as you do. The negative consequences of this may take a while to fully materialize, but they are all too real.

Schools: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ta/ac/ap/, click on the “Descriptive Statistics and Correlation Tables…” link, note the -0.73 correlation between “% Hispanic or Latino” and Academic Performance Index (on page 3 of the pdf). Also note that, 40 years ago, metrics of California secondary school performance placed it in or near the top quartile among US states; now, after a vast increase in immigration, it’s hovering around the tenth percentile.

The relevant statistic is whether the non-immigrants are doing worse because of immigration, not the overall score. If an immigrant arrives, and isn’t very good at school, he probably still ends up with a better schooling than back home. This will drag down the overall statistics for his new school, even if everyone is now better off.