Well, it may well be true that moving to better neighborhoods is better for slum-dwellers. Writing in the Baltimore Sun, Gady Epstein reported in November of 2000 on the effects the Section 8 housing program had on suburban Columbia, Maryland. After residents moved to Columbia from Baltimore with the help of the Section 8 program, the crime rate in Columbia skyrocketed, the performance of the Columbia schools declined, and Columbia's white homeowners started moving away in droves. The study cited in the Economic View column is mildly interesting, but the columnist goes way too far in drawing broad conclusions about anti-poverty policy from a narrow study. The column seems to endorse the idea of taxpayer subsidies to move poor people from slums to wealthy suburbs.
Conservatives can point to tough-minded welfare policies and aggressive police work.
The assumption that liberals are for free immigration and conservatives are against it is just false. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, for instance, has long supported a constitutional amendment for open borders, and Republican senators like Phil Gramm and Spencer Abraham have called for increases in immigration. Some liberals, including labor leaders and African Americans like the late Barbara Jordan, have voiced support for restrictions on immigration, arguing that immigrants take jobs away from American workers and exert downward pressure on wages. So for the Times to paint liberals as pro-immigrant and give conservatives all the credit for welfare reform is an oversimplification. The New York Times story focuses on the same Champaign, Ill., court case that the Los Angeles Times story focused on, and the New York Times story quotes one of the same experts, Katherine Dettwyler, who was quoted in the Los Angeles Times article.