South Africa has been ranked by the World Economic Forum as being amongst the top 20 countries in the world for having the most sound banking systems. SA is no 15 on the list, just ahead of Switzerland.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081009/bs_nm/us_financial_soundest_banks

Recently spotted in Job Mail Classifieds; International Opportunities section:

*** WELCOME BACK ALL S.A. EX PATS ***
(Especially those in the USA & UK)

Invest back in South Africa NOW!

YOU might have deserted your country, but your country will never desert YOU (Except of course if you’ve been silly enough to give up your passport by now…)

Your country needs YOU!
Just like YOU might need your country… (once again)

South Africa Welcomes you back for:

- Your Foreign Exchange $$$$$ (see current exchange rate)
- Your Skills (originally obtained in S.A. and enhanced abroad)
- Your International work Experience
- Your Dynamic Outlook (not all ex pats will qualify - many years abroad cannot change some cynics)
- Most of all: YOUR POSITIVE OUTLOOK WHEN YOU RETURN AND YOUR WILLINGNESS TO GET INVOLVED, CONTRIBUTE AND HELP BUILD YOUR COUNTRY.

** In return your country is prepared to forgive your for your negativity and for running it down while you were abroad. ** (Ignore if this does not apply to you)

If you do not meet above requirements, do not apply.

Jack D on October 12th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Would Canada continue to shift its peacekeeper activities to more military ventures?

Would immigration from Asian countries into Canada continue to drop?

Would climate change be relegated to the back of the policy bus?

What would happen to our United Nations commitments, particularly with regards to refugees?

Would hedge fund markets and energy exploration gambits make a big come back?

Despite his three critical mistakes (scorn for the arts, flip comment about "buying stocks," and mocking Dion) in the current federal election, Prime Minister Harper may well obtain a larger minority government. He is now on record, claiming that if an electorate gives a government two minorities in a row, that is in effect, a mandate to govern as if he had a majority. He delivered this eye brow raising concept in a T.V. interview which aired last week on CBC Newsworld.

In the U.K, Gordon Brown's "quasi" nationalization of British banks in face of our world economic agony, and the realization of a decades long dream of "old Labour," generally favorably reviewed, may still not be enough to stop the sweep: Labour out and in will step the youngish aristocrat Tory leader, David Cameron.

Cameron's aggressive stance against immigrant rights and his support for an increase in Britain's state surveillance apparatus, although "softened" in the last year, raises the prospect of a more closed society in that country, political mother to Canada and the U.S.

And it is in that latter nation that we see, not just supply-side chickens home to roost in a nation with trillions of dollars in debt, but the risk of a "McPalin" administration - deniers of the causal link between human activity and climate change, disablers of government regulation, builders of walls to "keep out" immigrants, suppressers of women's reproductive rights, and doubters of Darwin.

How will Canada act in a world order that could come to pass? What will ordinary citizens from each of these countries decide for their and all our futures?

My two bits worth: Mr. Harper will win a larger minority government and will attempt to shift Canada radically to the right; Mr. Obama will beat Mr. McCain but will govern from the right, hamstrung by his country's decades long dependence on imaginary economic principles; and in the U.K., the dour Scotsman will be unable to rescue Labour.

So, ironically, it will be the United States who will set the agenda for progressive policies with regards to immigration and government spending. Iraq may see some respite. Afghanistan, none.

It took more than a month to receive my UK visa in Korea. The weeks before I received my visa were extremely stressful because I had a pre-booked return flight to the United States and needed to be in Korea to receive my visa. The follow-up process was frustratingly opaque and bureaucratic. In Korea, you have to submit your visa application at the Visa Application Centre, which serves as an information and collection agency. It is separate from the British Embassy, which is the governing body that does the actual visa review and approval. However, to follow up on your visa, you have to go through the Visa Application Centre and most of the time they know just as much as you. You cannot follow up at the British Embassy unless you have a scheduled appointment. The guards at the Embassy wouldn’t even let me pass through the gates because I was neither British nor had an appointment. They were appallingly rude and told me to contact the embassy via phone. After several phone calls, I was finally told that my reviewer had been on vacation and would be completing my review this week. Fortunately, I received my visa just in time for my flight to Seattle.

Most people receive their visas right away, so you probably won’t have any problems, but always expect the worst. Apply early. Make sure to proofread you application, gather all your documents, and make copies well in advance. To view the most current visa requirements and to download an application, go to the UK Border Agency’s website.

An aging population that is either unable to work further places an additional burden on the health system, and an aging population that is unable to find work due to their age impacts negatively on the tax revenues. It is a double edged sword that is striking at the heart of Japan. In 2000, 17.4% of the Japanese population was 60 years or older,  and it is estimated that by 2025 and 2054 those numbers will increase to 28.7% and 36% respectively. For a more detailed analysis of the aging population in Japan and implications please read Yukiko T. Ellis' report.

The United States and Canada are facing similiar problems with a dramatic rise in their population over the age of 60, which is estimated to jump from 16% in 2000 to over 25% in 2025. The impact of rise can be mitigated somewhat at least in the North American context with the influx of a younger immigrant base. However, Japan does not have this luxury and the fertility rate amongst Japanese females is some of the lowest in the world.

This article from Norimitsu Onishi highligts some of the social signs we are beginning to see now of an aging population combined with an economic slow down.

----------------------------------------------------------

A leftover city of day laborers in Japan faces grim future
By Norimitsu Onishi
Sunday, October 12, 2008

OSAKA, Japan: With job signs stuck to their vans' windshields and sliding side doors left open in expectation, the recruiters were sizing up the potential hires at Japan's largest day-labor market here recently.

By 4:30 a.m., thousands of aging day laborers had spilled out of the neighborhood's flophouses and homeless shelters, or risen from its parks and streets, to form a potential work force of mostly graying men.

A sign on one blue van, barely legible in the twilight, offered a 15-day construction job paying $95 a day, minus $33 in room and board.

Although the terms were comparatively decent, the recruiter sitting in a folding chair in front of the blue van had found only one suitably young laborer by 5 a.m. Most were above the unwritten cutoff age of 55.

"It's really hard to use the men here because they've gotten old," said the recruiter, Takuya Nakamae, 55, turning his head toward his prize catch, a recruit in his 30s. "If you're this young, everybody wants you and you get plenty of offers. Just look at how young you are!"

And yet it was the older men who really knew how to work, he said, adding: "They're the ones who worked during Japan's decades of economic boom, so they know the ins and outs of every job. It's just that they don't have the strength anymore."

Nowadays, few young men gravitate here, the Airin district of Osaka. Little is being built in Japan's stagnant economy, and young day laborers or part-time workers find jobs by registering their cellphone numbers with temporary employment agencies.

Many of the older men who remain arrived here to work on the 1970 Expo in Osaka, which, like the Tokyo Olympics six years earlier, became a symbol of postwar Japan's rebirth. Over the decades, they left to work on bridges, buildings and highways all over the country, performing the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in helping build Japan. Some made it out of here and moved on to steadier jobs and lives.

But many others are still in Airin, one of the few corners of Japan where stray dogs lie in the middle of the street alongside drunken men, and Japanese mobsters, or yakuza, sell drugs openly on street corners and run gambling dens on certain blocks. After one worker claimed abuse by the police, scores of people here rioted for five days over the summer, though old-timers said the disturbances were only a faint echo of the violent and widespread riots of the 1960s and 1990s.

Many of the men left in Airin, on average just shy of 60 years old and with no family ties, are waiting to die here, said Minoru Yamada, who moved here in 1973, once worked as a day laborer and is now chairman of Kamagasaki Shien Kiko, a private organization that helps laborers.

"At one time, this was a place where you could remake yourself," Yamada said. "But not anymore. Now it's become a dumping ground for old men, a place where waste is disposed of."

A grim report by the city government last year said that conditions in Airin were rapidly worsening: an aging population, rising homelessness, deepening poverty and increasing cases of tuberculosis and alcoholism. The number of welfare recipients has grown fivefold in the past decade.

An ancient slum, this area was renamed and reshaped into Airin in the 1960s when the city government cleared it of family dwellings, concentrated all the city's day laborers here and invited others from all over Japan to meet a construction boom. Today, the city estimates that 30,000 people live here, about a quarter of its peak two decades ago, in this 62-hectare, or 153-acre, neighborhood, which is less than one-fifth the size of New York's Central Park.

The district's overall population is more than 85 percent male. But in Airin's core - an urban valley hemmed in by wide avenues and an elevated train track - there are almost no women at all.

During Japan's economic go-go years, the number of jobs offered here swelled, peaking at 9,614 a day in 1990. The number has fallen to about a third of that today and no longer includes jobs in the kind of large and lucrative construction projects that fueled Japan's boom.

Still, recruiters show up every morning at the Airin General Center, the day-labor market, saying they need to check over hires before sending them to a job.

"This is different from bidding on dead tuna at a fish market auction," said one recruiter, who said he shifted to Airin more than two decades ago after working as a pimp in Tokyo. "Sure, you can recruit on the Internet, but on the Internet, you can't make out someone's character. For example, a guy can be O.K. if he hasn't been drinking. But if he has, he may get crazy and create problems for everybody around him."

A couple of hours after the recruiters had left for the day, Tadashi Kato showed up at the center to put his name down for a job as a night watchman. Kato, 75, came here in 1957, abandoning forever his home in rural Hokkaido and family talk of fixing him up with a job at the national railway.

"It'd be natural to wonder whether I would have been better off joining the national railway, but I've led a carefree life and have seen things that people usually can't," Kato said in a guttural voice, explaining that he had taken photos of past riots here and was looking for a "successor" to inherit them.

He once lived in a flophouse. But nowadays, with few jobs coming his way, he sleeps on the streets. He refused to apply for welfare or enter the city-run homeless shelters, where each person receives one piece of hardtack bread a night. He would never, he said, depend on the government.

He was married briefly, and he said that, unlike many of the men who came here to escape after accumulating debts or abandoning their families, he long supported his former wife and their only child, a daughter.

He last saw his daughter, in Tokyo, when his first grandchild was born three decades ago.

"'Your feet stink - don't come here dressed like that,"' he said she told him. "She said I could come if I had some money for her, but not to bother if I didn't. Either way, it's hard being a man."

He had not seen his daughter since, but he said he knew her address.

"When I die, I'll absolutely go to my daughter's," Kato said of his ashes, adding, "Sometimes, you know, I think if I could go painlessly, it wouldn't be that bad not to wake up in the morning."

It was not 11 a.m. yet, but Airin's tiny outdoor drinking stalls were already filling up. These days, the most popular was a five-stool stall that belonged to Yayoi Onodera, 48, who charged $5 per drink and sold rice balls. She had earned around $40,000 in profit since moving here from Tokyo six months ago.

"I never dreamed I'd make so much money," Onodera said, adding that she had struggled in the beginning but was encouraged by a local yakuza leader who used to stop by before he was arrested and imprisoned for drug dealing.

Later that afternoon, many of the men drifted to Sankaku Park nearby where they watched sumo wrestlers on a television set atop a pole.

But Kazuyasu Ikeda, 64, went straight home to the 4.5-square-meter, or 49-square-foot, room he had been renting for the past six years for $11 a night. From his fourth-floor room, where he had a television set, 16 small cactuses and a small tank filled with guppies, he had a view of a parking lot and, beyond that, the Hankai train line.

He had just collected his wages for cutting grass that day and was in high spirits. The wages, of course, were nothing compared with what he had made during Japan's economic boom. Helping to build a highway in Okinawa back then, he said, he far outearned American marines stationed there.

"At a foreigners' bar that I used to go to, I was even more popular than the foreigners," Ikeda said, adding that he was such a regular that the bar kept a bottle of Camus Cognac for him.

He never had children and thus suffered no guilt, he said with a laugh.

But as he watched the end of the sumo matches of the day, Ikeda, a red towel he had used while working still wrapped around his head, seemed to grow tired and his mood darkened. The conversation drifted, as it often did in Airin, to the topic of death.

Ikeda boasted that he had never taken a handout, stood in a soup line or stayed in a homeless shelter. When there were no jobs, he collected aluminum cans. His "policy" was to rely on no one, he said.

"I'll hang on for another 10 years," he said.

The men here, he said, were like cigarette lighters worth 100 yen, or less than $1.

"It's painful to throw away a Zippo or Dunhill lighter even if it doesn't light properly anymore," he said. "But 100-yen lighters you just throw away. That's what we are."

International Herald Tribune Copyright © 2008 The International Herald Tribune | www.iht.com

The influential Hip-Hop duo Blue Scholars, were recently featured on the user content based television channel Current TV, if you haven't heard of the group, I would describe them as thoughtful musicians reporting the ins and outs of life in Seattle, vividly and poetically in their tracks.

This short documentary has a great pace and is incredibly endearing to the cause their music represents, Geologic who provides the vocals for Blue Scholars is heavily involved in community projects and delivers a message deeply rooted in the struggles of working class American immigrants. Partnering with Geo is the avant-garde producer Sabzi, who is a member of the Baha'i Faith. He is trained in jazz piano, though nowadays his palette delves in Hip-Hop, which he uses to instill a positive message for young people.

Useful Links:

Featured on Current TV

What say you leftists? Despite the fact that we KNOW this idiot sock-puppet is wrong for AMERICA, if the vote went his way we'd have nothing to say. We'd bitch, but it would be the will of the people. Were it a legitimate election. And we'd check because there's no way in HELL that this fool could be honestly elected. 

The "CHANGE" we need is an honest, accountable, conservative government. This communist would destroy our nation. Unless, of course, that is your end goal.

BUT! The big but, if THIS is true, there ain't a God damned thing you can say. Nothing.

And boy am I growing to love THIS blog: http://texasdarlin.wordpress.com/2008/10/11/obama-born-in-kenya-new-information/  Hoo-rah!

At the first conference of the CEMB, there was two things underlying the talks: that human rights require that people are protected, rather than groups or religions. The other was that political Islam is different from many other religions because it rejects the distinction between private and public aspects of modern life - and rejects the secular notion that your faith should do no harm to others. Ideas are protected by blood, whether by the death of Apostates, or threats to the life of those that speak out against Islam.

Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive -- the risk to be alive and express what we really are. - Don Miguel Ruiz

In Conway Hall, where the conference took place, above the stage by the celling emblazoned on the wall is To thine Own Self Be True. In a pluralistic society that should not be difficult - where more then one idea can be accepted. A.C Grayling made the point that tolerance should not be easy, while you should not move to the point that you tolerate the intolerant. Sharia Law does not treat women and men equally before the court, and many women do not speak English - to claim that the whole process is voluntary when British law has rights for women from dividing estates to custody of children is absurd when there is in reality no access to the law of the land in Muslim communities for women.

Ahadi made the point though that how the left and the right of politics deal with this issue is wrong. The right that it is a threat to the British way of life, while on the left that different cultures need to be accommodated. In practise the question is do we want a European ideal or a human rights ideal? The dutch politician Ehsan Jami seemed to be of the former notion, requiring an end to dual citizenship with an Islamic country. As Ahadi mentioned, the debate had changed since 9/11 from foreigners as they were called to being called Muslim - even though she had renounced Islam and many refugees were escaping political Islam.

Apostasy by its nature rejects free expression - the penalty being death in some countries, though whether the Koran itself advocates such punishment is disputed. In that sense one would hope that one day those that view the afterlife as being the judgement would prevail. However Sharia Law is gaining acceptance in Muslim countries, and even in Britain is established supposedly on a voluntary basis for civil matters but legal sanction given to the outcome of cases. Sharai Law was likened to a Trojan Horse that political Islam uses to take on the apparatus of the state.

in that use of free expression we have to make the distinction that we are against Islamophobia. This is a struggle of ideology on the nature of the relationship between the state and citizens. It may be argued that the only logical consequence is that you have to allow all forms of speech to allow criticism and guard freedom, with Pooya arguing that it should unlimited, unconditional. A.C. Grayling made the point that you had to be very specific about the limitations - which namely should be on what you cannot choose as a person. For example: gender, age, race but religious belief is free game because you consciously choose that.

One video that was shown was Fitna Remade which outlines the case rather well (without the Islamophoba immigration bashing of the original documentary).

Islamic Penal Code

President Ahmadinejad has been supporting efforts to have the death penalty for Apostasy judicially sanctioned once again. Iran needs to know that the world is watching - the Islamic Penal Code would allow men to be executed for abandoning Islam, with women serving life imprisonment. The Iranian Parliament voted 196 in favour with 7 against. This goes against the existing constitution in Iran.

On one subject, however, sharia law is unequivocal: men who change their religion from Islam must be punished with death. So when the judge heard the case of Rashid's father, he could refer to sharia and reach a straightforward decision: the death penalty. There was no procedure for appeal.

Nevertheless, in the 18 years since Hossein Soodmand's execution, there have been no judicially sanctioned killings of apostates in Iran, although there have been many reports of disappearances and even murders. "As the number of converts from Islam grows," notes Ms Papadouris, "apostasy has again become a serious concern for the Iranian government." In addition to 10,000 Christian converts living in Iran, there are several hundred thousand Baha'is who are deemed apostates.

There is another factor: President Ahmadinejad. "The President didn't initiate the law mandating the death penalty for apostates," says Papadouris, "but he has been lobbying for it. It is an effective form of playing populist politics. The Iranian economy is doing very badly, and the country is in a mess: Ahmadinejad may be calculating that he can gain support, and deflect attention from Iran's problems, by persecuting apostates."

The new law is not yet in force in Iran: it requires another vote in parliament, and then the signature of the Ayatollah. But that could happen within a matter of weeks. "Or," says Papadouris, "it could conceivably be allowed to drop, were there a powerful enough international outcry".

Time may be running out for Rashin's brother. She believes that the new law will be applied in an arbitrary fashion, with individuals selected for death being chosen to frighten others into submission. That is why she fears for her brother. "We just don't know what will happen to him. We only know that if they want to kill him, they will." [Daily Telegraph]

Anyway, after i got back to Vitoria from the crazed hitchiking trip to Portugal i felt that time was rapidly running out there for me. I’d almost come to the end of my savings and there was no prospect of getting a job. Winter was coming, too - and as Vitoria is high in the mountains, winters there are very cold. It was time to reluctantly pack up my few belongings and head back to London... Read more at http://SnapAndScribble.com »

Thinking about where I would live in history is hard. Learning about history at school I found myself constantly wondering how people in the past managed to get on with their lives at all – living in complete poverty; disease-ridden; losing their husbands in war; not having access to basics like sugar. It seemed like a whole other world, completely foreign and something I was thankful to have never grown up in.

But when you get older, you realise that history repeats itself. We might be safer than in the past, but in some ways things are worse. Our society has become so much more materialistic, and we live in a false comfort where we may not know how to react if that was ever taken away.

History comes alive when we think about the people that made it. I think about the times we live in, in our multicultural society, and I have to say I am proud of that. It should be exciting, but for many it causes problems. These problems are not unlike the fighting of the past, leaving our positions uncertain, and making me wonder how much better off I am now than I may have been in the past.

Terrorism has replaced traditional wars; biological fears of ‘disease ridden’ countries full of immigrants have replaced the epidemics that used to wipe out whole families; politicians’ collective lies and mistakes have replaced the absolute power of the monarchy.

So, I would like to say that living here and now would be the best time to live. Of course, I can’t imagine life without shopping, without luxuries, without my computer! But in some ways living in a time where we didn’t even have those options would be amazing. I am at a loss, though, as to what time of history I would rather live in.
• Maybe the simple days of the Anglo-Saxons?
• Being a peasant in medieval England doesn’t sound too appealing;
• Being a queen in medieval England doesn’t even sound to appealing;
• Definitely not a Victorian child;
• Maybe a flapper in the twenties?
• Or a housewife in the forties?
• I love the music in the sixties.

People in history have been through so much, seen so many changes and made their mark on the present day. If I had lived in any of those times, would I be me at all? I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll just see how life continues in the noughties.

My maternal grandfather was a farmer of great skill. He moved from Provo, Utah, to the frontier town of Manila, Utah, then to Delta, then to Salt Lake City, in a quest for riches from farming. Deciding that wouldn't work, he took a job with Utah Oil Co., a company that was eventually merged into Standard of Indiana and now, British Petroleum. His children all graduated from high school, except for the daughter lost in infancy. Several went on to college. They became construction company owners, contractors and engineers, railroad engineers, small company entrepreneurs and retailers. His grandchildren are physicians, lawyers, business executives, successful salesman, investors -- and a couple of good old boys who scrape by (every family has some). My grandfather was second-generation from pioneers, people who moved their families west in wagons, or if necessary, on foot and pushcart. They were people who fought Indians sometimes, and died in those fights and in the migrations. They left legacies in the towns named after them, and in their records as educators -- both my maternal grandparents were schoolteachers early on, many of their cousins were college professors, one a college president.

Education in our family was always viewed as a ladder to personal success, to a good life, if not always a key to economic well-being. Especially in the case of my maternal grandparents, there was great assistance from the Latter-day Saint emphasis on education.

If I had to typify their version of the American dream, certainly a huge part of that dream involved the kids getting educated well beyond their parents, and getting a better life as a result.

Education was a part of the American dream from pre-Revolution days. Foreign visitors often commented that in America the crudest of men read the newspapers and discussed politics with vigor and earnestness absent in other nations. Education was the cornerstone of freedom, in the view of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and as demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington.

Sometime in the 1980s, I think, the tide changed. Certainly the Reagan Revolution had something to do with it. Cuts in Pell Grants, the grants that got thousands of kids into college, were a signal that education was no longer valued as it once was. One by one the federal government stripped away some of the most important building blocks of our modern society, things like the GI Bill, which had provided America with a highly-trained, highly-skilled corps of engineers in the 1950s. Those engineers invented the infrastructure to our nation that now crumbles, and they invented the industrial processes, and sometimes the industries, that we now use daily. Transistors, which make computers possible on the scale we have today, were invented and developed into powerful "cogs" for machines that do what had not even been dreamed of 40 years earlier.

I can't tell you exactly when the tide turned, but I can tell you when I first realized it had. After staffing the Senate Labor Committee for most of a decade, I escaped to the President's Commission on Americans Outdoors, a good place for a budding environmental lawyer to work, I thought at the time. The chairman of the commission was Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander (now senator from Tennessee). Lamar had two big projects in Tennessee that he pinned his hopes for the state upon. Both were influenced in no small part by his work trying to recruit auto manufacturers to build production facilities in Tennessee.

Nissan and Toyota had levelled with him: Tennessee looked good, but for two things. First, there were few good ways to get products like automobiles out of the state to markets they needed to be sold in. Second, Tennessee's education system wasn't providing the highly-educated workers the car makers needed to run highly-sophisticated machinery in a fast-moving, just-in-time inventory system that produced high quality products at lowest cost.

Alexander responded with one initiative to build good roads out of Tennessee to major markets. He called that initiative "Good Roads." He responded to the education needs with a program designed to plug money and support into Tennessee schools to improve education, bolstered by the report of the Excellence in Education Committee in 1983. He called that initiative "Good Schools." In retrospect, those were good places to focus development efforts. Tennessee got at least one Japanese company to locate a plant there, and snagged the much-desired Saturn production plant of General Motors.

The Commission had some hearings in Tennessee. I was along on one of those hearings, and I was with Alexander when he was met by a Tennessee constituent who just wanted to talk to the governor. Alexander, being from Tennessee, hoping to keep his election chances good, and being a good governor, agreed to give the man and his wife a few minutes -- I watched. The constituent complained about all the changes coming to Tennessee. He complained about the costs of the roads, and the costs of improving the schools. He worried about taxes, because, he said, he didn't make a lot of money. Alexander assured him that his taxes would not rise much if any at all, and that especially the education part of the program would benefit all Tennesseans. "Do you have children?" Alexander asked the man.

He responded that he had two kids, both in their early teens. And then he said something that just stunned me: "You know, I've gotten by pretty good with my 8th grade education all these years, and I don't see why my kids need to have any more than that. I'm not sure we need Good Schools."

To Lamar Alexander's everlasting credit -- or shame, if you're very cynical -- he didn't strike the man down. Alexander spent a few more minutes explaining the benefits the man's children would have from better education, and he closed off telling about his meetings with car company executives who made it clear that they wanted to hire only good students who had graduated from good high schools, and maybe who had enough college that they could do the complex mathematics to run big machines. Alexander asked the man for his name and address, said his opinion was very important to him, and promised to get back in touch.

I suspect Alexander did contact the man later. His office tended to work very well on such matters as constituent contacts.

But I'll wager he didn't change the man's opinion about education.

Sometime in the mid-1980s many Americans began to look on education as unnecessary, as expensive, and as "elitist" in a new, derogatory sense. Instead of education being something blue-collar workers hoped their children would earn, it became something blue collar workers felt oppressed by, somehow.

From that commission, I moved to the U.S. Department of Education, in Bill Bennett's regime. Over the next few months I observed the same anti-education phenomenon playing out in debates about school reform in dozens of states. Then I got out of government and into private business, where education was demanded, and I only occasionally worried about the drama I had seen.

The past few weeks, especially since the nomination of Sarah Palin, have heightened my fears about the loss of the shared dream of better education for our children. It was part of the American psyche, woven into the fabric of our government from the "Old Deluder Satan" law in Massachusetts, which required towns of any size to set up some kind of school, through the Northwest Ordinances, which set aside sections of every township to be used for the benefit of public education, through the settlement of the west where nearly every town with a kid in it built a school -- schools were built in Utah before many pioneers had houses to get them through the winter -- through the dramatic rise of public education that helped knock out child labor, and that provided us with truly American armies and navies to get us out on top of two world wars.

Now comes conservative columnist David Brooks to explain how this process has been aided and abetted, if not intended, by the Republican Party, "The Class War Before Palin."

In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

It's a sobering piece. Please read it.

We remain a nation of migrants, a nation that migrates. We remain a nation that desires economic success and is willing to move to get it. Have we lost the good sense to remember that education improves our chances at success? Does Brooks explain the entire motivation for the War on Education?

What do you think?

September 27, 2008 – Traveling home and London

I had really hoped to stay awake during both of my flights back home. Flying westward from one side of the world to the other is a freaky experience because the clock is just not your friend. My flight was scheduled to leave Mumbai at 2:50 in the morning on Saturday, and I was to arrive in Denver at 6:30 in the evening on that same day. However, in reality, more than 24 hours would pass between departure and arrival. That’s just weird. Anyway, since I was going to be arriving in the evening, I thought it would be best to make sure that I was really tired and in need of sleep when I got there. Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men…

Once I was on my first flight (Mumbai to London) and realized that I had pretty much exhausted the entertainment options and wasn’t that interested in reading my R. K. Narayan book, I found myself getting very sleepy. I managed to struggle through Adam Sandler’s Zohan movie (I don’t recommend it – it’s like a 10-minute SNL sketch, stretched to an hour and a half – but John Turturro is great in it) and was asleep by the time the credits rolled.

When we landed in London, it was early morning (7ish) and the fog was so thick that the crew had to land solely based on instruments. Visibility was practically nonexistent. In fact, once we were on the ground, if you’d looked out the window, you would have thought we were still in the clouds. The London fog was that thick. As we taxied to our gate, I thought about my layover in London. My flight from London to Denver wasn’t scheduled to leave until 3:45 that afternoon, and it seemed truly silly to waste all that time sitting (or shopping) in Heathrow Airport. I checked out the in-flight magazine and found that there is underground (aka metro, aka subway, aka “the tube”) connecting Heathrow to central London. When I was last in London, almost exactly 15 years ago, that didn’t exist. Once I saw that, I decided I’d spend the time sightseeing in London and squeeze in a little more travel. After all, I’d already slept, so I needed some activity before being trapped on a plane for another 10 hours.

By the time I actually got off the plane, changed terminals, got through security, made sure it was ok to leave the airport (US passport = A-OK), got some local currency, left my carry-ons at the left luggage counter and found my way to the underground, it was a little after 9. The underground was actually mostly overground for its 45-minute journey to the city, so I got to see a lot of suburban London as I rode. I’d grabbed a little tourist pamphlet at the Heathrow underground station, so I reviewed that during the ride to plan my whirlwind itinerary. Fortunately, most of London’s major sights are within about one square mile, so I knew I could take in quite a bit.

I got off the underground at Picadilly Circus and was delighted when I came to surface. Picadilly is undeniably London, and I found myself having one of those moments that I often have when I’m traveling. “I can’t believe I’m here,” I thought to myself.

From Picadilly, I high-tailed it over to the National Gallery, where some of my favorite paintings in the world reside. I stepped inside (the museum is free), grabbed a map and headed over to visit the paintings of Jan van Eyck. His “Man with a Red Turban” and the Arnolfini wedding portrait both hang on one wall in the Gallery. To me, these paints are legendary. I could soak in their brilliant details, deft brushstrokes, clever composition and subtle colors for hours. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have that kind of time. I quickly realized that what sounded like a whole day in London could really only be a few hours, allowing for travel time, getting through security and any unforeseen difficulties along the way. So I paid my respects to the works of Mr. van Eyck, spent a few minutes with some Robert Campin pieces, dashed through some Vermeers and headed back outside.

The National Gallery sits on the edge of Trafalgar Square, an area where I spent a great deal of time when I was last in London in 1993. At that time, the square was filled with the disgusting winged rats that people call pigeons. They were drawn there by all the tourists who insisted on feeding them. Well, I supposed it’s a pigeon-and-egg scenario. The pigeons probably came to the square for the fountains, but then they came and stayed in droves because people fed them. Anyway, there are no longer any pigeons in Trafalgar Square, and several signs order tourists (well, at least those that can read English) not to feed the pigeons, should they appear, so it’s a much nicer place to be. By now, the fog had burned off and it was warming up to a beautiful, sunny Saturday morning. Tourists roamed the square aimlessly, gazing on the beauty of the National Gallery, Nelson’s Column and the nearby Church of St.-Martin-in-the-Fields. I hung out there for a bit, and then headed toward the Thames.

As I slipped down a narrow street, I stopped into a café for a cup of coffee and a sausage-and-egg on a roll to eat while I speedwalked through the city. Damn, that sandwich was good. The sausage was not a typical American breakfast sausage, but more like a bratwurst. Mmm… And it set me back one pound and 80 pence, which is nearly four dollars. Yikes. But it was delicious.

Once I reached the Victoria Embankment along the River Thames, I was right next to Charing Cross station and the Golden Jubilee Bridge. I walked out on the bridge to get a great view of the landmark skyline. There, still somewhat enrobed in fog, were the London Eye (gigantic ferris wheel that didn’t even exist the last time I was there), Big Ben, Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament. I soaked in the sight, and then decided to descend back into the city for a closer look. And that’s where my marathon of sightseeing really began.

I swept past Big Ben, then went around to see Westminster Hall and the Houses of Parliament. The streets were absolutely crammed with Saturday morning tourists. Oh, like me. I then went past Westminster Abbey and considered going in, but the crowds deterred me. I wove through narrow streets until I reached Buckingham Palace. I then followed the Mall along the northern edge of St. James Park, where there were a million lounge chairs set up. There was also a petting zoo (see photos) on the northeastern corner of the park. All along the way, I was snapping photos, eavesdropping on conversations in a million different world languages, and maintaining an impressive and exhausting pace, especially considering that my feet were already sore and blistered from days of walking in India.

I cut through the area around St. James’s Palace and passed through Picadilly Circus again, making my way through the West End theatre district (at least, I think that’s where I was along Shaftesbury Avenue (which still makes me think of Bill Hicks’s bit about how England doesn’t really have crime, just hooligans), where I spotted a stage adaptation of Rain Man and the famous Spamalot. I then dropped into a fantastic little coffee shop called Caffe Vergnano 1882, right near Leicester Square on Charing Cross Road, for an iced cappuccino. With coffee in hand, I headed into the Leicester Square underground station and boarded a train back to Heathrow. Riding that train, high on caffeine, I couldn’t help smiling in a self-satisfied way. Many people would gladly have waited out their layover hours at the airport, but I got out and saw the city. Good for me.

Getting back through security and all at Heathrow ended up being much easier than I’d expected, so I had time to pick up a few English candy bars (I love by foreign candy – why is that?) and enjoy a pint of John Smith’s before I had to board again.

The flight from London to Denver was, once again, phenomenally boring. I resorted to watching The Incredibles, which was mildly entertaining, and fell asleep again. That might have been helped along by the fact that I kept insisting on a can of London Pride whenever the flight attendant came around.

Once in Denver, I more-or-less breezed through immigration and customs without incident, was met by my generous sister, and taken back to my car, which I’d left at her house, thus ending my adventure.

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var tcdacmd="sa=a;sz=3;ad";Last year, at least 26 San Diego County residents were kidnapped and held for ransom in Tijuana, Rosarito Beach or Ensenada, local FBI agents overseeing the cases said yesterday. In 2006, at least 11 county residents had been kidnapped in the three communities.“Some of the 26 were recovered, some were hurt and some were killed,” said agent Alex Horan, who directs the FBI's violent-crime squad in San Diego.

“It's not a pleasant experience. Victims have reported beatings, torture and there have been rapes.  . . . Handcuffs and hoods over the head are common,” he said.

When contrasted to the 40 million border crossings made every year at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the kidnapping numbers are small. Most of the victims have business interests or family members in Mexico.

But authorities said anyone planning to visit Mexico should be cautious.

“I would certainly be concerned,” Horan said.The U.S. Consulate in Tijuana issued a travel advisory last week that said U.S. citizens living and traveling in Mexico should be extra vigilant.

Gunfights and other violence linked to drug cartels have increased in Baja California, and more Mexican citizens have been kidnapped lately.

While some of the groups suspected of kidnapping Americans are connected to drug trafficking, most aren't, Horan said.

He described the kidnapping groups as sophisticated operations similar to terrorist cells, each with a boss and clear divisions of labor. Usually, one group is involved in scouting, another carries out the kidnapping, a third holds the victim and a fourth handles the ransom.

“They know who they're going after. I think they have a list,” Horan said. “These are kidnapping cells.  . . . That's what they do. They do kidnappings all year long.”

While the FBI wouldn't say what the ransom demands are, or how often they're paid, agents said money is driving the increase.

“This is not about terrorizing people or retaliating. This is about making money, and obviously this is good business for them,” Horan said.

The scenario that fits about 90 percent of the FBI's kidnapping cases starts with a middle-class family with no criminal ties, who live in communities such as Chula Vista, San Diego and National City.

The family typically owns a business in Mexico and has relatives there. At least one family member, usually a man in his 40s, makes several personal and professional trips across the border.

While driving in Mexico, this person is pulled over by as many as 10 people posing as police.

They're carrying weapons, wearing vests and using police jargon. Within a minute or two, someone is shoving a hood over the victim's head and dragging him into a vehicle. His car is left on the side of the road.

“We've had victims held for days to months,” Horan said.

Not every victim is Hispanic, but there have been “very few cases where a tourist is targeted at random,” said Eric Drickersen, who supervises the FBI's border liaison office in San Diego.

Some of the kidnappings go unreported because people fear retribution, Drickersen said.

Ransom demands are almost always made over the phone. The cross-border communication gives the FBI its jurisdiction. But the agents need authorization from Mexican authorities before they can carry out an operation across the border.

Mexican authorities have been helpful, their U.S. counterparts said.

“They're cooperating, but we would like them to do even more,” Drickersen said.

A week ago, Mexican authorities rescued two female real estate agents who were being held in a Tijuana neighborhood. The women were kidnapped Jan. 19 by three men after showing a property in southern Tijuana, the Baja California Attorney General's Office said in a statement.

The men called in a ransom demand of $350,000, the statement said. Family members negotiated a payment of $27,000 and dropped off the cash, but the women weren't released.

Baja California state agents tracked down the vehicle used to pick up the cash. The driver led authorities to the women, and three men were arrested.

Both women are Mexican citizens, although one is married to a U.S. resident. She and her husband live in Chula Vista.

I THINK IT IS TIME THIS COUNTRY COMPLETELY CUT OFF MEXICAN RELATIONS.THEY ARE MAKING MONEY TO KEEP THEM GOING BY SMUGGLING DRUGS AND HUMANS, TERRORISTS, CRIMINALS INTO THIS COUNTRY.

MICKMCK707

Example #1 by Z.S.

I found this article by Zardykhan (2004) very interesting and somehow relevant to the theme of Immigration. It tells about Kazakhstan starting from eighteenth century, Soviet time and modern Kazakhstan. Article puts the question of Nation Building during the USSR and its influence to post soviet Kazakhstan. It compares it to the US immigration article, the US became a “melting pot” during 1820 and 1995 due to immigrants that came and eventually created a new nation. In our case , largest immigration event happened to Kazakhstan during Stalin’s time and his policy  of not letting countries of Central Asia to get their independence. He decided to solve this issue by migrating other ethnicities in first place Slavs who were in Kazakhstan to explore “Virgin Lands”.

The article states that:  “Between 1931 and 1940, some 509,000 people migrated to Kazakhstan from other regions of the USSR through labor recruitment alone”. Before that several ethnic groups and nationalities were deported to Kazakhstan such as Germans, Koreans from the Far East and Poles.  Also, as it is stated in the article, many ‘undesirable’ people were deported to Kazakhstan, those who were accused of different crimes or wrongdoings. This way the number of Kazakhs during that time both shrinked in size and also in the percentage of whole country population. By 1970s there were 42% of Russians (majority), 32.6% Kazakhs, that’s how we see that Soviet demographic policy aimed to destroy the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan and how migration was strong and forceful. In the end, we also might consider Kazkahstan “a melting pot” but the one which was made artificially.

Zardykhan, Zharmukhamed (2004). Russians in Kazakhstan and demographic change: Imperial legacy and the Kazakh way of nation building. Asian Ethnicity, 5.

Example #2 by M.K.

The issue of migration is very important for Kazakhstan these days. Since the population of our country is not very big and we need to improve this, we need people coming into the country and not leaving it. That’s why I wanted to find out more about migration during Soviet Union times and compare it to post Soviet statistics of migration.

The author (White, 2007) was researching the main reasons of Russians leaving the country or migrating within it. But in both of these cases, people very often return to their homes, because they have failed to succeed in a new job, city, or country. Also, besides from comparing the migration in Russia and post-Soviet countries, the article tells about migration patterns in Europe and whole world.

I personally think that you definitely have to be brave in order to leave your hometown searching for better life. It takes a lot of courage to leave all the places, things and people that you have known for many-many years and move to another city, or even country. Because who knows, maybe you won’t find your place there, and how hard it is to come back realizing that your dream has failed. But on the other hand, if you succeed and stay at the place you moved to, you feel so happy about yourself and proud of all the work you have done while achieving your goal.

So, to sum up I want to say that overall, it’s probably worth risking – to move and try to change your life, because if you try your best and work hard, you should succeed. But even if not, maybe this is not where you are supposed to be. You should never give up and keep trying.

White, A. (2007). Internal migration trends in Soviet and post-Soviet European Russia. Europe-Asia Studies, 59(6), 887-911.

Example #3 by VK

The main idea of the article by White (2007) is to compare migration in the Russia during Soviet and post-Soviet periods. Author tries to find out the reason why people migrated and what period was the peak of migration.

 Actually, migration in Soviet Union was ignored and old-fashioned migration from villages to cities was quite normal. I have heard a lot about migration after the Soviet Union collapsed. A huge amount of people were returning home or migrating in order to find the best place to live. The author writes: “…some types of Soviet migrant still have their contemporary counterparts—middle-aged professional people moving from provincial towns and cities in search of more rewarding jobs, or young people moving to the city from villages and small towns for education or staying on there after graduation or military service.” But after being disappointed they returned back or migrated somewhere else. There is even one proverb: “It is always good in the place where there are no us”. Even my grand grandparents migrated from one place to another in order to find something better.

According to the article there are several types of migration “permanent, return, and temporary or occasional”. Anne White explores the management of migration and finds some ways to measure migration. However it is still impossible to say the exact figure of people who migrated during Soviet and post-Soviet periods, but it is obvious that immigration was “popular”.

Nowadays migration is normal phenomenon. It is widespread all over the world! I have just been to the USA and I met a lot of people who moved from ex-Soviet republics to America. All of them had their own reason to move, but I have heard about some cases when people were made to immigrate.

As for me I don’t want to move anywhere as I love my homeland, but….who knows? =)

-AND WHO ARE YOU, IF I MAY ASK?

- I’m his friend and colleague, I only came with him to help; he doesn’t speak much English. I’m from Norway, and I have a residence permit.

- UHU. AND DO YOU HAVE IT HERE?

- No, I’m afraid not, as I only came to assist my friend.

- UHU. LET ME SEE YOUR PASSPORT PLEASE.

- Unfortunately I left it at home. I’m terribly sorry. But I can show you some other ID card. I have my credit card with me - it has a picture and my personal number.

 I take out my Norwegian credit card and hand it over. The policeman comes closer, and takes on to study my face and the picture on the card.

- YOU ARE MUCH MORE BEAUTIFUL IN REAL LIFE THAN ON THE PICTURE.

- Oh. Thank you.

Finally they let us pay the penalty of 140 euro for having an expired VISA, and checked whatever personal belongings my Turkish friend was carrying. Then they let us go.

Tony addresses a wide variety of issues in this 224 page book and it could be aptly viewed as a primer for present day politics in America.  After a short intro citing increased reticence in a majority of Christians to label themselves as "Evangelicals" along with a straying from the recorded words of Jesus himself as the reasoning for the creation of the term "Red Letter Christians," Tony spends time on Global Issues.  Covering issues such as the environment, the war, and the AIDS pandemic, he highlights the important part America plays in the globalized community that is now our reality.  It is interesting to me that he chooses to put these chapters first in his book.  Based on his writing, I think it is safe to say he did that intentionally to help his readers widen their perspective on what is important.  Next Tony tackles the Hot-button Issues that for some are the single most important issues of any election: gay rights, abortion, and increasingly, immigration before covering Economic Issues and Government Issues.  Here he covered issues such as minimum wage, wasteful government, and political lobbyists.

As a passionate person, I tend to get riled up when these issues are discussed.  That said, I didn't read this book to illicit feelings.  I read this book to be a little bit more informed about the issues at hand.  Tony did not let me down on that.  I appreciated his even handed approach to the issues especially since he did not come across as dispassionate or disinterested.  I recommend this book to anyone who has a growing desire to understand more about the political arena in America today from a faith based stand point.

The government of the United States has already acted.  They passed a $700 billion bill that, along with unnecessary tax cuts to special interests, relieves stupid and irresponsible bankers and investment agencies of their risk.  Initially confidence was back up, and the stock market regained some of its points.  I don’t know what else to call it, because there isn’t inherent value in the stock market, or money. 

Now the economy has regained its sense.  The people of the United States, those whose money fuels the investments and liquidity, told the government not to pass this imaginary money bill (a huge loan taken out by the US Congress in the name of the US people).  Now they are still not confident, still right that the bailout bill was the wrong thing to do.  The Congress went ahead and stole our free market.  So the stock market crashed more than it ever has before. 

The world is in turmoil, because most of the world owns stock in our financial stupidity.  Of course looking out your window no one seems to be in turmoil. 

I have been in tears.  Yesterday morning, watching news of voter fraud and financial collapse, an eerie thought crossed my mind.  Much like the compulsion to watch the news all day on September 11, 2001 and remember every event and emotion, I thought I should remember these days and their news, as though recording the last days of an era, an ideology, or a country. 

I’m generously predicting complete socialism in America in 3 months.  My dad says it could be sooner.  So, as a matter of fact, does President Bush.  The government has acted and will continue to act, he says with regards to the economy and the failing markets.  Our country may soon be socialist. 

That is, if country still means anything. 

Today the G7 world leaders are meeting to compose a unified plan for a unified global solution to the economic crisis affecting people internationally.  "In an interconnected world, no nation will gain by driving down the fortunes of another. We are in this together. We will come through it together," Bush said. "There have been moments of crisis in the past when powerful nations turned their energies against each other or sought to wall themselves off from the world. This time is different."

My friends don’t know who to vote for in the presidential election.  They’re discouraged with the options offered by major political parties.  We all know that neither candidate will accomplish much of anything toward fixing the massive problems in our government and economy (financial markets and health care), nor will they actually do much of anything for the social interests of people (education, immigration, abortion, and marriage).  The best answer I have is that it won’t matter what we vote.  Our government is rapidly running away from republican principles, the Constitution, and even its national existence. 

Have a good day. 

(My personal philosophy is that whatever is out of my control is in God’s.  He has the future thoroughly planned, and has revealed the end of the world in His word in several places.  What’s more, my personal welfare and provision is securely in his good hands, not ultimately in the government’s.  Whatever happens, however discouraged I may be by world events, I can trust His sovereignty, goodness, and grace.) 

To God be all glory,

Lisa of Longbourn

Kim Masters shared a terrific essay on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday about her family's roots in Czechoslovakia and the influence one young British man had in assuring the survival of so many Czech children in the days leading up to the Holocaust. Read and listen to her essay Finding A Hero Amid Fading Memories.

Following this moving segment by Masters, Scott Simon sat down to speak with Romanian musician, Sanda Weigl to discuss moving to East Berlin days before the Berlin Wall, her time in a forced labor factory and finally finding home in New York City. The segment features Weigl's music, rich in Gypsy influence, which she regularly performs in cabaret's backed by a three piece all Japanese trio, dubbed, "the band" who, insists Wiegle, "play Romanian gypsy music better than most Romanian musicians today".

Both stories got me thinking about my Grandparents, who immigrated to New York from Lithuania in 1949 following years of hiding throughout Germany, passing as Germans. My Grandparent's versions of history always challenged my perceptions as in their experiences, it was the kindness of the Germans in the face of a Russian invasion which allowed for their safe departure from Lithuania and eventually to the U.S. I came across a terrifc documentary, Sugihara: Conspiracy of Kindness, which chronicles the bravery of a Japanese consul in Lithuania in during the war, who helped many Lithuanian-Jews obtain exit visas. William Kaplan's , One More Border: the true story of one family's escape from war torn Europe is a beautifully illustrated (Shelley Tanaka) account of his father's esape from Lithuania is an excellent and historically accurate telling of the story for younger readers.

For a wide sampling of the immigrant experience try a few of the following.

Crossing into America: the new literature of immigration which I tracked down in order to read Li-Young Lee's, The Cleaving which is featured in the collection. Lee will be the keynote speaker at the 2009 Kachemak Bay Writer's Conference and I've been eagerly devouring his unique brand of poetry.

In the July/August issue of Orion Magazine, Charles Bowdan and Julian Cardona's, Exodus, a cross-border look at the latest wave of immigration from Mexico will leave you reeling in the unstoppable power of the current of this economics of survival situation.

- Alors vous devez vous mettre à la lecture dès aujourd'hui, je vous ferai un programme. Ainsi vous serez en mesure de comprendre la crise que traverse notre époque, énonça solennellement Ignatius. Vous commencerez par les derniers romains, au premier rang desquels Boèce, bien sûr. Puis vous vous plongerez dans l'étude relativement exhaustive des penseurs du début du Moyen-Age. Vous pouvez sauter sans mal la Renaissance et les Lumières. C'est surtout de la propagande dangereuse. Et, pendant que j'y suis, vous feriez mieux de sauter les Romantiques et les Victoriens. Pour l'époque contemporaine, un choix de bandes dessinées et d'illustrés.
- Vous êtes formidable.
- Je recommande tout particulièrement Batman, car il a tendance à transcender quelque peu l'abominable société dans laquelle il se trouve. Et sa morale est assez rigide. Je dois dire que j'éprouve un certain respect pour Batman.

John Kennedy Toole, La conjuration des imbéciles.

First, let me thank Evenshine for his/her thoughtful reply to my post "Dogma Vs. Cheese." 

Second, let me give thanks in general that this election season is almost over.

One of the odder moments in this incessant campaign was when John McCain’s status as a real American became a question. I don’t mean that anyone doubted his patriotism or citizenship or anything like that. I’m referring to the skepticism expressed over whether his birthplace (a military base in the Panama Canal zone) fulfills the U.S. Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural-born citizen.”

It would indeed be a soul-crusher for Republicans if the guy pulls an upset in November, only to be ruled ineligible come Inauguration Day. Either scenario, by the way, is highly unlikely.

In any case, conservatives want to change the Constitution (that non-living document) by adding the “Schwarzenegger amendment,” so that any naturalized citizen can become president. But while they’re at it, they also want to amend the Constitution so that being born in America is not sufficient for citizenship.

The thinking here is that too many pregnant Hispanic women are dragging their huge bellies across the border, just so they can spit out a little nino or nina on U.S. soil. Doing so, of course, ensures American citizenship for their offspring.

I happen to agree with these proposed changes, especially amending the Constitution so that people born in America are not automatically made U.S. citizens. In fact, my compliant with this proposal is not that it is unfair or radical, but that it doesn’t go far enough.

So if we’re going to do this, let’s do it correctly:

Amend the Constitution so that no one can become a citizen until he/she passes a basic test. I mean nobody gets citizenship by virtue of where they’re born or their parents’ status. Everybody has to earn it.

This is where most conservatives pull back. They just want Diego and Maria denied rights because their parents don’t speak English. They certainly aren’t talking about limiting the status of their own ninth-generation offspring.

It’s not just selfishness. We have this mindset that people whose roots go back farther are better Americans. But individuals whose ancestors fought at Valley Forge are not inherently more patriotic than immigrants. In fact, I would argue that people who spend time, money, and effort to study our culture – then prove they know what they’re talking about – are more committed to, and knowledgeable about our nation than the millions of Americans who slept though high school history.

To be fair, I have a bias. Several members of my family have had to pass the test. I was born here, so I didn’t have to put myself on the line. But my mother, aunt, and several cousins have had to step up and say, “Hell yeah, I had to work for this.” And don’t we always appreciate things that we have earned more than gifts that are just handed to us?

And what’s so intimidating about a basic test, anyway? I’m not talking about forcing people to answer questions like “Explain U.S. monetary policy on a macroeconomic level.” The citizenship test, as I understand it, asks people things like “Why do some states have more representatives in Congress?” I find it difficult to believe that this is a harmful thing for citizens to know.

If we had informed citizens – people who really strived to be active members of this country – maybe America wouldn’t elect leaders based on how cute they are or, Lord help us, whether the majority wanted to have an imaginary beer with them.

An objection to this idea is the status of children. Are we to educate every child with the knowledge that come adulthood, many of them will be, at best, legal residents and never become citizens? Well, that’s hardly scary, because we do that now. Furthermore, I would argue for the intrinsic benefit of putting all kids on an even playing field – one where every child is a future potential president –rather than subdividing children into “natural-born citizens” and interlopers.

So what are the objections to this idea? Are they based on the principles of fairness and history, on the norms of our culture? Or perhaps we react negatively because of fear, the itchy suspicion that many of us have no idea what all those stars and stripes on the flag actually symbolize.

Background

If you have been present in the United States since January 1, 1972, you may be eligible for the “registry” provisions of our immigration laws which would allow you to obtain lawful permanent residence even if you are illegally in the United States now, or if you initially entered the U.S. illegally.

Where Can I Find the Law?

The part of the law concerning the registry provisions is located at INA §249. The specific eligibility requirements and procedures for becoming a permanent resident through registry are included in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) at 8 CFR 1259 .

Who Is Eligible?

You are eligible to apply for permanent residence based on 8 CFR 1259 if you:

• Entered the United States prior to January 1, 1972;
• Have continuously resided in the United States since entry;
• Are a person of good moral character;
• Are neither ineligible for citizenship, except for the requirement of five years of lawful permanent residence, nor inadmissible for participation in terrorist activities, certain criminal or security grounds, or for alien smuggling;
• Never participated in Nazi persecutions or genocide;

Note: Any alien who has at any time engaged in terrorist activities is ineligible for registry. Further, any alien who fails to appear at a removal hearing, or who fails to depart after agreeing to voluntary departure, is ineligible for registry for a period of ten years.

 How Do I Apply?

You must submit a completed Form I-485 with filing fee, and a completed Form G-325A with evidence that you have continuously resided in the United States prior to January 1, 1972, to the USCIS district office having jurisdiction over the place in which you live. You must establish that you are eligible and that registry should be granted in the exercise of discretion. There is no appeal from the decision of the District Director but your application may be renewed in front of an Immigration Judge.

Will I Get a Work Permit?

Applicants who are inside the United States and have filed Form I-485 (Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status) are eligible to apply for a work permit while their case is pending. You should use Form I-765 to apply for a work permit.

You do not need to apply for a work permit once you are accorded permanent resident status. As a lawful permanent resident, you should receive a permanent resident card that will provide evidence that you have a right to live and work in the United States permanently. Please see How Do I Get a Work Permit? for more information.

Can I Travel Outside the United States….

…While I Am Waiting for My Application Under the Registry Provision to be Processed?

If an alien obtains Advance Parole from the USCIS following approval of a Form I-131, he or she may travel outside of the United States and return without jeopardizing their registry application. However, any alien who has accrued more than 180 days of unlawful presence in the United States and then travels outside the United States is inadmissible for a period of 3 to 10 years. Registry applicants have, by definition, accrued long periods of time in unlawful status. If you are applying for permanent residence using the section 249 registry provisions, you should not travel outside of the United States without first obtaining advance parole from the Service, or you will be unable to return to the United States.

…If I Have Already Registered for Lawful Permanent Resident Status?

Yes. Any alien who has been granted lawful permanent resident status under “registry” may travel overseas and be readmitted as a returning permanent resident without having to apply for admission for travels that are six months or shorter. All lawful permanent residents who travel outside of the U.S. for periods longer than six months must reapply for admission at the Port-of-Entry.

How Can I Check the Status of My Application?

Please contact the USCIS office that received your application. You should be prepared to provide the USCIS with specific information about your application. More information is available on finding the status of your case.

Can Anyone Help Me?

If advice is needed, you may contact the USCIS District Office near your home for a list of community-based, non-profit organization that may be able to assist you in applying for an immigration benefit. Please see our Immigration field offices home page for more information on contacting the USCIS.

Source: http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=892a96981298d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD&vgnextchannel=4f719c7755cb9010VgnVCM10000045f3d6a1RCRD

Here is a site with a bunch of poems from Angel Island. Have a look and see if you notice any patterns that emerge. You can also visit this site for a look at an analysis of the poems as well as text from the Exclusion Act of 1882.

This book is filled with details of life and how it was lived in 1945 mostly from books, letters, photographs and interviews.  Everything's discussed in categories and in a gossipy tone that covers people, places, race, class, shopping, transportation, music, technology, slums, mansions, art, parties, and schools.  I kind of wish I'd taken better notes on this book since it's full of fun little tidbits, but no great memorable themes.  I'd like to read it again, perhaps while in Manhattan, the book tucked under my arm as I visit what's there and what once was.

I've previously read the following books by Morris: The World of Venice and Heaven's Command: An Imperial Progress.

Author Morris, Jan, 1926-
Title Manhattan '45 / Jan Morris. --
Publication Info. New York : Oxford University Press, 1987.
Description 273 p., [12] p. of plates : ill. ; 22 cm.