The Art of Defining Marriage

The unit’s lore is worthy of its own reality TV series — sham couples caught red-handed, yes, but also quirky ones whose authenticity surprised everyone. The gay man who claimed he had suddenly found his female soul mate (denied); the recovering alcoholic who had lost his memory (approved); the man who volunteered that he had erectile dysfunction in an attempt to explain why his mate did not know the location of his nine tattoos (unsuccessful); the elderly citizen who lost an arm in a subway accident, but found happiness with a young Caribbean wife (successful).

“We can’t impose our definition of marriage, especially being in New York,” said Maria Guerra, a Stokes supervisor. “We’ve seen it all.”

-Do You Take This Immigrant?

Hope!

After reciting the Oath of Allegiance, 144 people became American citizens during a special naturalization ceremony in Washington. The opening sentence of the oath reads: "I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen."

The Gift of Time

The Gift of Time-Letters from a Father
By Jorge Ramos

Incredible America

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Four years ago, officials had projected the shift would come in 2050.

The main reason for the accelerating change is significantly higher birthrates among immigrants. Another factor is the influx of foreigners, rising from about 1.3 million annually today to more than 2 million a year by midcentury, according to projections based on current immigration policies.

“No other country has experienced such rapid racial and ethnic change,” said Mark Mather, a demographer with the Population Reference Bureau, a research organization in Washington.

-In a Generation, Minorities May Be the U.S. Majority

The Idea that is America at its best

In a pointed gesture, the U.S. Olympic team has voted Lopez Lomong, a member of the track team who gained American citizenship in 2007 after fleeing Sudan and spending a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp, as its flag bearer for the opening ceremony in Beijing.

-Sudanese refugee voted American flag bearer

Cool link of the Day

Britain from Above

Illicit Mexico

Mexico: On the Road to a Failed State?

The Gangs of Central America

A Course on Poverty and Development from Google

Ted Miguel / Davesh Kapur / Steve Redelet


Lant Pritchett



Seema Jayachandran / Ted Miguel


Janice E. Perlman
/Ananya Roy


Nancy Birdsall / Raymond C. Offenheiser

Things in Fareed Zakaria's Post American World

270 Illegal Immigrants Sent to Prison in Federal Push

The Post-American World

Look around. The world's tallest building is in Taipei, and will soon be in Dubai. Its largest publicly traded company is in Beijing. Its biggest refinery is being constructed in India. Its largest passenger airplane is built in Europe. The largest investment fund on the planet is in Abu Dhabi; the biggest movie industry is Bollywood, not Hollywood. Once quintessentially American icons have been usurped by the natives. The largest Ferris wheel is in Singapore. The largest casino is in Macao, which overtook Las Vegas in gambling revenues last year. America no longer dominates even its favorite sport, shopping. The Mall of America in Minnesota once boasted that it was the largest shopping mall in the world. Today it wouldn't make the top ten. In the most recent rankings, only two of the world's ten richest people are American. These lists are arbitrary and a bit silly, but consider that only ten years ago, the United States would have serenely topped almost every one of these categories.

These factoids reflect a seismic shift in power and attitudes. It is one that I sense when I travel around the world. In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious—and vaguely French—so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, "they" have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism.

-Fareed Zakaria

Which candidate can help Dorothy?

Poverty, parenthood threaten to turn students into statistics;

Fifteen years old and in high school, Dorothy Wade — all copper curls and who speaks in a flat mumble from the side of her mouth — has an 11-month-old baby, Santiago. He sometimes turns blue with asthma. Between school and this nighttime job, Dorothy sees him too little.

At home, her own 32-year-old mom, with three kids and now a grandson, sits on the couch recuperating from an operation to cut a tumor from her spine. Because of the surgery, she’s been out of work for two weeks, unpaid and unable to go to her $8.50-an-hour midnight job where she ships packages. The phone company shut off service.

As for the baby’s father — an illegal Mexican day laborer who flirted with Dorothy in Kansas City — the last Dorothy heard, he had been shot in Mexico. She suspects it’s a lie to shield a deadbeat dad.

Another report to read

House of Lords report on the economic impact of immigration;

Immigration has become highly significant to the UK economy: immigrants comprise 12% of the total workforce—and a much higher proportion in London. However, we have found no evidence for the argument, made by the Government, business and many others, that net immigration—immigration minus emigration—generates significant economic benefits for the existing UK population.

Overall GDP, which the Government has persistently emphasised, is an irrelevant and misleading criterion for assessing the economic impacts of immigration on the UK. The total size of an economy is not an index of prosperity. The focus of analysis should rather be on the effects of immigration on income per head of the resident population. Both theory and the available empirical evidence indicate that these effects are small, especially in the long run when the economy fully adjusts to the increased supply of labour. In the long run, the main economic effect of immigration is to enlarge the economy, with relatively small costs and benefits for the incomes of the resident population.

The economic impacts of immigration depend critically on the skills of immigrants. Different types of immigrant can have very different impacts on the economy. The issue is not whether immigration is needed but what level and type of immigration is desirable. In this context, net immigration from the EU—which we expect to remain positive—cannot be controlled. The question then is whether additional immigration from elsewhere carries benefits or disadvantages.

Many businesses and public services at present make use of the skills and hard work of immigrants. But this is not an argument for immigration on a scale which exceeds emigration and thus increases the population of the country. We do not support the general claims that net immigration is indispensable to fill labour and skills shortages. Such claims are analytically weak and provide insufficient reason for promoting net immigration. Vacancies are, to a certain extent, a sign of a healthy economy. Immigration increases the size of the economy and overall labour demand, thus creating new vacancies. As a result, immigration is unlikely to be an effective tool for reducing vacancies other than in the short term.

We also question the Government's claim that immigration has generated fiscal benefits. Estimates of the fiscal impacts are critically dependent on who counts as an immigrant (or as a descendant of an immigrant) and on what items to include under costs and benefits. The overall fiscal impact of immigration is likely to be small, though this masks significant variations across different immigrant groups.

Rising population density has potentially important economic consequences for the resident population, including impacts on housing, as well as wider welfare effects, especially in parts of England where immigrants are most concentrated. Although immigration is only one of a number of factors affecting the demand for housing, it does exert a significant impact on the housing market in particular areas. Some of the wider impacts from rising population are hard to measure and highly regional. Some, such as the impact of increasing population density on the cost and speed of implementation of public infrastructure projects, remain poorly understood.
Arguments in favour of high immigration to defuse the "pensions time bomb" do not stand up to scrutiny as they are based on the unreasonable assumption of a static retirement age as people live longer and ignore the fact that, in time, immigrants too will grow old and draw pensions. Increasing the retirement age, as the Government has done, is the only viable approach to resolving this issue.

There are significant unknowns and uncertainties in the existing data on immigration and immigrants in the UK. There are insufficient data about people leaving the UK and about short-term immigration to the UK. Existing data do not allow for accurate measurement of the stock of immigrants at national, regional and local levels. Inevitably, even less is known about the scale of illegal immigration and illegal employment of immigrants. The gaps in migration data create significant difficulties for the analysis and public debate of immigration, the conduct of monetary policy, the provision of public services and a wide range of other public policies.

Our overall conclusion is that the economic benefits to the resident population of net immigration are small, especially in the long run. Of course, many immigrants make a valuable contribution to the UK. But the real issue is how much net immigration is desirable. Here non-economic considerations such as impacts on cultural diversity and social cohesion will be important, but these are outside the scope of our inquiry.

Against this background, we have identified the following priorities for Government action. The Government should:

* improve radically the present entirely inadequate migration statistics;
* review its immigration policies and then explain, on the basis of firm evidence on the economic and other impacts, the reasons for and objectives of the policies, and how they relate to other policy objectives such as improving the skills of the domestic workforce;
* better enforce the minimum wage and other statutory employment conditions, with effective action taken against employers who illegally employ immigrants or who provide employment terms which do not meet minimum standards;
* clarify the objectives and implications of the new, partially points-based immigration system. It is far from clear that the new arrangements will in fact constitute the radical overhaul of the present system suggested by the Government;
* monitor immigration by publishing periodic Immigration Reports giving details of the numbers and characteristics of non-EEA nationals entering the UK under each Tier of the new system;
* give further consideration to which channels of immigration should lead to settlement and citizenship and which ones should be strictly temporary;
* review the implications of its projection that overall net immigration in future years will be around 190,000 people. The Government should have an explicit and reasoned indicative target range for net immigration and adjust its immigration policies in line with that broad objective.

NY Tax Basics

Tax Workshop for International students studying in New York

Imagine there is no Mr. Ganguli

America's Idiocy;

“The Namesake” is worth watching for many reasons. It is a compelling study of personal identity. It features some of the most talented Indian actors in the business. But it is also an excuse for a thought experiment: imagine how much poorer America would be without the likes of Mr Ganguli.

Almost a third of Silicon Valley start-ups since 1995 were founded by Indians or Chinese. They also power America's great universities, particularly the science departments. About 40% of people earning PhDs in computer science and engineering are foreign-born

A black man and a woman on a sinking raft

The original Raft of the Medusa

Related;
Senator Obama and the Raft of the Medusa

On July 2, 1816, the Medusa got stuck on shoals in the Arguin Bank. Of the 400 passengers, most of the well-to-do escaped in the six life-boats. The crew, about 150, settled for a 65 by 23 foot raft. Mayhem ensued –murder, mutiny and cannibalism. About two weeks later, just four miles from shore, fifteen survivors were picked up by the Argus (the Medusa’s sister ship)—ten made it home to tell their stories to the press.

The black sailor who energetically waves his shirt toward the Argus may represent the military conscripts brought along to patrol France’s territory in Senegal. More likely, he serves to remind the viewer of France’s slave trade, which Géricault actively opposed and Leutenant-Colonel Schmaltz meant to profit from in Africa. Therefore, Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa is more than a dramatic record of this event and a symbol of hope in the face adversity, it questions the body politic when its practice leads to corruption and human degradation. The artist’s choice of a black man leading the fight for survival called attention to those who had been abandoned by society, like the Medusa sailors left to fend for themselves on the open sea.

Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa

At the 1819 Salon, the painting was titled Scene of a Shipwreck in order to avoid criticism from the French government; a disconcerting decision considering how obsessed Géricault was with the creation of the work. Unable to find a buyer, Géricault exhibited the painting to the public in continental Europe and England and charged an admission fee, a popular trend at the time. 40,000 people came to see the work in London and it was viewed with horrified fascination. Eventually, the work did sell. It was saved by the French government from a group of French nobility who intended to cut the work up and sell it piecemeal. It can now be seen at the Louvre. Géricault died about five years after its completion at the age of thirty-two.

Reflections on Gericault's Face of Envy, Or: For Everyone Who Wants But Doesn't Get

The Raft of the Medusa

The artist avoided showing the most horrific aspects of the tragedy, which actually included murder. Instead he chose to depict the dramatic moment when the frantic castaways attempted to attract the attention of a distant ship that was eventually to rescue them. All are piled onto one another in every attitude of suffering, despair, and death, arranged in a powerful X-shaped composition. It is sublime and terrible at the same time, expressing such horror, yet with a glimmer of hope. Géricault placed remarkable value on accuracy in Raft of the Medusa: he carried out prodigious research and completed numerous preliminary studies for the work, even going so far as to seek and interview survivors of the wreck.

Would Gross National Happiness increase under democracy?

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan ended a century of absolute monarchy Monday by electing a staunch royalist as its first prime minister.

The Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party took 44 of the 47 seats in the new Parliament, Election Commissioner Kunzang Wangdi said. The People's Democratic Party won the remaining three seats. Turnout was slightly more than 79% of the 320,000 registered voters. The results will not be official until Tuesday morning.

Jigmi Kinley, who twice served as premier under royal rule, is expected to be named prime minister. Mr. Kinley's Bhutan Peace and Prosperity Party was considered the more royalist of the two very royalist political parties in the elections.

The election came with a twist: It was the king, not the people, who pressed for democracy. The democracy process in Bhutan was started by King Jigme Singhye Wangchuck, who abdicated in favor of his son in December 2006. Bhutanese regularly refer to both as "His Majesty."

"His Majesty is like our father. We all prefer our father," said Karma Tsheweng, a 35-year-old mechanic.

Bhutanese have reason to be ambivalent. The tiny country of about 600,000 people has prospered under royal rule. Its fast-growing economy is slowly lifting many people out of poverty and nearly everyone has access to schools and hospitals. Bhutan has an average annual of income of $1,400 was twice neighboring India's, and nearly all its people had access to schools and hospitals, a rare achievement in this corner of the world. Such success contrasts sharply with South Asian countries like Nepal or Bangladesh, which often seem like case studies in democracy gone wrong -- a fact that left many here dreading the change.

But "we have come to see that this is an opportunity he has given us because he is farsighted and wise," said Karma Dorji. Still, he added, "We prefer our king."

Mr. Kinley was celebrating his landslide -- his party took 44 of the 47 parliament seats -- in remote eastern Bhutan on Monday. The party's spokesman, Palden Tshering, called the win a "victory for His Majesty." Mr. Kinley is likely to be named prime minister soon. The king, 28-year-old Jigme Keshar Namgyal Wangchuck, will remain head of state and likely retain much influence.

Mr. Kinley's party, like the opposition, hews closely to the king's vision. Both vow to follow the latest five-year plan – called "His Majesty's vision" -- and promote Gross National Happiness, an all-encompassing political philosophy that seeks to balance material progress with spiritual well-being.

Known by its people as the Land of the Thunder Dragon, Bhutan's snowcapped peaks and mountainside monasteries have long intrigued Westerners in search of a Buddhist nirvana. But the kingdom is, in many ways, a strikingly conformist place where the outside word is viewed warily and self-promotion and confrontation are frowned upon.

Bhutan's election campaign was exceedingly mild by the standards of other democracies with candidates more likely to compliment competitors than criticize them. But there were ugly moments. One party accused the other of vote buying (it was actually paying its workers); a candidate charged his opponent with trying to influence powerful monks by having his wife donate a butter lamp to a monastery.

-Bhutan Holds Its First Parliamentary Vote

There will be Blood

Photo of the Day- Tibetan Monks protest in Nepal

Related;
China fears that the protests in Tibet could spread;

As your correspondent left Lhasa on March 19th (the authorities refused to extend his week-long permit to report there) the city was under its tightest security since martial law was imposed in March 1989 to contain anti-Chinese protests. Troops were driving through the streets broadcasting messages through loudspeakers denouncing the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader.

Military looking vehicles had their license-plates covered or removed and many troops displayed no insignia, suggesting an attempt to cover up the use of army personnel to control the unrest. China does not want the run-up to the Olympics overshadowed by accusations of military repression in Lhasa. But the army is almost certainly playing a big part in the city’s clampdown on the ethnic violence that erupted on March 14th and 15th. The authorities say 160 rioters in Lhasa have turned themselves in to the police and 24 people have been charged with “grave crimes”. But Tibetans say they fear widespread and indiscriminate arrests.

Indian Guest-workers in New Orleans and their American Dream

A shipyard in the US state of Mississippi is accused of using a "guest worker" programme to exploit hundreds of workers from India.

Border security- from a Mexican Perspective