In The News

The Miami Herald: The US Pushes Latin America Into China’s Arms

Andrés Oppenheimer February 9, 2018
The Monroe Doctrine, a US policy adopted in the early 19th-century, warned other powers to stay away from Latin America. Today, as the United States nags and overlooks the region, China has made gains. US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a speech on February 1 describing the region as a US priority and warned that China has more influence. Latin America’s total US imports shrunk from 50...

The Straits Times: Aging and Immigration

Vikram Khanna February 6, 2018
Wealthy nations with low fertility rates have aging populations with decreasing numbers of working-age adults. Achieving economic growth and sustained living standards requires increasing fertility, productivity, immigration or increasing numbers of women entering the workforce, suggests Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, as described by Vikram Khanna, associate...

The Economist: America’s Federal Government Shuts Down Over Immigration

January 22, 2018
Immigration policy is the point of contention for US Congress struggling to pass a spending bill: specifically, ending temporary status for young immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and invested in education, careers, homes and community based on a shield us provided by the Obama administration. That status ends in March. That quarrel led to a shutdown of the US federal...

Washington Post: “Here Is What My #S---hole Looks Like”

Paul Schemm and Eli Rosenberg January 12, 2018
The United States is a country of immigrants. Ancestors of many citizens arrived destitute – from Europe, Asia and Africa – in search of opportunity and thrived. In a meeting, Donald Trump was reported to have rejected a legislative deal on immigration and asked, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” before suggesting that immigration policies focus on places...

The Guardian: Trump Pulls US Out of UN Global Compact on Migration

Patrick Wintour December 8, 2017
Citing its commitment to US political sovereignty and strict immigration policies, the Trump administration has pulled the country of the United Nations’ global compact on migration. The announcement came within hours of the opening of a UN global conference on migration in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. According to Patrick Wintour of the Guardian, “The UN had always insisted that the compact was...

The Economist: The Balfour Declaration

November 10, 2017
While the Balfour Declaration was not as strong as Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann had hoped when ratified in 1917 as it turns out, the public statement of support issued by the British government during World War I for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people" in Palestine did reinforce the settler project and deliver Israeli statehood. According to the Economist, “...

Quartz: Adding Asians to Kenya’s List of Tribes

Abdi Latif Dahir August 9, 2017
In July, Kenya’s government declared Asians as the nation’s 44th indigenous group after a successful petition from the Asian community, a nod to their long history in the country. Although individuals from the Indian subcontinent, referred to as Asians in Kenya, first immigrated en masse to the East African nation in the late 1800s, they still face scapegoating, racism and violence. Critics “...