In The News

Push for Rights of Singapore Women's Foreign-born

Chuang Peck Ming June 12, 2003
The proactive, modern women of Singapore are still shackled by obsolete policies, says the government-supported 'Remaking Singapore Committee'. Women and their children are subject to a vast array of double-standards that, they say, are born in the delivery-room and go on to thrive in society. These policies perpetuate the perception that women from Singapore are lesser citizens than...

A Primer for Cross-Strait Relations

Chen Hurng-yu June 11, 2003
If Taiwan ever wants to improve cross-strait relations and free itself of interference from Beijing, it will need to depart from the 1971 framework and change its foreign policy, says Chen Hurng-yu, professor of history at Taiwan's National Chengchi University. The overlapping claims of Taipei and Beijing to sovereignty over China – a dispute that has continued since the UN denied Taiwan’s...

Indians Pursue Portuguese Passports as an Entree to Europe

James Brooke June 8, 2003
Anyone who was living in the Indian state of Goa in 1961 – when colonization by Portugal officially ended – or who had an ancestor living there at the time, can still obtain a Portuguese passport and thus have indirect access to much of Europe. During decolonization, the Portuguese made arrangements so that all inhabitants of “Portuguese India” would retain some of the rights of Portuguese...

Dreams, Deferred

Erika Kinetz June 1, 2003
The recent downturn in the US economy has had a devastating impact on the financial services, telecommunications, and media industries in New York City. In a New York Times feature article, Erika Kinetz offers stories of recent graduates of Queens College who hail from around the globe, and who, in spite of enviable grades and technical skills, remain unemployed. For these graduates, jobs are...

Special Visa's Use for Tech Workers is Challenged

Katie Hafner May 30, 2003
The high technology sector in the United States is amongst the worst hit by the current recession. The recent outcry against the hiring of foreign workers – mostly from India – at comparatively lower wages exemplifies the severity of the crisis of unemployment in the high tech sector. The unemployed within the high tech sector, members of the US Congress. and certain special public interest...

European Union’s Southern Drive

Shada Islam May 30, 2003
Despite apparent attempts by the US to lead the world in every way and area, when it comes to northern Africa and the Middle East, the European Union has its own ideas. Europe's importation of immigrant labor to support its aging population has contributed to a buildup of over 13 million Muslims of Middle Eastern descent across the continent. In the face of continued economic shifts and...

An Exodus Grows in Brooklyn

Michael Powell May 28, 2003
By all accounts, life as one knew it is over in New York City's Little Pakistan. Little Pakistan formed as an ethnic residential and business neighborhood of Pakistani immigrants in the early 1960s. In the decades that followed, the neighborhood transformed into a bustling center of Pakistani-ness, adding to the vitality of multicultural New York. As reported in this Washington Post...