In The News

Immigration Reform and National Security

Tamar Jacoby September 16, 2002
Despite Mexican President Vicente Fox’s appeal to the U.S. Congress last year for more favorable immigration policies, the issue of immigration reform has been swept under the proverbial rug. The plan proposed to increase the number of visas for Mexican workers and to legalize the status of many previously undocumented workers in the U.S. A year after the plan first reached Washington, issues...

Muslim Hardliners to Begin "Sweeps" Against Foreigners

September 7, 2002
Indonesian Islamic organizations led by the militant MMI have threatened a crackdown against foreign nationals working illegally in major Indonesian cities. The threat comes as a response to neighboring Malaysia's recent announcement of strict immigration rules against illegal workers there – many of whom come from Indonesia, The Indonesian groups' 'sweep' would check the...

Amnesty Urges Malaysia to Stop Whipping Illegals

Reuters August 12, 2002
Until recently, caning was an infrequent practice in Malaysia, authorized as a supplementary punishment for many crimes but used only 13 times in 2001. The practice has been revived now as a punishment for illegal immigrants, most of whom come from Indonesia. Amnesty International has requested that the practice be stopped, calling it cruel and unlikely to deter immigrants or asylum-seekers....

Gephardt Is Preparing a Measure to Legalize Illegal Immigrants

Carl Hulse July 23, 2002
The United States is home to millions of illegal immigrants, many of them from Mexico, who have become a major chunk of the American labor force. Before September 11, President Bush talked with Mexican President Vicente Fox about the possibility of granting amnesty to some of those immigrants, but heightened concerns about national security have left that plan hanging. Democrats in the House of...

Bush Trades His Principles

Jagdish Bhagwati April 17, 2002
President George W. Bush is supposed to stand for free trade and open immigration. However, his recent policies speak otherwise. New steel tariffs have been applied in a preferential fashion, and immigration initiatives favor Mexicans. While some friends of the U.S., like Brazil, South Africa, and South Korea, are exempt from steel tariffs, the E.U. is not. And although the Immigration and...

Globalization True, and False

Pulapre Balakrishnan August 20, 2001
Any discussion on free trade must include a discussion of free immigration, for it is people that produce the goods that are to be traded. If the producers are not free to move, then trade itself is not free. As the writer Balakrishnan argues, “immigration cannot be ignored in any global compact on economics.” Balakrishnan is, however, aware what free immigration means to developed countries: the...