In The News

America for Sale: 2 Outcomes When Foreigners Buy Factories

Peter S. Goodman April 16, 2008
The debate over globalization’s effects on the US economy has become a focal point of the presidential campaign. Outsourcing jobs is a major concern of voters, and with good reason. In Michigan alone, as New York Times’ writer Peter Goodman notes, more than 300,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to foreign competition during the last eight years. Yet globalization encourages foreign investment...

IT Workers on the Move With Globalization

Anthony P. D’Costa April 9, 2008
Talented professionals, including information-technology workers, chose to migrate for jobs and high wages. Such workers have often moved from developing countries in Asia and Eastern Europe to the wealthy developed nations, where graying populations and a lack of youth interest in mathematics and other technical subjects, created a need for skilled workers. But a new shift is also on, reports...

Why Africa Must Make Health Spending a Priority

Helen Nyambura-Mwaura April 4, 2008
Health analysts agree that hiring of African nurses and doctors by hospitals in developing nations is a problem that invites the risk of new diseases emerging and spreading quickly around the globe. The 10 countries with the highest tuberculosis and HIV rates are in Africa. Health care workers are in short supply around the globe, but shortages are particularly acute in the poorest countries....

Labor Pains in the Middle East

April 1, 2008
Oil-rich states in the Middle East have long depended on migrants from countries such as India and Bangladesh to fill the demand for labor in capital-intensive projects and protected indigenous labor by promoting large civil service classes. But global inflation has reduced real wages while increasing the price of goods, with effects magnified for those countries with currencies pegged to the...

World Banker and His Cash Return Home

Jason DeParle March 24, 2008
Remittances, once treated as an insignificant rounding error, eclipse the world’s combined foreign aid by threefold. A migration scholar with the World Bank, Dilip Ratha, calculated the magnitude of remittances and brought them to the world’s attention. Critics suggest that “behind every remittance is a separated family” and argue that remittances contribute to consumption rather than development...

The Global Rose as Social Tool

Roger Cohen March 18, 2008
Roses are also a modern-day global product, grown over thousands of acres in developing nations like Kenya before shipment to supermarkets in Great Britain. The British pay about $10 for a small bouquet while the Kenyans earn about $70 per month. “Look at the global economy one way and Buyaki earns the equivalent of seven bunches of roses for a month's labor,” explains Roger Cohen for the...

Guess Who's Getting the Most Work Visas

Moira Herbst March 17, 2008
Since 1990, the US has issued a set number of H-1B visas by lottery to attract talented science, technology and math professionals from around the world to its universities, research centers and companies. Increasing numbers of applications, however, combined with strict caps and a lottery system prevent many foreign professionals from entering the US workforce. A federal report points out that...