In The News

Asian Music, Accompanied by the A Train

Yilu Zhao July 6, 2004
In China, traditional musicians face the two-fold threat of florescent pop music and a gradual drying of government funding, both of which have led to a decrease in demand for their craft. "While most pop music groups take in extra income by playing at clubs and parties," writes Yilu Zhao, "some traditional music ensembles… sit idle for months on end." As a result, many...

Immigration is Changing the Face of Suburban America

William G. Holt, III July 6, 2004
New immigrants to the US are settling in some surprising places. In the past, most newcomers to the US found comfort and kin in the urban centers of cities like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. But increasingly, says sociologist William Holt, immigrants are settling in the suburbs of 'second-city' destinations like Atlanta and reversing a trend set by the earlier period of...

U.S. Restrictions on Trips to Cuba are Inhumane

Jim Defede June 29, 2004
This commentary in the Miami Herald discusses the new travel restrictions enforced by the Bush administration, which will limit family visits to Cuba from once a year to once every three years. The author argues that this new policy is merely an election-year strategy designed to get older Cuban-Americans to vote for the Republican incumbent in November's US presidential election. The travel...

Immigrants Don't Steal the Jobs of Germans

Patrick Welter June 11, 2004
With 4 million Germans currently unemployed, immigrants have become an easy scapegoat to blame for job losses. And it is the potential immigrant who wants to settle down in Germany that faces the biggest roadblocks to immigration, notes this article in FAZ Weekly. Under a proposed immigration law, bureaucrats will be allowed to screen potential immigrants to see whether they will prove beneficial...

Filipino Workers, Activists Protest Over Jobs

Cody Yiu June 3, 2004
For years Taiwanese industry and construction companies have relied upon the labor of Filipinos, Thais, and migrant workers from other Southeast Asian countries. Labor relations have not always been smooth, however, with reports of abuse and exploitation surfacing from time to time. The latest labor conflict, reported here in the Taipei Times, concerns 19 Filipino workers who were being over-...

Dangers to the Constitution

Elise Kissling May 28, 2004
This week's agreement on an expanded immigration law in Germany allows wider and freer entry for foreign nationals, but the political debates leading up to it have raised questions and concerns on many levels. Elise Kissling, in Germany's F.A.Z. Weekly, writes that an earlier legal proposal, strongly backed by German Interior Minister Otto Schily in the name of security from terrorism,...

Germans Agree to Admit Skilled Immigrants

May 27, 2004
German politicians have finally agreed on a progressive new immigration policy that will allow skilled non-European workers to enter and reside in the country. had spent three years working on the legislation. After much consultation and political wrangling, said German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, a balance was struck between Greens who wanted a more liberal policy and groups who feared that...