In The News

Oscar Embraces Globalization and Diversity This Year

Steven Rea January 29, 2007
Though it may not win Best Picture, the film most emblematic of the Academy Awards in March will be “Babel,” which examines the modern tension between instant communications and persistent language barriers. This year, films like “Babel,” with six languages, and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” mostly in Japanese, are honored in the Best Picture category, rather than confined to Foreign Film nominations...

An Immigration Raid Aids Blacks – For a Time

Evan Perez January 18, 2007
After federal agents raided chicken and meat processors in 2006, many immigrant workers fled their jobs. In rural Georgia, one company raised wages by $1 and recruited local workers, most African Americans. Since then, company officials have had to deal with more complaints about work conditions, pay disputes and workplace rights, reports this article in “The Wall Street Journal.” Injury rates...

Opening Up the Transatlantic Market

Daniel S. Hamilton January 15, 2007
Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany and president of the G-8, urges a transatlantic free-trade agreement. Except for a few high-profile squabbles, trade barriers between the two continents are already low and the US Senate has already given its approval of such an agreement, note transatlantic analysts Daniel Hamilton and Joseph Quinlan. The authors point out that a US state like Illinois has...

Celebrate Koran Oath as an All-American Moment

James Zogby January 5, 2007
Critics lashed out at one US congressman’s decision to use the Koran rather than a Bible for taking his oath for office. Some critics said Keith Ellison’s decision to use the Koran “undermines American civilization.” Indeed, most members of Congress don’t use any book at all. Ellison’s decision to use a Koran that belonged to Thomas Jefferson – author of the Declaration of Independence, the third...

Too Much Globalization, Or Not Enough?

Andrew Leonard January 5, 2007
Immigrants contributed to more than 25 percent of new engineering and technology start-up firms in the US between 1995 and 2005, according to a study from Duke University’s Master of Engineering Management Program and the School of Information, University of California, Berkeley. Companies started by immigrants produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 in 2005. Notably, firms with...

Migranomics Instead of Walls

Ernesto Zedillo January 4, 2007
Illegal immigration stirs resentment against immigration in general. Yet enforcement alone – building giant walls, adding border patrols, requiring new forms of identification – will not stop illegal immigration, points out Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. For a nation in need of willing workers, immigration contributes to prosperity and the ability to...

A Ransom Worth Paying

January 2, 2007
In pursuit of profits, Brazilians quickly search for new land to plant soybean fields, and the rainforests of the state of Amazonas could vanish within a generation, according to an article in “The Economist.” Some Brazilians would not mind putting a stop to deforestation, but the only way that will happen is if wealthy nations pay Brazil and other poor countries in the region to save the...