In The News

Young Foreign Workers Fill Summer Shortages

Steven Greenhouse July 20, 2003
Foreign students love spending time in American resort towns, but they don't always come as tourists. Over the summer months, when small vacation spots like Cape Cod, Montauk, or Wisconsin Dells flood with visitors, university students from Eastern Europe and elsewhere take jobs unfilled, or undesired, by their American counterparts. Many work 80-hour weeks at minimum wage, cleaning...

Closing the Culture Gap

John Boudreau July 18, 2003
California's San Francisco Bay area attracts a diverse group of people from around the world who come to the US for work, pleasure, or study. When the love bug strikes, though, do cultural differences just fade into the background? Certainly not, says this article in San Jose's Mercury Times. Nonetheless, honest communication and an open mind can help bridge those inevitable cross-...

Wrong on Rights

Harold Hongju Koh July 18, 2003
A powerful recourse for human rights victims is in danger, says Harold Hongju Koh, Professor of International Law at Yale University and former US Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. In response to a lawsuit brought by Burmese citizens against the US energy company Unocal, the Bush White House has filed a brief in a California Federal Court to overhaul a...

Nuclear Doubts in the House

July 16, 2003
During the Cold War, fear deterred the United States and the Soviet Union from all-out nuclear warfare, and today it makes the prevention of nuclear conflict a chief objective of American foreign policy. However, according to this opinion in The New York Times, a new bill in the US House of Representatives threatens to lower the psychological threshold for nuclear war, a particularly risky...

Workers Falling Behind in Mexico

Mary Jordan July 15, 2003
In Mexico, there are too many workers and too few jobs. The country has failed to recover from the financial crisis of the 1990s that sent the peso and the average standard of living plummeting. And, while the number of unskilled laborers remains high – indeed higher than ever before as women increasingly enter the workforce – lower wages in countries like Indonesia and Guatemala have lured...

When Frontier Justice Becomes Foreign Policy

Thomas Powers July 13, 2003
America has always been ambivalent about assassinations, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. Though several leaders were targeted during the Cold War, such attempts were generally shrouded in secrecy and vehemently denied by government officials. The one endeavor that was publicized – against Fidel Castro – caused such public outcry that Presidents Ford and Reagan imposed executive orders...

Employers Take United Stand in Insisting on Labor Concessions

Steven Greenhouse July 11, 2003
The situation of American workers in several large corporations is a striking illustration of the negative effects of globalization and a more integrated world economy. In large part because of low-cost foreign labor, American corporations are gaining the upper hand in negotiations with worker unions. Even in industries that are thriving, management claims that the pressure to compete requires...