A woman in France protesting the government’s new immigration restrictions. Photo: Flickr user looking4poetry

Tough times in Britain have fueled a growing debate about immigration — and a backlash that is forcing the government to respond.

The issue is jobs, and Gordon Brown’s aides worry that the government has been too quiet on immigration, leaving a vacuum which extremists have occupied.

Should countries that have historically welcomed immigrants close their doors during tough economic times?

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The debate continues about whether immigrants or host governments should try harder to achieve better integration.

Should immigrants do more to fit into their new countries? Or should host countries do more to make immigrants feel welcomed?

Nadim Baba of Al Jazeera English reports from Dresden, Germany.

Tell us what you think in the comments section below. Please remember to be respectful and on-point in your comments. Malicious or offensive comments will be deleted and repeat offenders will be banned.

A French Muslim woman wears a niqab in Paris.

Six years ago, I was looking for an apartment in the French capital. Searching for the 5-A buzzer, an American friend and I came across an old French man who thought we were trespassing.

“Vous allez faire un kamikaze?” he shouted, wondering whether we were about to blow up his building.

“Avez-vous un tapis de priere?” he asked in a southern French accent, assuming that we were Moroccans who carry prayer rugs.

We responded that we were just American students, despite our relatively swarthy complexions, and then he proceeded with an extremist anti-Arab rant.

This was my first exposure to virulent French racism and cultural insensitivity. His tirade echoed the xenophobia of the far-right Front National party, which had received 17 percent of the vote in France’s 2002 presidential election.

Today, France is still wracked by intolerance and Islamophobia, despite a long tradition of democracy and dissent. As France struggles to integrate second-generation North Africans who are largely clustered in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of cities, the Islamic dress controversy continues to rage.

In July, a report by French newspaper Le Monde revealed that just 367 women wear the full Islamic veil in France. The figure makes French President Nicholas Sarkozy seem heavy-handed in his recent declaration that the niqab was “not welcome.” This piece of hard evidence, supplied by data from two domestic intelligence agencies, makes it unlikely that the center-right Sarkozy would pursue an absolute ban. The hyperactive leader is known for his pragmatism, and he doesn’t want to appear too extremist.

The report comes amid a French legislative commission’s investigation on the use of the full veil in public places. The panel seeks to address the style’s popularity, and it will make a recommendation about the usefulness of a ban.

But there is linguistic confusion about the full veil. The Islamic article of clothing in question is actually the niqab (originally from Saudi Arabia), rather than the burka (popular in Afghanistan). An explanatory diagram in Le Point shows the differences between the three primary types of Muslim veil.

An Egyptian woman in Alexandria wearing a Burqini.

The evolution of conservative Islamic fashion does not stop there. In mid-August controversy erupted at a Paris pool surrounding the “burqini,” a bathing suit designed by Australian company Ahiida to uphold the modesty of Muslim women.

An editorial accompanying the niqab statistic in left-leaning Le Monde criticized the need to “legislate for an exception” and further stigmatize French Islam. Declaring the niqab to be a phénomène ultraminoritaire (very rare phenomenon), the editorial recognizes that the several hundred women who wear the niqab are not sufficiently integrated into French culture.

The French are fierce defenders of their secular republic and will defend women’s rights against fundamentalist religious customs such as the veil. But there are disagreements about whether it would be helpful to legislate religious expression in the public sphere.

“We cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity,” said the French president in June, frustrating many cultural commentators such as a blogger at “Moor Next Door“:

The trouble the French may want to worry about is not the burqa as it is worn in France today, but that such a ban, as the headscarf ban has done, will make the garment a greater symbol of Muslim identity and sign of cultural defiance. France has done a good job at finding ways of alienating racial and religious minorities. Indeed, among Western nations it is a leader in this field. This is a quality that does little to further the assimilationist cause the French so actively pursue.

The Le Monde report indeed suggests that most of the 367 women in question are under 30 and wear the niqab to make an explicit political point to defy French society — and in some cases, rebel against their own families. The vast majority of French Muslims reject the full body veils, according to the French intelligence reports. Moreover, according to the French Council of Muslim Worship, wearing the niqab is a personal, cultural choice.

But, unlike the U.S., France values secularism even more than the right to free expression of religion. A “burka ban” would never pass muster in the U.S. But French politicians insist that they will not fight a second battle to separate church from the French state. The first church-state battle was with the Catholic church, from which the government legally separated in 1905.

In 2004, France received much criticism after banning the headscarf in public schools. The law was one of many factors that led to more than a month of civil unrest by minority youths across France in November 2005.

France has Europe’s largest Muslim population, estimated around 5 million. But France does not keep official statistics on race or religion, so this figure could easily be much higher. Regardless, just one in every 90,000 French women wear the full-body veil. And apparently one-quarter of them are converts to Islam.

One French Muslim organization that has been discouraging women to wear the full veil is Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissives). Founded by Fadela Amara, a liberal Muslim woman of North African origin, the group promotes a modern combination of Islam and feminism.

Amara, now a minister in Prime Minister Francois Fillon’s right-leaning government, has become far more popular among politicians than among folks in la banlieue (working-class suburbs). Amara told Le Parisien last year:

The burka is a prison, it’s a straitjacket…It is not a religious insignia but the insignia of a totalitarian political project that advocates inequality between the sexes and which is totally devoid of democracy.

- Ben Piven

Photos courtesy of Flickr users I.Diabate and Giorgio Montersino under a Creative Commons license.

Many Pakistanis seek new opportunities abroad.

As Pakistan reels from both the global financial crisis and the Taliban-led insurgency, many young Pakistanis are looking for a brighter future outside their home country.

Thousands of Pakistanis leave the country to seek work every year, with some 4 million workers currently living abroad.

Worldfocus contributing blogger Faisal Kapadia is a freelance writer living in Karachi, Pakistan, who blogs at “Deadpan Thoughts.”

A few days ago at the petrol station, I was talking to a friend as the attendant filled my car about my recent visit to China via cell when the attendant timidly approached me. I looked at him quizzically as I had already forked over the cash for the petrol, and shut my phone.

“Sahab [Friend], have you come from abroad?”

“Jee I do visit outside Pakistan on occasion.”

“Sahab bus kisi tarah ham ko bhi yahan se nikalo na?” ["Friend, we can get out of here the same way, no?"]

I looked at him in disbelief, and wondered how I had suddenly risen in status in his eyes. Just because I had access to foreign shores, he somehow thought of me as a would-be savior who would employ him immediately and send him to heaven via the next flight out of here.

Which leads me to think as to whether we are a “failed state” as the international press and [...] world leaders often describe us or a “failed generation”?

This mentality, I am afraid, is prevalent not only in our masses but in every class of this country where escape abroad seems to be the answer to all the problems faced here. True, life abroad does guarantee a far better economic and social reward for work — however, why do we not try to change our lot here rather than abroad is what baffles me about most people.

It seems every person of my age is afraid of asking questions. Self-censorship is the norm in Pakistan; whether we are forced to or not, we just don’t ask anymore — we prefer to run away or at most throw money at the problem till it goes away. If there is no electricity we whine about it on blogs and Twitter but we do not go to the nearby KESC [Karachi Electric Supply Company] center and question.

If the neighborhood is filled with sewage water we do not call up our locally elected representative and ask him why it has not been cleared. We prefer to remain in a vacuum of “not rocking the boat” so as to speak.

We do this at work at home and in life and then pretend to act as if the world and our country are against our existence. How many of us have gone up to the boss and asked why “Mr and Mrs” so and so got the increment and we did not? How many of us have actually tried to engage the political parties and leaders we keep insulting and ask them why so-and-so happened?

How many of us have tried asking for help in any form, a friendly analysis by someone you trust can also provide genuine insight into what a person might be doing wrong.

As for the gas station attendant, I duly explained to him how even if he manages to go to Dubai he will continue to pump gas for someone who might not even pay him every month, will keep his passport in his grasp blackmailing him at every opportunity and might even abuse him if he refuses with coercion ala local law. I suggested he try to educate himself in some way to raise his lot in life in his own country, rather than be a victim somewhere else. What I am trying to say is, for him education was the answer but there are answers for many of our problems also, the only way to get them is to ask questions about them.

To read more, see the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Listen to our online radio show on failed states.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user NB77 under a Creative Commons license.

The Lignum Vitae tree — Jamaica’s national tree — shades the grave of Albert Hosang in the Chinese cemetery in Kingston, Jamaica. Photo: Lisa Biagiotti

Lisa Biagiotti is currently reporting on HIV/AIDS, sexuality and young gay men in Jamaica. On Saturday, she visited her grandfather’s grave in the Chinese cemetery in Kingston. She shares a personal story of death and renewal of the Chinese community in Jamaica.

I never met my grandfather, Albert Hosang, but I knew he was buried in the Chinese cemetery in Kingston, Jamaica. The 11-acre cemetery serves as the buffer zone for three main gangs in one of Kingston’s most volatile neighborhoods.

Before the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA) erected a wall around the cemetery, it was a blanket battleground. People slept in graves and pillaged marble tombstones, preventing many Chinese Jamaicans from visiting the final resting places of their relatives.

The cemetery is a reminder of the Chinese presence in Jamaica since 1854. After slavery was abolished in Jamaica, British landowners recruited the Chinese — specifically the peasant, nomadic Hakka Chinese from the Guandong province outside Hong Kong. They came as indentured laborers, but soon rose through the economic and social ranks of Jamaican society, settling in downtown Kingston and throughout the island as traders, shopkeepers and bakers.

From the beginning, the Chinese mixed with the local population and converted from Buddhism to Christianity. At one point, some estimate the Chinese population reached 20,000, but it’s difficult to calculate a precise count because many Chinese are a blend of other ethnic backgrounds like black Jamaican, white European, South Asian, Lebanese, Syrian and Jewish.

When independence from British rule came in 1962, the Chinese fully integrated into Jamaican society. The second and third generations identified more as Jamaican than Chinese. They didn’t speak the old Hakka dialect, but spoke Jamaican patois. The CBA in Jamaica is trying to revive haunts of Chinese culture with Mandarin language lessons, Chinese socials, badminton, Kung Fu and other traditional Chinese celebrations.

There is also a new wave of Chinese immigrants in Jamaica today. Like their Chinese ancestors 150 years ago, they are setting up shops in downtown Kingston. When I walked into Chun Lai’s shop on Princess Street, no one spoke patois (yet), and all the goods were made in China.

At 10:00 on Saturday morning, I sat at the foot of my grandfather’s grave in the 99-year-old Chinese cemetery while resident expert David Chang read the Chinese characters on the tombstone. (My grandfather died at age 46, but the Chinese characters read 49 — it’s common to have errors like these as the language slipped away from the Chinese Jamaicans.) David read from top to bottom, right to left: The town and province my grandfather’s family came from in China, the names of his parents, brothers and wife. Then he said, “And 10? Ten children?” and turned to me.

I nodded, “Yes, 10 children.” And I looked down at my right hand, at the worn, barely-beveled ring my Aunt Paula sent me in a plastic bag a few weeks ago. I sighed and thought of her as she waged her final battle with cancer. I patted her father’s grave and heard her slim gold band tap the white tile.

My aunt, Paula (Hosang) Sperrazza, died at 1:30 p.m. that very same day. I’m not sure if my visit was karmic or auspicious — maybe it just is. She was a courageous and brilliant woman who began her life 62 years ago in the Chinese Jamaican community in Kingston.

Rest in peace Paula Sperrazza and Albert Hosang.

- Lisa Biagiotti

• Watch all the Worldfocus In the Shadows video signature series
• Listen to Worldfocus Radio on LGBT politics and gay asylum
• For more information on homophobia and HIV in Jamaica, visit The Glass Closet, a multimedia project produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting

Some Guatemalan migrants to the U.S. send money back to their families. Photo: Samuel Loewenberg

Samuel Loewenberg of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting is currently in Guatemala producing a couple Worldfocus signature stories. He writes about the experience of Guatemalan migrants to the U.S.

People seem to cry a lot in Guatemala.

This applies to men as well as women, the country’s reputation for machismo notwithstanding. The crying seems to come especially when they are recounting their experiences as migrants to the U.S. It has been something of a surprise to be honest.

Over the years I’ve interviewed family members of murder victims, survivors of terrorist bombings, victims of medical malpractice, and I’ve not quite encountered something like this before. It is not that the trauma is greater (how can you quantify trauma?), but it does seem somehow closer to the surface. More than anything, I think what brings them to tears is a sense of grand injustice.

After all, they came to the U.S. to work, to provide for their families by doing jobs that Americans did not want to do, and they ended up being treated as criminals. The minimum wage in Guatemala is about $200 a month, well under the $250 a month considered necessary to feed a family, according to economist Jorge Santos, who says that U.S. economic policies, from the neo-liberal economic regimes known as the “Washington consensus” to the more recent Central American Free Trade Agreement have only increased the pressure on Guatemala’s poor, who make up the vast majority of the country.

Indeed, the level of Guatemala’s income inequality is stunning, with only a handful of families controlling the vast majority of the country’s wealth in what is almost a feudal system. The level of education for the general populace is among the lowest in Latin America, and malnutrition strikes about half of the country’s children — making it one of the worst such situations in the world.

In a small community center of the village of San Miguel Duenas outside of the Guatemalan tourist town of Antigua, dozens of men and women who had been deported after a raid on the kosher meat factory in Iowa, gathered to recount their treatment at the hands of U.S. immigration officials.

They described being held for as long as five months. They said they were given negligible access to lawyers and were unable to communicate with their families. Some said they were stripped naked. According to the Washington-based Guatemalan Human Rights Commission/USA, one woman was separated from her one-year-old child during her imprisonment. When she was released, she found her baby had been adopted by an American couple.

Workers told me they were hit by ICE officials, and when describing the abuse, which was not only physical but psychological, a rather tough looking guy with a mustache and gold chain broke down in front of me. “I came back with more scars than benefits,” he said.

- Samuel Loewenberg

Watch for Worldfocus’ stories from Guatemala in the coming weeks.

Christopher Sabatini, the senior director of policy for the Council of the Americas and an expert on Latin American affairs, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Secretary of State Clinton’s visit to Mexico,  whether the newly announced initiative to increase security along the U.S.-Mexico border will help end the drug violence and if talk of Mexico becoming a failed state helps or hurts the situation.

Read more analysis from Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner: Border fence can’t hide growing challenges in Mexico.

A fence at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Over the last year, Mexico has been swept up in a tidal wave of drug violence. Things have gotten so bad that, according to a recent Pentagon report, the country risks a “sudden collapse.” For more, listen to our online radio show on Mexico’s war on drugs.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Mexico for a series of high level talks. Not only does the Pentagon assessment have Mexican officials bristling, there are lingering resentments over other issues too — there’s a growing trade dispute and ill will over the construction of that giant border fence.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner, the former deputy foreign editor of the Washington Post, writes about engaging with Mexico and its troubles rather than building fences.

“Show me a 50-foot fence, and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder.”

That quote from Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona makes more sense every day. Napolitano, now the Secretary of Homeland Security, was referring to the multibillion dollar, 700-mile long fence being built along the U.S.-Mexican border.

The idea of the controversial fence was to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the border. Many people — including most people in the Mexican government — agree with Napolitano that the fence was a bad idea.

For many, the fence has come to symbolize arrogance and disinterest in dealing with real issues, such as poverty that fuels immigration, and consumer demand that supports the multibillion dollar cocaine, marijuana and heroin trade out of Mexico.

And if anybody in the United States still thinks the fence can hide the uncomfortable reality across the Rio Grande, they’re deceived.

The wave of drug violence in Mexico is bleeding over into the United States, and U.S. military officials fear a worse scenario: One Pentagon study says that Mexico, like Pakistan, faces the prospect of being unable to deal with the violence and could become a failed state.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is diving right into talks about drug cooperation, trade and other issues today and tomorrow in Mexico City and Monterrey. And President Obama is scheduled to go to Mexico in less than a month.

The administration has an opportunity to come up with answers that would include engagement with the Mexican government rather than building barriers. The answers will probably be costly, but there is rising sentiment in Washington that Mexico can’t be left, as one analyst recently said, to “muddle through somehow” on its own.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user jcarter under a Creative Commons license.

Chinese President Hu Jintao ended his tour of four African nations this week, having promised to deepen ties with the continent. See where President Hu visited by scrolling down to our interactive map.

A lot of chatter has surrounded China’s interests in Africa. Media have branded China’s role in Africa as an invasion or an era of neo-colonialism with ulterior motives of pillaging Africa’s raw materials. Rhetoric from Chinese and African leaders includes words like “friendship,” “partnership” and “brotherhood,” stressing a shared history and common experience.

Worldfocus traveled to East Africa last summer to explore the strengthening trading ties among China and African countries — Sino-African trade amounted to almost $107 billion last year and has expanded tenfold since 2000. Chinese investment has encouraged new infrastructure projects and growth on the continent.

Some of this trade, however, involves countries like Sudan and Zimbabwe, where human rights abuses have been cited. Some also criticize the flood of cheap Chinese goods because it has eliminated Africans’ jobs.

Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show examined the roots of the China-Africa relationship dating back 50 years, exploring what it means for Africa and China and whether the U.S. has become an uncomfortable third wheel.

Worldfocus anchor Martin Savidge hosted the following guests:

Li Anshan is a professor at the School of International Studies, Peking University and the director of the Institute of Afro-Asian Studies. His publications include “A History of Chinese Overseas in Africa” and “Social History of Chinese Overseas in Africa: Selected Documents, 1800-2005,” among others. His interests include African history, China-African relations, colonialism, Chinese overseas, comparative nationalism and development studies.

David H. Shinn is a former Ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. He is currently an adjunct professor at George Washington University. Amb. Shinn’s research interests include Africa, terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. foreign policy in Africa. He also blogs regularly here.

Mariana van Zeller is is a correspondent for Vanguard, an original documentary series on Current TV. She’s a native of Portugal and has spent the last several years traveling the globe to cover the emerging trends that are reshaping our world. Mariana has reported on conflict, immigration and the environment. In 2008, she traveled to Angola to produce the documentary “Chinatown, Africa,” which examines China’s rapidly growing presence on the continent.

Each year since 1991, a Chinese foreign minister has selected Africa as the first overseas trip. China has diplomatic relations with 49 of Africa’s 53 countries and has ambassadors in all these countries, except for Somalia due to the security situation. Below is an interactive map detailing recent visits by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to African nations. Click on the highlighted African countries below to see China’s recent high-level visits.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Stephen Puschel

Worldfocus special correspondent Lynn Sherr and producer Megan Thompson visited the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.

Venture to the first stop on the train line in Chiapas, and meet several Central American immigrants Waiting for northbound trains out of Mexico’s south (web original video).

Worldfocus’ crew traveled to the start of the railroad line in the town of Arriaga in Chiapas, Mexico. Central American immigrants hang out for hours — and sometimes days — waiting for the next freight train to depart. They climb onto the sides and the tops of these northbound trains.

This video was shot by Megan Thompson and edited by Bijan Rezvani.

Worldfocus special correspondent Michael Greenspan and producers Yuval Lion and Ara Ayer explore Israel’s melting pot.

Take a walk down Tel Aviv’s most diverse street (video).

Today, the neighborhood has revived with the influx of lower-income immigrant workers. The street’s store fronts now serve the vibrant ethnic communities that have folded into contemporary Israeli society.

Worldfocus producer Yuval Lion’s signature story on the changing face of Israel shows the diverse and transforming culture of the country. Editor Bijan Rezvani cobbled together this collage of sights and sounds.

Take a walk down Neve Sha’anan Street.

Though the U.S. has often been called the “land of opportunity,” the country is losing some of its top minds to companies overseas.

In a phenomenon known as reverse brain drain, highly skilled immigrants and foreign students in the U.S. are returning to their home countries — nations like India or China whose industries might seem attractive as U.S. unemployment rises and visa restrictions come into effect.

Does the U.S. risk falling behind as these businesspeople and innovators return to work in their home countries? Worldfocus.org’s weekly radio show explores the emerging opportunities for highly-skilled immigrants around the world, U.S. immigration restrictions, and what all this “brain circulation” means for the U.S.

Listen to extended interviews with Hanson Li of a China-based investment bank and Yeniva Sisay, who grew up in the U.S. but returned to her ancestral home of Sierra Leone: China and West Africa beckon talented minds home.

Read the frustrating experience of a “slumdog immigrant” from India who is living in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. Rajeet Mohan also offers some solutions to retain and leverage highly-skilled immigrants in the U.S.

Martin Savidge hosts Vivek Wadhwa and Michele Wucker in our online radio show.

Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School and executive in residence at Duke University. He is an entrepreneur who founded two technology companies and is the author of the forthcoming report tentatively titled “America’s Loss is the World’s Gain,” a study of Chinese and Indian immigrants who have returned to their home countries. Vivek also writes a column at BusinessWeek.

Michele Wucker is the executive director of the World Policy Institute in New York City and the author of “Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right” and “Why Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians and the Struggle for Hispaniola.” She also was a 2007 Guggenheim Fellow working on evolving notions of citizenship, belonging and exclusion. Her work involves the politics and economics of immigration and integration, transnational political processes, the politics of culture, Latin America and the Caribbean and international finance.

Credits:
Host: Martin Savidge
Producers: Lisa Biagiotti, Katie Combs and Stephen Puschel

More than half of all Silicon Valley startup companies had one or more highly-skilled immigrants as key founders, according to a Duke University study.

As unemployment continues to spike in the U.S., highly-skilled immigrants are more vulnerable to lose their jobs and their visas.

The U.S. issues up to 65,000 H-1B work visas each year for highly-skilled professionals. Foreign-born architects, engineers, computer programmers, accountants, doctors and other skilled workers are eligible to come to America under these visa provisions.

Each year, approximately 20,000 more H-1B visas are reserved for those with master’s or doctoral degrees from the U.S.

Holders of this visa can stay for a maximum of six years and apply for a Green Card and permanent residence if sponsored by their company. But applicants often wait in line for years, and up to 500,000 H-1B visa holders are waiting for a green card.

Rajeet Mohan is an Indian living in the U.S. on an H-1B visa. He shares his frustrating immigration experience and offers some solutions to retain and leverage highly-skilled immigrants in the U.S.

“Slumdog” Immigrant

I saw the movie “Slumdog Millionaire” the weekend after my Green Card application had been denied.

So many threads from the main character Jamal’s childhood connect to the moment he’s sitting in the hot seat of “Who wants to be a Millionaire?” competing for 20 million rupees. The movie made me think of how U.S. immigration policies seem to have played such a big role in shaping my destiny in this country and how I have no control over the results. This is my story of patience and frustration for the elusive “greener pastures” in my life.

A lot has been written and debated about the approximately 11 million undocumented immigrants residing in the U.S., however, little is published on highly-skilled immigrants.

Who is a highly skilled immigrant? For the purpose of my story, it represents an individual (like me) who has earned a master’s degree or higher from an American university, and holds a job for which an American citizen wasn’t available.

The life cycle of the legal immigrant is well defined: An F-1 student visa, followed by an H-1B (valid for six years) and — if the Goddess Fortuna blesses him/her — the prized Green Card (U.S. permanent resident card).

I came to the U.S. from India on Jan. 3, 1998 with $1,000 in Traveler’s checks and $500 in cash — just enough to buy a return ticket if there was an urgent situation back home. Little did I realize that on that day I had stepped into the “slumdog” immigrant life cycle — a legal process of immigration that is so painful and uncertain that if I were ever to advise potential immigrants willing to take this path, I would oppose the decision with the same level of intensity that Lou Dobbs so effectively uses to make his case against illegal immigrants.

I completed my master’s degree and went on to work for some of the finest American companies as an employee and a consultant. My Green Card application was filed in October 2002. After six years in line, I have never seen the Green Card and I’m not sure if I ever will get to see one.

The reason: I changed jobs three years ago. Though the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act has made job changes for immigrants easier after a specified period of time, my case falls into what was a loophole in the system. In 2006, it was technically legal for my former employer to “transfer” my status (without my knowledge) to another immigrant professional when I left my job. This practice was addressed and made illegal by Homeland Security in 2007.

How I found out: I logged on to my computer this past Thanksgiving to check my application status, as I often do, and it abruptly said “canceled.” I was not notified three years ago when I switched jobs or even now. Modern technology today allows us to track every packet via FedEx or UPS, so why do immigration applications, which are so crucial to the U.S. government and the applicant, get lost in a service center “black hole”?

Defenders of USCIS say that there is a process to appeal such decisions, which I’m in the process of doing. The problem is that there is no definite time line for the appeals process to be resolved and usually the legal immigrant has to finally use his $1,500 to go back to his home country.

I have listed several problems here, but the consultant in me wants to offer some solutions so that highly-skilled immigrants who find themselves in this predicament have more options than to simply quit their jobs, unwind their assets and return to their home countries.

I’m a firm believer of free market principles and having a good understanding of supply and demand (something I still remember from business school), I propose the following solutions to the legal immigrants’ problem of being in the dark during the Green Card process.

1. Decouple the link between the employer and the applicant after a specific stage in the Green Card process. In other words, take the middle-man employer or sponsor out of the process and make the contract between the immigrant and the government. I’m confident that this action will unleash the full potential of highly-skilled immigrant populations and America has all to gain from it — especially in today’s tough economic environment.

2. In return for action mentioned in the first solution and the assurance of the Green Card, immigrants with master’s degrees or higher, should donate their time and expertise. For two hours a week for one year, these highly-skilled immigrants should teach/tutor kids of U.S. citizens. I am proud of the strong foundation of the Indian schooling system, especially when it comes to math and science. Both Alan Greenspan and Thomas Friedman have highlighted the huge gap in math and science education for American kids. Their analysis predicts detrimental long-term impact. Their writings enunciate how this knowledge gap could lead America to potentially lose its innovative spirit.

Leveraging the skills of these immigrants could herald a new dimension to the grassroots movement that seems to be taking shape and ultimately restore America to the greatness for which we all left our homeland. The recent changes in the American political landscape have given me “hope.” President Barack Obama’s call for grassroots movement made me think of what immigrants could do for their adopted country.

So, back to me as the “slumdog immigrant.” I’m in the “hot seat” situation as I wait for my rejected Green Card application to be reconsidered. The motion I will be filing has no expected resolution date and since my current work visa (my current backup) is valid only until June 15, 2009, my hopes now rest on the astronomical alignment of my fate. If my application doesn’t get reconsidered by June 15, I must quit my job, sell my house, unwind my assets and return to India.

I don’t doubt that I can find work in India, and certainly, my family is there. But my wife, 2-year-old son and I have made a life and home in the U.S. and want to stay.

In the game show, the contestant has one opportunity to use a “lifeline” to choose A, B, C or D. In my case, the only “lifeline” I have is to dial 1-800-375-5283 — USCIS Customer Service.

- Rajeet Mohan

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user ario_j under a Creative Commons license.

Thousands of Chinese have returned to their homeland after studying or working in the U.S.

Though the U.S. has often been called the “land of opportunity,” the country is losing some of its top minds to companies overseas.

In a phenomenon known as reverse brain drain, highly skilled immigrants to the U.S. are returning to their home countries — nations like India or China whose industries might seem attractive as U.S. unemployment rises and visa restrictions come into effect.

Listen to our online radio show on reverse brain drain.

Blogger “John Moore” in Texas worries that the U.S. is losing its best and brightest, blaming restrictive copyright and patent laws that hamper innovation.

The “South Africa Rocks” blog writes about ex-pat Londoners returning to South Africa, fueled by more competitive politics and tightened U.K. visas.

Blogger “Piset Wattanavitukul” discusses why Chinese ex-pats are drawn back to China, including wages and industrial growth.

The “Indra’s Drishtikona” blog compares India’s scientific and technical growth to that of Western powers, suggesting that return migrants are attracted to the country’s innovation.

Blogger “szforbes” argues that return migration is growing not just because of the economic downturn, but also because of the desire to improve one’s home country. The blogger interviews two Indian returnees.

Blogger “Greg Weeks” writes about anecdotal evidence that immgrants are leaving the U.S., but points out that there are still many incentives to drawn foreign workers as well.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Steve Webel under a Creative Commons license.

Bhutanese refugees at the Beldangi 2 camp in Nepal.

Though they fled or were forced out of Bhutan more than 18 years ago, Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalis have yet to return.

Altogether, more than 103,000 people of ethnic Nepali origin in Bhutan left that country in the 1990s after new citizenship laws were implemented. Many ended up in sparse refugee camps in Nepal.

The Bhutanese government says the majority of the refugees were illegal immigrants.

In the past few years, several thousands of refugees have resettled in the West — but thousands more still remain in the Nepalese camps. 

Don Duncan is a freelance print and radio reporter and videographer who has reported from Afghanistan, France, Bhutan, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Nepal, Spain and the United States.  He writes at World Politics Review about the situation of Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese minority.

Bhutan’s Radicalized Refugees

When Matimya Moktan, 41, saw her husband Manbahadur standing unannounced in their doorway after a nine-year absence in prison, her heart sank.

“I was sad to see him back here again,” said Matimya, one of more than 100,000 Bhutanese refugees living in United Nations-administered camps in eastern Nepal. “I had hoped I would see him again in Bhutan, but his standing back in our doorway meant we may never get back there,” she adds, seated in the corner of the family’s dark wattle-and-daub hut in the Beldangi I refugee camp, five kilometers outside the Nepalese town of Damak.

Manbahadur returned following nine years spent in a Bhutanese prison for having illegally re-entered the country and staging a protest demanding the return to Bhutan of his people, Bhutan’s ethnic Nepalese minority that was expelled in 1991.

Sandwiched between Communist China and largely Hindu India, tiny Buddhist Bhutan, with its population of a mere 600,000, has been given to fits of ethnic and cultural protectionism throughout its history. An impressive necklace of cliff-perched fortresses — or Dzongs — that dot the country’s mountainous perimeter testify to past efforts.

By the 1980s, when the ethnic Nepalese bloc mushroomed to represent one third of the kingdom’s population, Bhutan responded with a “one nation, one people” policy that at once bolstered the majority Drukpa culture by mandating its traditional dress and language for all, and restricted the rights of the ethnic Nepalese population. After a series of civil rights protests by the ethnic Nepalese, many of whom were Bhutanese citizens, the state clamped down — hard.

“We left because we were scared that they would imprison us, that they would beat us, that I would be raped,” Matimya told World Politics Review. In the weeks leading up to her family’s departure from Bhutan in 1991, she says, the army had begun to take women away from their houses.

This was just one tactic in what human rights groups say was a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing of a minority population that claims to have arrived in Bhutan as early as the mid-1800s. Other tactics, say the refugees, included torture, beatings and the destruction of property.

But in today’s Bhutan, which in March made the transition from a century of absolute monarchy to become the world’s newest democracy, another narrative prevails.

“Deep inside, they know they never belonged to this country,” says Bhutanese Prime Minister Dorjee Y Thinley in his office in Bhutan’s capital Thimphu. What is labeled elsewhere as an ethnic cleansing of Bhutanese citizens is seen in Bhutan as the “regularization” of an illegal immigration problem that had been left unbridled for decades. “They are refugees not of Bhutan, but of the ecological degradation, political upheavals, economic deprivation and insecurity in Nepal,” Thinley says, referring to Nepal’s 10-year civil war that ended in 2006.

For almost two decades, the fate of these refugees has been suspended between these two versions of events.

To read more, see the original post. 

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Katrine Syppli under a Creative Commons license.

A mosque in Palermo, Sicily.

Editor Lisa Biagiotti researched Muslim immigration trends in Italy on a Fulbright grant in 2001. She recalls the post-9/11 climate in Italy and touches on the heightened immigration debate in Italy today.

As I read the Italian headlines these days — the government’s declaration of a state of emergency because of the immigrant influx, the proposal of special tests that could potentially segregate immigrant children and the general xenophobia toward immigrant groups — I remember the row of armed Italian policemen lining the U.S. embassy gate in Rome.

When I got off the plane in Rome a week after 9/11, I was ready to research Muslim immigration in Italy. I was prepared to link current Muslim immigration flows into Italy to colonialism under Mussolini, when Italy overthrew the Christian Coptics in Ethiopia and placed the Muslim minority in power. In typical Mussolini style, Italy built mosques and sent Ethiopian Muslims on pilgrimages to Mecca.

Actually, the connection between Italian colonialism and the rising tide of Muslim immigration was not significant. The immigration boom was due more to Italy’s geographic position — dipping down into the Mediterranean. People from Muslim countries in northern African and eastern Europe filtered through Italy. Today, there are just under 4 million immigrants (about 6 percent of the total population).

In the once-homogeneous country known for its emigration, I saw Filipino women pushing baby carriages and wheelchairs in Rome, African men hawking CDs on the streets, immigrant prostitutes hanging out behind the ruins along the old Appian Way, a bustling Chinatown in the Tuscan countryside and boats of refugees washing up on Italy’s shores.

After 9/11, as an American — and I don’t mean to be dramatic here — I couldn’t help but feel a bit uneasy not knowing when the next attack might strike. Muslims were not only affected in the U.S., but also in Italy where the immigration debate turned against them. Muslim immigrants faced Islamophobic blame and pressures. My research took on unexpected meaning.

Seven years later, the election of Barack Obama as the next president of the U.S. has seemingly erased much negative sentiment toward Americans — but the same is not true for Muslims and other minorities in Italy. Nonetheless, there are signs of hope for easier relations.

This year’s report on immigration statistics and trends seems at odds with newspaper headlines. Caritas di Roma reports increased integration — one in 10 marriages is between an Italian and an immigrant, and in some northern regions that percentage spikes to 25 percent.

As Martin Seemungal’s video shows, anti-immigrant sentiment still churns, but I guess I’m a little optimistic when I read about the Italians and immigrants rallying together to protest the murder of a Burkina Faso native or the Catholic-Muslim interfaith talks that took place in Rome earlier this month.

In some ironic way, maybe Mussolini’s vision and outreach of a predominantly Catholic Italy joining forces with Muslims could somehow play out peacefully today.

- Lisa Biagiotti

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Andrew & Suzanne under a Creative Commons license.

Nationality laws vary greatly around the globe.

In Greece, for example, some children face insecurity and confusion because they are not Greek citizens, despite being born in and living in the country. In Japan, the government may pass a law granting 20,000 mixed race children Japanese citizenship.

When a child is born, he or she can gain a nationality in a variety of ways – from the place of birth or from parents’ nationalities or ethnicities; sometimes automatically and other times requiring an application process.

Standard basis for citizenship:
Jus soli — birthright — a rule that the citizenship of a child is determined by the place of its birth
Jus sanguinis — blood right — a rule that a child’s citizenship is determined by its parents’ citizenship

The chart below details the foreign populations in world countries, residency requirements for naturalization (excluding special factors such as marriage to a national) and types of citizenship.

Data is from 2005, the latest available date for comprehensive comparative information. For more detailed information on citizenship laws and requirements in a particular country, visit that country’s Web site.

	642,000 15.9% of population *	Residence for 1,350 days of past 5 years	Eliminated birthright  citizenship in 2006
	1.2 million 15.1% of population 40.9% are nationals	10 years continuous residence	Blood right
	585,000 14.1% of population 45.2% are nationals	3 years residence	Eliminated automatic birthright citizenship in 2004
	38.36 million 12.9% of population 46.4% are nationals	Legal residency for 5 years	Birthright
	10.14 million 12.3% of population	At least 8 years  residence	Blood right
	6.47 million 10.7% of population 53.1% are nationals	5 years residence	Blood right; delayed birthright (can acquire citizenship on request)
	5.41 million 9.1% of population	5 years residence	Many types of  citizenship (vary)
	974,000 8.8% of population 41.5% are nationals	10 of last 12 years	Blood right; birthright if  no other nationality  acquired
	2.52 million 4.3% of population 47.5% are nationals	10 years residence	Blood right; birthright if no other nationality acquired
	168,000 2.7% of population	3 years residence	Birthright
	1.11 million 2.3% of population	4 of 8 last years	Blood right
	124,000 2.3% of population	5 years residence	Blood right
	2.05 million 1.6% of population	5 years of residence	Blood right
	644,000 0.6% of population	5 years residence	Birthright; recognizes  dual nationality
	596,000 0% of population	Settlement in China	Blood right

*When data on foreign-born nationals is blank, the information is not available.
Sources: United Nations, NationMaster. Photos courtesy of Flickr users under a Creative Commons license.

In July, the Italian government declared a state of emergency due to the high level of illegal immigration, largely from Africa. The following month, soldiers were deployed across the country in an effort to stop crime that has been blamed on illegal immigrants. Even the pope has weighed in on the issue.

More than 3.5 million foreign-born people currently live in Italy.

Worldfocus correspondent Martin Seemungal heads to the northern town of Treviso, where gunslinging mayor Giancarlo Gentilini has brought order to the town and cracked down on illegal immigration, even as accusations of racism linger.

Below, bloggers in Italy and around the world assess the country’s debate on immigration.

The “(We) Can Do Better” blog warns that “Italians are doomed to extinction,” arguing that crime and immigration are twin issues and that the battle for Italian civilization is already lost.

Blogger “Mohammad” suggests that the Italian people are not aware of the reality of immigration, in part because politicians have misused the issue.

The “Roma Rights Network,” written on behalf of the Romani people (many of whom live in camps outside of major Italian cities), claims that Mayor Gentilini has a history of racism and that too many are following his lead.

“The Mandarin” blog criticizes Gentilini’s forced removal of Chinese lanterns from restaurants in Treviso, given that the Chinese contributed greatly to Italian cuisine.

The “Mikeb302000″ blog calls the Berlusconi government’s deployment of military forces in cities a “transparent attempt” to appease xenophobic constituents, while the “Digger’s Realm” blog calls the move a “good start” and praises the prime minister’s stance on immigration.

Blogger “Gabriele,” an Italian currently in Singapore, writes that the three “I’s” of Italy are ignorance, intolerance and injustice, claiming that the country is missing out on the opportunities of a multi-ethnic society.