STEP OUT Migration

World Migration Map

Remember that potato chip commercial that bet you couldn't eat just one?  Well, I bet you won't stop at one if you try out this new toy from the indispensable Migration Policy Institute.   

Call for Papers -- American Quarterly

Here's an interesting call for papers for a special issue of American Quarterly.  The editors are looking for papers on a broad range of migration issues, with a due date of September 1, 2007.

Memorial Day

We remember the fallen on Memorial Day, and salute their bravery, too.  Here's an article Stuart Anderson wrote for Veteran's Day, but which is appropriate on this day as well.  It is on immigrant winners of the Congressional Medal of Honor, tells some amazing stories, and notes that more than 20 percent of Medal of Honor recipeints have been immigrants.

Refugees as Subject

We mentioned last week that a family of Chaldean Christian refugees from Iraq lived with us for a little while after Michele and her students won the family asylum.  Here's a link to a story about another such family, also with two children, who hazarded an amazing series of obstacles to enter the United States. 

Reading the story is instructive on a lot of levels, but the one that stands out for us is it demonstrates vividly that refugees are subjects -- actors, makers of their own fate -- as well as objects, victims of the actions of others.  We too often emphasize the latter status at the expense of the former.  Refugees are fighters, who often have had to fight for their very lives.  On this Memorial Day, when we commemorate the actions and lives of those who, by their bravery, have kept us free, we might think of refugees too, who exhibit a similar bravery and who demonstrate by their lives that freedom is worth fighting for.

Idolization

How about a non-immigration post on this Sunday day of rest?  Can we discuss the Beatles medley on this season's final episode of American Idol?  It was hideous, excrutiating and atrocious -- yet, in a perverse way, quite enjoyable.  True, to enjoy it, you did have to mentally transport yourself to the future, and then watch the medly as if it were something that happened long ago, while simultaneously thanking God that musical taste has advanced since those dark days of the early 21st century.  But if we can't use our imaginations to make the unbearable bearable, what's an imagination for?  Anyway, don't we need a word for this uniquely human gift?  It's an idealization of the present through an act of visualization -- given this, and the inspiring influence of American Idol, we nominate idolization, meaning the act of viewing the present as if it were the past, so that one can enjoy in the present what would otherwise be considered painfully unenjoyable.

Asylum Implications of Proposed Immigration Bill

It is to be expected that a big bill will have some hidden flaws lurking within it.  In an article in the Washington Post, Georgetown law professor Phil Schrag has uncovered one such problem with the proposed immigration bill.  The bill comes down hard on passport fraud, making it a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.  Professor Schrag notes that this provision is likely to have a very undesirable impact on asylum seekers, who quite often are unable to procure passports of their own from the country that is persecuting them.  His suggestion that an exception be carved out for asylees is an excellent one.  See here for the article.

The Economics of Immigration

Much of the recent debate about immigration focuses on the economics of it.  Here is point and counterpoint in that debate.

Another New Immigration Blog

George Borjas is a leading (albeit quite controverisal) labor economist who is well known for contending that the economic effect of U.S. immigration is decidedly negative.  A few years ago, we both spoke at a conference at Villanova University -- now our paths have crossed again, in the blogosphere.  Here's a link to Professor Borjas's very new blog.

Michele

Immigration and China's One-Child Policy

Here's a New York Times story on a crackdown in rural China on violations of its one-child policy.  In a lot of ways, it provides an interesting comparison to the current debate in the U.S. regarding illegal immigration.  Do you feel the same about the importance of enforcement in both cases?  Is a similar message sent by each state about the value of lives in its midst, and what are the implications of sending that message?  How do the interests of the respective states in enforcement compare?  Is the right to have a family a substantially weightier reason to break the law than is the duty to support one's family (an important motivation for much migration)?  And does thinking about these issues lead one to amend one's position on one or both of them?  What do you think?

It's a Big Big World

One of our daughter's favorite television shows is It's a Big Big World.  Well, it is a big big world, and it is precisely because this is so that the study of migration is enjoyable and enlightening.  But as in-depth study can reveal the vastness of our world, so too can random bits of information, even when they have nothing to do with migration.  Take, for example, a curiousity we mention in passing in our book (on p. 18), the brief 19th century medical fad for "blue light cures."  Essentially, blue light, delivered by means of sunlight streaming through blue windows, was thought to cure a variety of diseases.  The foremost proponent of the cure was a Civil War General named A.J. Pleasonton; the full text of his 1877 book, The Influence of the Blue Ray of the Sunlight and of the Blue Colour of the Sky is available on Google.  The American medical establishment never bought into Pleasonton's ideas, which were soon discredited.  (Among other things, Paul Collins' tells the story of Pleasonton and his blue light cure in Banvard's Folly).  Lo and hehold, however, today we see this story, explaining the benefits of blue light, albeit only for the victims of one extremely rare genetic disease.  Yes, it is a big big world, and posthumous kudos to General Pleasonton.  He wasn't wrong, just way ahead of his time (and maybe a little off regarding the benefits to the general population -- but that's being picky, isn't it?).