Category Archives: Uncategorized

News21: About the 2009 Project and the People Involved

News21 is a part of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation’s Initiative on the Future of Journalism. Background on the News21 element is available on the Carnegie site.
>>>>Bios in brief: Meet the 2009 fellows<<<<
Here is an excerpt from the Carnegie report, Journalism’s Crisis in Confidence: A [...]

Quick Hit: Could You Pass a Citizenship Test?

The U.S. Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services unveiled a revised civic portion of its citizenship test in October.The test is unchanged in format– it consists of 10 questions drawn from a pool of 100, and you have to answer six correctly– but it purports to focus more on the principles of our government rather [...]

E.U. Seeks Pact with Africa to Limit Immigration

African immigrants captured off the coast of the Canary Islands last month were detained in Spain. (AP Photo)
Like illegal Latin American immigrants in the United States, illegal African immigrants have caused contraversy in Europe. Recently, the European Union’s member states agreed on a pact that would curb illegal immigration, limit unskilled immigrants and refugees, and [...]

Virginia Officials Figure Out How to Live With Immigration

Virginia, a once-conservative southern state that is becoming more and more suburban and diverse, has been the scene of several immigration skirmishes in recent years, as local authorities tried to stem the flow of illegal immigrants to the rapidly-growing state.
Now, the Virginia Commission on Immigration has recommended a softer approach. More English classes, in-state [...]

U.S. Citizens’ Foreign Widows Denied Residency

Both sides of the immigration debate have called for a reform of our legal immigration process, which can be Byzantine and choked with red tape, and which often seems unfair. Here’s an illustrative example.
CBS News’ 60 Minutes took a look at the plight of immigrant widows, whose marriages to U.S. citizens were not vetted by [...]

Slate Details Gov. Napolitano’s Links to ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff’

The other day the News 21 blog looked at the future of the Department of Homeland Security, and I noted that President-elect Obama’s likely nominee to head it, Ariz. Gov. Janet Napolitano, is known in her home state as tough but moderate.
Writing in Slate today, former Arizona Republic reporter Tom Zoellner suggests the tough [...]

The Future of the Border, Part 1: The State of ICE

Former ICE head Julie Myers. (Wikipedia photo)
Since its creation in 2003 as part of the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has earned a reputation for controversy. It is perhaps best-known by the news-consuming public for the series of high-profile raids on employers, the most infamous of which was the Postville, Iowa raid [...]

Teens Charged with Hate Crimes in Immigrant’s Murder

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x58A6o2NEBs

Seven Long Island teenagers have been charged with hate crimes for the murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant earlier this month. The high school students were indicted today for an attack that ended with one of them stabbing Marcelo Lucero.
In a case that tops last summer’s murder of Mexican immigrant Luis Ramirez in Shenandoah, Pa., [...]

Could the Media Be to Blame for Immigration Reform’s Failure?

A report released by the Brookings Institution in September asserts that the media’s framing of the immigration debate is to blame for the failure of comprehensive immigration reform in 2006 and 2007. The media’s narrative about immigration is one of “illegality, crisis, controversy and government failure,” the report states, and this narrative is open to [...]

Guyanese Immigrants Help to Rebuild Schenectady

Schenectady, N.Y. (Photo by Elephi Pelephi, via Flickr)
An article on reversing urban blight in the Cleveland Plain Dealer uncovered an interesting story in the once-dying city of Schenectady, N.Y. In a bid to save itself from a shrinking population and economic base after General Electric Co. moved out, Schenectady, near Albany, recruited immigrants from a [...]