Accuracy, balance, completeness, and fairness are major values emphasized in news coverage; still, the field of journalism struggles with the ideas and ideals of diversity.
Continue reading "What I'm Reading: What Does an Illegal Alien Look Like? " »
For me, summer reading means escape, largely through fiction that is as unrelated as possible to my scholarly work. Imagine my surprise then when I opened two new novels pulled randomly from the shelves of the Minneapolis Public Library. Both featured main characters who were very much "on the move."
By Sonia Cancian, University of Minnesota Visiting Scholar Spring 2008
The love letter, with its expressions of love, longing and desire written between confidants and lovers living apart, is a document that for centuries has been regarded as the ultimate form of the art of letter-writing.
By David LaVigne, PhD candidate in History at the University of Minnesota, IHRC Affiliated Faculty
A popular idea often heard about the United States’ most famous port of immigration, Ellis Island, is that immigrants commonly had their family names changed there. This, however, is a myth: inspection agents at Ellis Island and other ports of entry rarely changed immigrants’ names. For immigrants to be admitted to the United States, they needed detailed documentation that proved their identity. These papers were filled out in the country of emigration—often by professional clerks—and adhered to the spelling patterns of the local language. Passenger ships used the travel documents to compile accurate passenger lists at European ports of debarkation. If all this were not enough, Ellis Island employed hundreds of interpreters who interrogated immigrants in their native languages. In short, immigrants were likely to begin their lives in the United States with their names spelt correctly. (American Names)
By Andy Urban, PhD candidate in History at the University of Minnesota. IHRC Affiliated Faculty
A recent article in the Economist [link] attempts to complicate the current debate surrounding immigration by reiterating the point that undocumented immigrants typically do not compete with native-born Americans for the same jobs. The article focuses on Jim Pederson, a Democratic candidate for senator from Arizona. Pederson has been touting a guest worker program as a “sensible� alternative to the impossible task of securing and closing-off the border with Mexico. In part, the Economist article draws from a scholarly report recently published in Foreign Affairs by Tamar Jacoby [link], a member of the conservative Manhattan Institute think-tank. Jacoby critiques the arguments of her conservative counterparts seeking to restrict immigration by asserting that, “The market mechanisms that connect U.S. demand with foreign supply, particularly from Latin America, are surprisingly efficient.� Essentially Jacoby promotes a free market approach to immigration, whereby a cheap labor supply from abroad will provide construction and service sectors with a labor supply that they cannot attract from the native-born American population.
By Louis Mendoza, associate professor and chair of the Department of Chicano Studies at the University of Minnesota. IHRC Affiliated Faculty.
This week’s immigration news was dominated by proclamations either celebrating or condemning President Bush’s signing into law a new homeland security bill that includes a 1.2 billion dollar appropriation for building 700 miles of fence along the U.S.-Mexico border to stem unauthorized immigration.
Continue reading "The Borders Between Us: On Building and Bridging the Divide" »
By Donna R. Gabaccia, Director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota
How fortunate that the U.N. released its report on the state of world population 2006 as domestic commentators were pronouncing the death of immigration reform.
This accident of timing enabled its big news about women migrants to make the headlines. That, in itself, is big news for a world that often ignores migrants’ gender.