Damn Foreigners: Giving names to British Places!!!

heh

Click here for the high resolution photo. 

And this one.

Goodbye Sweden

I've spent quite a lot of time in Sweden Kannu. It's an amazing place. Truly beautiful. 
The people are also extraordinarily different from the Indian or British or American structure and culture that I've grown up with. They are very calm. Very polite. Very consensual. Their architecture is bright. Clean. Straight lines. Everything is managed well and on the face of it, no issues. 
But my experiences of Sweden were in the late 1990's. Things have moved on since then. It was distressing to read this. Yes of course the chap seems to be upset and therefore might be a bit OTT in certain areas. His comment about the Swedish military hit close and was a bit funny as well. It's a neutral country but will get rolled over by the Russians in the blink of an eye. It's that bad. 
And now the Belgian attacks. I think Europe has to rethink its way and approach to minorities and immigration. 
Some tough choices ahead. 
Hope you get better soon son with you me tummy. Sorry wasn't able to cuddle you yesterday. I was a bit out with the knees. :)
Love
Baba



Goodbye Sweden
http://swedenreport.org/2015/06/02/goodbye-sweden/
(via Instapaper)

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slaughtering the commonly held shibboleths

Kannu 

I read this article today shown below. Its a great article son. Very very interesting. A small article but which really nails the commonly held tropes and shibboleths which are extant in the world today. Such a clear and articulate argument son. People do not really appreciate these basic truths. The links are very valuable as well. I have remarked on all these points generally other than perhaps the feminism angle, havent really worked or commented on it that much but very interesting son. Worth spending an hour to go through the links, you will find it very beneficial for your studies as well as arguments for politics and philosophy.   

Love 

Baba 




http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2015/12/labor_econ_vers.html 

My 13-year-old homeschooled sons just finished my labor economics class.  I hope they take many more economics classes, but I'll be perfectly satisfied with their grasp of economics as long as they internalize what they learned this semester.  Why?  Because a good labor economics class contains everything you need to see through the central tenets of our society's secular religion.  Labor economics stands against the world.  Once you grasp its lessons, you can never again be a normal citizen.

Fear in the eyes

Can you see the eyes of this migrant who is hiding from the police? Under the car? In Mellila, which is an enclave of Spain on the coast of North Africa. These little enclaves are an historical oddity, left over from the days of colonialism and imperialism. 

And now they are the promised land. Land where African refugees flood into, trying to get into Europe. 

But those eyes. Fear. Totally fear filled eyes. 

Glut of Foreign Students Hurts U.S. Innovation

now here’s a different view…

In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry.

International students are attractive to strapped colleges because they tend to pay full tuition or, in the case of public institutions, pay more than full price in out-of-state rates.

Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program.

The pursuit of foreign students by U.S. schools affects not only college access for Americans but also their careers. Back in 1989, an internal report of the National Science Foundationforecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math -- the STEM fields -- would suppress wages. The stagnant salaries would then drive the American bachelor’s degree holders in these fields into more lucrative areas, such as business and law, after graduation, and discourage them from pursuing STEM doctorates.

i dont have special views on this but i never considered this impact. For example, in the business schools I am associated with in the UK, they are all gung ho for international students as they pay money – the full amount and are willing to study. The number of British students studying for business is falling so dramatically that its weird. The students who graduate put pressure on the job market indeed but the immigration rules are helping to squelch that pressure.

tough times indeed…

I never realised the aspect of internal brain drain

We know of the brain drain from emerging countries to the west but how about the internal brain drain aspects? fascinating angle and one which I didn't previously consider. Something to think about. I quote:

As a director of international programs at the University of Botswana for four years, I witnessed this indigenous African brain drain up close. Every year it seemed somebody from the law department was recruited to be a judge. I watched as nongovernmental organizations poached at least three of the best female academics for jobs within Botswana. For-profit universities, almost all foreign owned, regularly recruit local Ph.D.’s from the university to give them a local face. Foreign-owned businesses in Botswana are always on the lookout for faculty trained in business, science, and engineering. The government itself has not held back. It has cherry picked at least two of the university’s best administrators for top roles in education. Finally, a number of academics find that their services as consultants are so in demand that they can easily make a much better income as self-employed contractors than working at the university.

Further depleting academic staff at the university is a brain drain to South Africa. Every year at least one faculty member leaves for a very sizable pay raise to work at a university to the south. There is, however, one difference with the internal brain drain and the one to South Africa: Most of the university’s former faculty come back after a year or two. They find the social environment in South Africa much more conflicted and competitive. Also, they feel they are treated as foreigners rather than fellow Africans. And some are surprised that taxes are often higher than they expected. On the other hand, those who leave the university for jobs within Botswana almost never return to academe in any capacity.

Most discouraging is that those leaving are often among the best and brightest. They are creative, ambitious, often charismatic, and almost always top leaders. The result is that the full professor ranks at the university have very few locals and a sizable proportion of expatriates, particularly from other parts of Africa. Indeed, Botswana poaches extensively for senior talent from other African countries, many of whom are quite good as instructors and scholars. These African expatriates often remain in Botswana until retirement because the salaries are much better than what they could earn at home, even in the private sector. However, they usually do not identify with Botswana personally or professionally. Many provide little service to the institution in terms of committees, are not serious about mentoring junior colleagues from Botswana, and do not contribute to the local intellectual environment. So while the university may provoke a brain drain from its sister countries in Africa, it cannot replace the best and the brightest local scholars who have the energy and vision to propel both the institution and the nation forward. Moreover, the university often ends up paying more for these senior expatriates than it would have for the talented locals.

Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs

Son

This is a very important article which talks about low paid jobs. This situation exists in pretty much every developed country. Who will do the jobs like plucking tomatoes? Cleaning toilets? Sorting out fish? Packing cabbages? These are the lowest paid jobs around and the question is, where do you get these people from when the native born don't want to do these? And while the first generation is happy to do those jobs, their second and third generation don't want to. See Germany with Turkish immigrants, England with Pakistani immigrants, and USA with their Hispanic immigrants. The rise of nativist right wing anti immigration wings is a direct consequence of policies like this. 

But you cannot pay high wages there. The product or service gets priced out of the market. So what do you do? Not easy to answer son. 

I think it's a combination, wages have to rise if supply of labour is constrained, basic economics. On the other hand, when immigrants aren't integrated or made welcome, like Turks and Pakistanis and Jamaicans,  they turn into bigger problems. 

But still, an interesting article to read son

Love

Baba

Why Americans Won't Do Dirty Jobs - BusinessWeek
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/why-americans-wont-do-dirty-jobs-11092011.html

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In the wake of an immigrant exodus, Alabama has jobs. Trouble is, Americans don’t want them

By Elizabeth Dwoskin

Skinning, gutting, and cutting up catfish is not easy or pleasant work. No one knows this better than Randy Rhodes, president of Harvest Select, which has a processing plant in impoverished Uniontown, Ala. For years, Rhodes has had trouble finding Americans willing to grab a knife and stand 10 or more hours a day in a cold, wet room for minimum wage and skimpy benefits.

Most of his employees are Guatemalan. Or they were, until Alabama enacted an immigration law in September that requires police to question people they suspect might be in the U.S. illegally and punish businesses that hire them. The law, known as HB56, is intended to scare off undocumented workers, and in that regard it’s been a success. It’s also driven away legal immigrants who feared being harassed.

Rhodes arrived at work on Sept. 29, the day the law went into effect, to discover many of his employees missing. Panicked, he drove an hour and a half north to Tuscaloosa, where many of the immigrants who worked for him lived. Rhodes, who doesn’t speak Spanish, struggled to get across how much he needed them. He urged his workers to come back. Only a handful did. “We couldn’t explain to them that some of the things they were scared of weren’t going to happen,” Rhodes says. “I wanted them to see that I was their friend, and that we were trying to do the right thing.”

His ex-employees joined an exodus of thousands of immigrant field hands, hotel housekeepers, dishwashers, chicken plant employees, and construction workers who have fled Alabama for other states. Like Rhodes, many employers who lost workers followed federal requirements—some even used the E-Verify system—and only found out their workers were illegal when they disappeared.

Such a long journey

Son

Indians are frequently called as a model minority. Here is one example of how Indians fared in Trinidad. 

Fascinating story. I wonder what you will tell your daughter about how your father immigrated from India to the uk? Dadu immigrated from Bangladesh. You don't hear much from me on that but one day we will go there :)

Love 

Baba

Such a long journey
http://www.himalmag.com/component/content/article/4670-such-a-long-journey.html

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Cover

By Namit Arora

How and why 145,000 people migrated to a small Caribbean island.

Image: Carey L Biron

I recently visited the Indian Caribbean Museum near the town of Chaguanas in Trinidad. Set in a large hall, the museum did not have other visitors at the time. Its friendly curator, 69-year-old Saisbhan Jokhan, came out to greet me and quickly proved to be a trove of information. The museum commemorates the history of a million Indo-Caribbeans, whose ancestors came as indentured labourers from the Subcontinent between 1838 and 1917. Graphic panels at the museum include details on immigrant ships, copies of girmits (indenture agreements) and rare archival photos of life on Caribbean sugarcane plantations. Evocative objects abound: an improvised sarangi, a pair of wood slippers, a rotary sugarcane press like the ones still used in mofussil India, even a life-size model of an indentured worker’s hut. Other displays show milestones in the life of the community, such as a 1970 photo of the first ‘Indo-Trini’ policewoman; a panel on Alice Jan, the first lady of Indo-Trini culture; and Indo-Trinis winning the right to build their own schools in 1952, allowing them to replace Christian with Hindu teaching.

Swedes are actually inviting Russians

I nearly fell out of the chair when I read about this story. I quote:

Sorsele municipality, in northern Sweden, are overjoyed in the continued interest in the area, after receiving over 900 applications from enthusiastic Russian families keen to move there.
As The Local reported in 2010, within the next five or six years, over 350 locally employed public sector employees will retire from Sorsele municipality, in the county of Västerbotten.
That's 30 percent of their workforce and it was feared that Sorsele wouldn't be able to find anyone to fill the positions.
The local authorities therefore decided to market themselves to their Russian neighbours, with the aim of boosting dwindling population figures and to ensure an influx of foreign labour.
However, there is no guarantee that the job openings will be filled by the Russians. According to Wikström, they will be competing about the jobs with everyone else.
As part of the project, which will cost about six million kronor ($891,000), the idea is that the Russians would learn Swedish before their arrival to Sweden.
The council is hoping for funding from the EU. According to them, there's plenty of housing but fewer jobs.
So far, the council reports a massive interest.
And according to the local authorities, among the 900 applicants are doctors, teachers, veterinary surgeons and engineers.
Despite one aim of the project being boosting population figures, Wikström told SVT that it isn't necessarily women of child bearing age that they especially welcome.
”Absolutely not. We want whole families with children as every community need young people,” said Wikström to SVT.
However, local authorities stressed that money from the EU is essential to make the project work.
The first Russians could then be arriving in the county of Västerbotten in a year's time.

Sweden and Russian have been fighting for a fair few centuries now although there hasn't been one for about 200 years now. Still, for Sweden to actually invite Russians into the cold frigid north is interesting. Second one was obviously the fact that the Swedish local authorities need to borrow money from my taxes to pay for this. Welcome to the wonderland of EU.

Religious Practices Among Islamic Immigrants: Moroccan and Turkish Men in Belgium

One of the most common mistakes people make is to assume that Muslims are monolithic. For that matter, the far too many people also think that the “west” is monolithic. I attended a book launch at SOAS recently where there was this book on framing Muslims. I have to admit that I wasn't really impressed. The whole concept to me sounded very woolly and from what the authors said, there was clear ideological bias. So I dont think I will be buying the book.

Speaking to somebody after the event, I explained why I think this was so. You see, man is a social animal and will form social groups (so far so good). Social groups are formed based upon two concepts. First is to define what they are and second is what they are not. So when, for example, the blurb on amazon says something like this, “Can Muslims ever fully be citizens of the west?” that immediately tells me that the authors themselves are now guilty of framing Muslims themselves. When the basic research question is not independent, then the entire argument is a solution in search of a problem. In effect, they are themselves part of the problem of stereotyping. You might as well as ask, Can people who speak Serbo Croat or whatever fully be citizens of the west? They are not monolithic.

They also do not consider the flip side of stereotyping, the one done on the West. The West is also not a monolithic character? Mixing together everybody from Chile to China, India to Scotland aint making sense to me. No doubt stereotyping happens. No doubt framing happens. All I am saying is that that is human behaviour and there are many more dimensions to this than what the authors consider.

And then Orientalism was brought into the picture and that was the death kneel for me. I dont understand that orientalism logic at all but what do I know.

But I was reminded of an interesting article which I read last year. Here is the link. and abstract:

This study examines the religious participation of Islamic immigrants in Belgium using data from the Migration History and Social Mobility Survey collected in 1994–1996 from 2,200 men who had immigrated from Turkey and Morocco. Religious participation is measured as mosque attendance, fasting during Ramadan, and sacrificing a sheep at the Festival of Sacrifice. Results show that the religious participation of Islamic immigrants depends on both premigration and postmigration characteristics. Religious participation is higher among immigrants who: (1) attended a Koranic school in their country of origin, (2) were socialized in a religious region of their home country, (3) received little schooling, (4) currently live in an area of Belgium with a greater number of mosques, and (5) associate with a high number of co-ethnics. These results suggest that the religious participation of Islamic immigrants in Belgium is an outcome of characteristics unique to immigrants as well as processes common among the general population.

Curious, eh? to extend the results of this survey in Belgium and to try to answer the question raised in this book, one not only has to look at what better integration mechanisms to do in Belgium but also the factors behind the country of origin of the immigrants. (assuming that the level of religiousity is somehow linked to integration).

But complicated stuff and no simple answers. But look at this article on why are Jews so powerful.

Why are the Jews so powerful ? By: Dr Farrukh Saleem. (The writer is a Pakistani, an Islamabad-based freelance columnist.) January 12, 2009

Posted by ibnmahadi in Uncategorized.
trackback

There are only 14 million Jews in the world; seven million in the Americas , five million in Asia, two million in Europe and 100,000 in Africa . For every single Jew in the world there are 100 Muslims. Yet, Jews are more than a hundred times more powerful than all the Muslims put together. Ever wondered why ?

Jesus of Nazareth was Jewish. Albert Einstein, the most influential scientist of all time and TIME magazine’s ‘Person of the Century’ was a Jew; Sigmund Freud — id, ego, and super-ego, the father of psychoanalysis was a Jew; So were Karl Marx, Paul Samuelson and Milton Friedman.

Here are a few other Jews whose intellectual output has enriched the whole humanity:

• Benjamin Rubin gave humanity the vaccinating needle.
• Jonas Salk developed the first polio vaccine.
• Alert Sab in developed the improved live polio vaccine.
• Gertrude Elion gave us a leukaemia fighting drug.
• Baruch Blumberg developed the vaccination for Hepatitis B.
• Paul Ehrlich discovered a treatment for syphilis.
• Elie Metchnikoff won a Nobel Prize in infectious diseases.
• Bernard Katz won a Nobel Prize in neuromuscular transmission.
• Andrew Schally won a Nobel in endocrinology (disorders of the endocrine system; diabetes, hyperthyroidism. Aaron Beck founded Cognitive Therapy (psychotherapy to treat mental disorders, depression and phobias).
• Gregory Pincus developed the first oral contraceptive pill.
• George Wald won a Nobel for furthering our understanding of the human eye.
• StanleyCohen won a Nobel in embryology (study of embryos and their development) .
• Willem Kolff came up with the kidney dialysis machine.

Over the past 105 years, 14 million Jews have won 15-dozen Nobel Prizes while only three Nobel Prizes have been won by 1.4 billion Muslims (other than Peace Prizes).

Stanley Mezor invented the first micro-processing chip. Leo Szilard developed the first nuclear chain reactor. Peter Schultz, optical fibre cable; Charles Adler, traffic lights; Benno Strauss, Stainless steel; Isador Kisee, sound movies; Emile Berliner, telephone microphone and Charles Ginsburg, videotape recorder.

Famous financiers in the business world who belong to Jewish faith include Ralph Lauren (Polo), Levis Strauss (Levi’s Jeans), Howard Schultz (Starbuck’s) , Sergey Brin (Google), Michael Dell (Dell Computers), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Donna Karan (DKNY), Irv Robbins (Baskin & Robbins) and Bill Rosenberg (Dunkin Donuts).

Richard Levin, President of Yale University, is a Jew. So are Henry Kissinger (American secretary of state), Alan Greenspan (fed chairman under Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush), Joseph Lieberman, Madeleine Albright (American secretary of state), Maxim Litvinov (USSR foreign Minister), David Marshal (Singapore’s first chief minister), Isaac Isaacs (governor-general of Australia), Benjamin Disraeli (British statesman and author), Yevgeny Primakov (Russian PM), Jorge Sampaio (president of Portugal), Herb Gray (Canadian deputy PM), Pierre Mendes (French PM), Michael Howard (British home secretary), Bruno Kreisky (chancellor of Austria) and Robert Rubin (former American secretary of treasury).

In the media, famous Jews include Wolf Blitzer (CNN), Barbara Walters (ABC News), Eugene Meyer (Washington Post), Henry Grunwald (editor-in-chief Time), Katherine Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), Joseph Lelyyeld (Executive editor, The New York Times), and Max Frankel (New York Times).

Can you name the most beneficent philanthropist in the history of the world ?  The name is George Soros, a Jew, who has so far donated a colossal $4 billion most of which has gone as aid to scientists and universities around the world. Second to George Soros is Walter Annenberg, another Jew, who has built a hundred libraries by donating an estimated $2 billion.

At the Olympics, Mark Spitz set a record of sorts by winning seven gold medals. Lenny Krayzelburg is a three- time Olympic gold medallist. Spitz, Krayzelburg and Boris Becker are all Jewish.

Did you know that Harrison Ford, George Burns, Tony Curtis, Charles Bronson, Sandra Bullock, Billy Crystal, Woody Allen, Paul Newman, Peter Sellers, Dustin Hoffman, Michael Douglas, Ben Kingsley, Kirk Douglas, William Shatner, Jerry Lewis and Peter Falk are all Jewish?

As a matter of fact, Hollywood itself was founded by a Jew. Among directors and producers, Steven Spielberg, Mel Brooks, Oliver Stone, Aaron Spelling (Beverly Hills 90210), Neil Simon (The Odd Couple), Andrew Vaina (Rambo 1/2/3), Michael Man (Starsky and Hutch), Milos Forman (One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest), Douglas Fairbanks (The thief of Baghdad) and Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters) are all Jewish.

To be certain, Washington is the capital that matters and in Washington the lobby that matters is The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC. Washington knows that if PM Ehud Olmert were to discover that the earth is flat, AIPAC will make the 109th Congress pass a resolution congratulating Olmert on his discovery.

William James Sidis, with an IQ of 250-300, is the brightest human who ever existed. Guess what faith did he belong to ?

So, why are Jews so powerful ?

Answer: Education.

Why are Muslims so powerless ?

There are an estimated 1,476,233,470 Muslims on the face of the planet: one billion in Asia, 400 million in Africa,44 million in Europe and six million in the Americas . Every fifth human being is a Muslim; for every single Hindu there are two Muslims, for every Buddhist there are two Muslims and for every Jew there are one hundred Muslims. Ever wondered why Muslims are so powerless ?

Here is why: There are 57 member-countries of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), and all of them put together have around 500 universities; one university for every three million Muslims. The United States has 5,758 universities and India has 8,407. In 2004, Shanghai Jiao Tong University compiled an ‘Academic Ranking of World Universities’ , and intriguingly, not one university from Muslim-majority states was in the top-500.

As per data collected by the UNDP, literacy in the Christian world stands at nearly 90 per cent and 15 Christian- majority states have a literacy rate of 100 per cent. A Muslim-majority state, as a sharp contrast, has an average literacy rate of around 40 per cent and there is no Muslim-majority state with a literacy rate of 100 per cent. Some 98 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world had completed primary school, while less than 50 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Muslim world did the same.

Around 40 per cent of the ‘literates’ in the Christian world attended university while no more than two per cent of the ‘literate s’ in the Muslim world did the same.

Muslim-majority countries have 230 scientists per one million Muslims. The US has 4,000 scientists per million and Japan has 5,000 per million. In the entire Arab world, the total number of full-time researchers is 35,000 and there are only 50 technicians per one million Arabs (in the Christian world there are up to 1,000 technicians per one million). Furthermore, the Muslim world spends 0.2 per cent of its GDP on research and development, while the Christian world spends around five per cent of its GDP.

Conclusion: The Muslim world lacks the capacity to produce knowledge.

Daily newspapers per 1,000 people and number of book titles per million are two indicators of whether knowledge is being diffused in a society. In Pakistan , there are 23 daily newspapers per 1,000 Pakistanis while the same ratio in Singapore is 360. In the UK , the number of book titles per million stands at 2,000 while the same in Egypt is 20.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to diffuse knowledge.

Exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports are an important indicator of knowledge application. Pakistan ‘s exports of high technology products as a percentage of total exports stands at one per cent. The same for Saudi Arabia is 0.3 per cent; Kuwait , Morocco , and Algeria are all at 0.3 per cent while Singapore is at 58 per cent.

Conclusion: The Muslim world is failing to apply knowledge.

Why are Muslims powerless?  Because we aren’t producing knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless?  Because we aren’t diffusing knowledge.
Why are Muslims powerless?  Because we aren’t applying knowledge.

And, the future belongs to knowledge-based societies.

Interestingly, the combined annual GDP of 57 OIC-countries is under $2 trillion. America , just by herself, produces goods and services worth $12 trillion; China $8 trillion, Japan $3.8 trillion and Germany $2.4 trillion (purchasing power parity basis).

Oil rich Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar collectively produce goods and services (mostly oil) worth $500 billion; Spain alone produces goods and services worth over $1 trillion, Catholic Poland $489 billion and Buddhist Thailand $545 billion. (Muslim GDP as a percentage of world GDP is fast declining).

So, why are Muslims so powerless ?

Answer: Lack of Education ! All we do is shout to Allah whole day and blame everyone else for our multiple failures..!

I ask you, if this isnt stereotyping, then what is? At one shot, Jews are stereotyped. Muslims are stereotyped. As I responded to the mailing group, I said. If this logic is right, then the root cause of this is the religion. Then all Muslims need to do to become good and smart is to convert to Judaism. If Islam is the rationale behind this grouping and frame, then it leads inexorably to that argument. Which is obviously stupid, reductio ad absurdum, eh? See why I find books like this and arguments like this very strange?

Don't Christen Asylum Seekers

Story.

A Bishop's letter being sent out to priests in Sweden is advising them to avoid christening asylum seekers that have converted to Christianity because it could be dangerous, reported news agency TT. One of the reasons for the recommendation is because it can cause danger and increase risks if a person who has converted to Christianity is later sent back to their home country.
Another reason is that the motive for the christening can be questioned by some who suggest that asylum seekers convert to Christianity to increase their chances of staying in Sweden.
The issue is being addressed in a Bishop's letter titled, ”The Church's handling in meetings with people from other religious traditions.”
“There are both pastoral and ethical reasons for the advice,” Helene Egnell of the Center for Religious Dialogue, told newspaper Kyrkans Tidning. “Asylum seekers are in a vulnerable and exposed situaion. A christening doesn't have any affect on the asylum seeking process and brings instead big risk for persecution if someone is sent home.”

Hmmm, this is a bit strange but fairly understandable as the churches would be looking for souls to harvest and nothing like giving hope for asylum as a reason for this, eh? We see the same thing in India as well.

Conditions of nationality

This bewildered me. I quote:

They need to have iqamas (residence permits) and obtain exit-reentry visas every time they want to leave the country.

Under the citizenship rules and regulations, children born to Saudi women with foreign husbands are not automatically entitled to Saudi passports at birth.

Boys can, however, apply to obtain the nationality when they are 18, while girls can only get it if they marry Saudi men.

The boys should be born in the Kingdom and lived here until they are 16 years of age. Saudi men married to foreign women do not face such a problem. Their children are automatically entitled to citizenship at birth.

Children born to Saudi women and foreign fathers need sponsorship.

Al-Sharif said many Saudi mothers register their sons and daughters under their sponsorship as drivers and housemaids regardless of their education in order to save them from deportation.

“These particular job titles will prevent their sons and daughters from getting proper jobs and prevent the mother from recruiting a driver or a housemaid from outside,” he added.

“These children feel humiliated in their motherland, the very place they were born in.”

Al-Sharif said that if the mother was able to register her children as companions to her, they would not be granted work permits regardless of their financial needs.

Al-Sharif said the husband would not have declared in his iqama that he is married to a Saudi, while the wife will not have made the same declaration in her civil records. “They have to have their marriage contract with them always to prove that they are husband and wife,” he said.

He also noted that daughters from such marriages are given cards when they are 18 years old stating that they should be treated like Saudi citizens, but added this would not allow them to work.

He also noted that foreign husbands would not be given any preferential treatment when they apply for Saudi nationality, no matter how long he remains married.

Al-Sharif said Saudi men who marry foreign women without permission from the authorities concerned have a different kind of problem. “They find great difficulties in documenting their marriage contracts or getting their wives and children into the Kingdom,” he said.

Al-Sahrif said children born to Saudi mothers and foreign fathers also have problems in obtaining free medical treatment in government hospitals.

He said the society has come across cases in which children from such marriages were not allowed to obtain their mothers’ pensions or social security assistance.

He claimed that children born to Saudi women and Palestinian men are not even allowed to apply for Saudi citizenship.

Simply bewildering why this kind of gender based discrimination would occur at this day and age. At one point, the UK also treated women differently from men but thankfully this has been resolved now. For example, if a British woman married a foreign man, her British citizenship would be lost but not so if you were a British Man marrying a foreign woman. There are still gender based differences, see here for example.

Benefit Conditionality

A good article on why tying welfare benefits to conditionality is good. But the argument that this cannot be done in a recession is wrong. The basic concept is that if you are offered a job, then you need to take it up or lose benefits. Fair point. But what’s that got to do with the recession? If and only if a job is offered, then you get into this issue. Even if ONE person out of the millions out of work gets work over benefits, then that is a good step, no? I understand the argument that the job has to pay more than the benefits otherwise this argument falls down but overall I dont understand why there is an issue? I quote:

"A lost generation”; “a wasted generation”; “a generation on the scrap heap” – those are some of the reactions to the news that youth unemployment has risen to nearly one million. And it is not hard to understand why. Unemployment at any time of life can be a disaster, but it can have particularly pernicious effects on the young, whose habits of work have not yet been formed: if a youngster spends a long time out of work and on benefits, he or she may never develop the discipline and determination necessary to seek and hold down a job.

Christine Snell runs Windmill Hill Fruit Growers, a soft fruit farm in Herefordshire. She has more than 300 people working on her farm in the summer, and she needs to employ at least 30 even during the winter months. The work is ideal for youngsters because experience is not necessary: all you need is a degree of physical fitness and the ability to turn up on time.

How many of her workers are English? Just one. She recruits almost the whole of her workforce abroad, mostly from Bulgaria and Romania.

“I desperately want to recruit locally,” she explains. “Every few months, I place ads in an attempt to attract local workers. The response to my most recent ad was typical. I got 17 replies. When I explained what was required – five days a week, eight hours a day, with wages of £6.50 an hour – only two of them were willing to work for me. The others dropped out either because they didn’t like the look of the work, or because I explained that I needed their National Insurance number in order to pay them. They wanted cash – they said if they weren’t paid in cash, they would lose their benefits, which they were eager to keep.” Mrs Snell told them she would not be complicit in an attempt to defraud taxpayers. That was enough to put those potential employees off.

“Of the two that agreed to start work,” she continues, “one didn’t turn up, and the other gave up after a week. The unemployment rate around here is high, and there are a lot of youngsters at the local job centre. But the truth is that none of them seem interested in taking the jobs that are on offer. I absolutely don’t like recruiting abroad, not least because it increases my costs: I have to get all the contracts and health and safety documents translated, and I have to find accommodation for all the foreign workers. But what else can I do? Believe me, if there were English youngsters around here willing to do the work, I would hire them like a shot!”

this was sad

But the one nationality you almost never find waiting on your table or tending the bar is someone from Britain. Owners of bars and restaurants say that the reason they don’t employ young Brits is straightforward: too many of them are unreliable, unwilling to work hard and to accept that you can’t be rude to customers.

And then this warning:

Whether it would actually ensure that they created more jobs is, of course, another matter. But even economists are agreed that when the job market picks up, the first section of the British population to benefit will be the young, because they are first in the queue for new jobs.

Providing, that is, that better qualified and more enthusiastic immigrants do not take them first.

Shocking waste. We don't have the gumption to deal with these things although after the economic disaster of the Labour government, I have slightly higher hopes for the coalition. And all this while, immigration grows to cater for this gap, thereby pissing off just this group of feckless feral youth who flock to the EDL and BNP. And the governments don't do anything about it.

update: Here is an updated article from the same newspaper.

Citizenship questions for Saudi Arabia

Two interesting questions, here and here.

Amnesty for Illegal immigrants. This is why Nick Clegg will lose

Whoever thought up the idea of giving amnesties to British Illegal immigrants to the LibDems should be shot. And then pulped. And then sent to the USA to be used to plug the leaking pipeline. It has given a huge boost to the BNP and shows that the LibDems are completely out of touch with the common man. I simply cannot understand what they were thinking.

This is an email which I got and its highly simplistic relating to the USA but illustrates what Joe Public in England has such a huge issue with immigration.

You have two families: "Joe Legal" and "Jose Illegal".

Both families have two parents, two children, and live in California .
Joe Legal works in construction, has a Social Security Number and makes
$25.00 per hour with taxes deducted.
Jose Illegal also works in construction, has NO Social Security Number,
and gets paid $15.00 cash "under the table".

Ready? Now pay attention...

Joe Legal: $25.00 per hour x 40 hours = $1000.00 per week, or $52,000.00
per year. Now take 30% away for state and federal tax;
Joe Legal now has $31,231.00.
Jose Illegal: $15.00 per hour x 40 hours = $600.00 per week, or
$31,200.00 per year. Jose Illegal pays no taxes.
Jose Illegal now has $31,200.00.

Joe Legal pays medical and dental insurance with limited coverage for
his family at $600.00 per month, or $7,200.00 per year.
Joe Legal now has $24,031.00.
Jose Illegal has full medical and dental coverage through the state and
local clinics at a cost of $0.00 per year.
Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe Legal makes too much money and is not eligible for food stamps or
welfare.
Joe Legal pays $500.00 per month for food, or $6,000.00 per year.
Joe Legal now has $18,031.00.
Jose Illegal has no documented income and is eligible for food stamps
and welfare.
Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe Legal pays rent of $1,200.00 per month, or $14,400.00 per year. Joe
Legal now has $9,631.00.
Jose Illegal receives a $500.00 per month federal rent subsidy. Jose
Illegal pays out that $500.00 per month, or $6,000.00 per year.
Jose Illegal still has $31,200.00.

Joe Legal pays $200.00 per month, or $2,400.00 for insurance.
Joe Legal now has $7,231.00.
Jose Illegal says, "We don't need no stinkin' insurance!" and still has
$31,200.00.

Joe Legal has to make his $7,231.00 stretch to pay utilities, gasoline, etc.
Jose Illegal has to make his $31,200.00 stretch to pay utilities,
gasoline, and what he sends out of the country every month.

Joe Legal now works overtime on Saturdays or gets a part time job after
work.
Jose Illegal has nights and weekends off to enjoy with his family.

Joe Legal's and Jose Illegal's children both attend the same school. Joe
Legal pays for his children's lunches while Jose Illegal's children get
a government sponsored lunch. Jose Illegal's children have an after
school ESL program.

Joe Legal's children go home.
Joe Legal and Jose Illegal both enjoy the same police and fire services,
but Joe paid for them and Jose did not pay.

Do you get it, now?

Indians in the USA – their racial perspectives

The fact that Indians (and yes, pretty much broad based definition of Indians) are racist is not open to debate. The national obsession towards whiter skin and the pretty much well known behaviour towards Blacks (of whatever nationality) is evident across the country. Ask any black chap to go to any place in the country and try to get rented accommodation or even walk around without being stared at. Do not get me wrong, I was four square in this category as well. Anyway, that’s not the point. An interesting question comes up, what happens when you take them out of India say to USA. If you do that, do their attitudes change? So what are the attitudes of Indian Americans or Indian immigrants towards African Americans?

Thankfully, we now have a research paper which sheds some light on this rather interesting sociological behaviour. The research picked 161 Indian immigrant and Indian American Students at a large mid western university in the USA. They were paid $10 for filling out a questionnaire which took about an hour to fill out. This sample ended with 63 Indian immigrants of an average age of 25 years and 81 Indian Americans whose average age was 20 years. Indian Immigrants were defined as people who spent their first 18 years in India. Indian Americans are those whose parents emigrated to USA and thus were born and brought up in USA. 51% male. ~$80k median parental income for Indian Americans and ~$30k for Indian immigrants. I am not going to go deeper into the methodology, that is guaranteed to send you to sleep.

So what did they find out?

1. Indian immigrants reported stronger racist attitudes towards African Americans than did Indian Americans.
2. Stronger the identification with other oppressed minorities, the more positive they felt towards African Americans
3. The beliefs about social status, social hierarchy like caste which are inculcated by Indians growing up in India is a factor in the behaviour of Indian immigrants towards African Americans
4. More contact with African Americans helped in reducing the level of racism
5. Indian immigrants do not identify with African Americans in terms of being a minority, they identify themselves more with the White majority.
6. Holding more positive attitudes toward being Indian was associated with higher levels of modern racism for Indian immigrants, but no relationship was found for Indian Americans.

Quite an interesting set of results there, Sir. Obviously the limitations of the study are pretty obvious. Small sample size in a hothouse university environment, one of the first studies, sample population not representative of overall population, inherent problems with trying to draw conclusions from such a small sample, difficulty in comparing world views of two totally different populations such as Indian immigrants and Indian Americans etc. etc.

But overall, looks like more contact with African Americans helps in reducing racism although India has a very long way to go before it can truly call itself as colour blind and non discriminatory. When people say that you can taken an Indian out of India but you cannot take India out of an Indian, looks like its true, but some of the worse elements you can take out.

Pak court rejects asylum petition for 5 American Muslims

This is what happens when you have countries too closely associated with religion. Take for example, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan or any other OIC country which is all gung ho about Islam. Since Jihad is part of the religion, the argument goes, any bearded terrorist who is looking for jihad can ask for asylum. You couldn't make this up, seriously.

 

LAHORE: A Pakistani court today dismissed a petition seeking asylum in the name of 'holy war' for five American Muslim youths recently arrested in the country for allegedly planning terror attacks, saying that it was not the duty of the judiciary to define 'jihad'.
The Lahore High Court dismissed the petition filed by Khalid Khwaja, a former Inter-Services Intelligence official now associated with a rights organisation. In his petition, Khwaja had contended that the youths came to Pakistan for 'jihad' (holy war) and since this was not a crime, their detention is illegal.

And welcome to ISI inc.. lol

Netherlands and its minorities

Came across two articles on how Netherlands are dealing with their minority issue. If you recall, this is the land where Theo van Gogh was killed by a rather lunatic idiot and since then, minorities, specially Muslim, have had issues.

First article related to how Dutch Egyptians have problems with their children’s education. This made me seriously wonder how on earth are we going to improve if male patriarchies are going to be simultaneously try to control their daughters, give them crap education and then at the same time, steal from the benefits system. What on earth is going on with these chaps? For them to say that an Egyptian State school education is better than a Dutch state school education is frankly ludicrous. They are suffering from delusion. I quote:

The ministry's investigation revealed several reasons why parents in Amsterdam are sending their children to Egypt. "It appears that the parents feel the quality of education in Egypt is higher than in the Netherlands," Dijkstra wrote to parliament in April. "A number of them feel the culture and the education package in Egypt is more appropriate." Other parents cited conflicts between ethnic groups at school, or personal reasons like divorce or illness.

A more varied picture emerges from a dozen interviews with the parents of Egyptian-Dutch children conducted by NRC Handelsblad in Egypt. None of the parents wanted to see their full name in print, mostly because they were afraid to lose child support or other benefits.

Adel may say his main motive was economic, but he complained most about the freedom and rights granted to children in the Netherlands. He is afraid to lose custody if he spanks his children. His brother's conviction for child kidnapping scared him. After divorcing his Dutch wife, Adel's brother had taken their two children to Egypt in violation of the custody agreement. When he returned to the Netherlands for work he was arrested and sent to prison for three years.

This is seriously stupid, the reason why these immigrants went to the Netherlands was to participate and earn from Dutch culture. Do they think that the economy, culture and earnings in Netherlands came from a culture, educational system which was akin to Egypt? if so, why leave in the first place? Its again these men being stupid. And nobody seems to think of the children’s rights either.

Second article related to rates of intermarriage. Now intermarriage is usually taken as a very good indicator of improving race relations. According to this note, and I quote:

Over 90 percent of Turkish and Moroccan immigrants in the Netherlands who got married in 2008 did so with someone out of their own ethnic group. Less than 10 percent married a white Dutch person, according to the Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS).

Last year, 28,000 people of non-Dutch origin got married. Over half were non-Western immigrants (the rest being Western immigrants), of whom about half were Turkish and Moroccan, most of them born in the Netherlands or having come there shortly after they were born abroad.

Seven in 10 Western brides and bridegrooms married a white Dutch partner. Among the non-Western immigrants, this was less than 25 percent. Among Turks alone, the figure was just 8 percent, and among Moroccans, only 7 percent. Surinamese and Antilleans (about 30 percent) boosted the figure for the whole non-Western group.

Around 15 percent of the non-Western immigrants and almost none of their Western counterparts that got married did so with a partner coming over from the country of origin. Among Turks and Moroccans, this figure was 20 and 14 percent respectively.

Sixty-three percent of the Dutch Turks who married, married another Turk already living in the Netherlands. For Moroccans, this domestic 'own group' figure was as much as 70 percent.

For years, over 80 percent of non-Westerners have got married to a partner of the same origin. Since 2004, when the rules for migration marriages were tightened up, 'import' marriages have become less frequent but not domestic 'own group' marriages.

Looks like there is a fair way to go still.

KOSOVO:YOUNG; 73% UNEMPLOYED, ONE THIRD PREPARED TO EMIGRATE

Now here’s a bit of an issue for Europe. On the doorstep of Europe, in a place which saw vicious civil war, thousands dead and billions of Euro’s spent on trying to improve the economy, we end up with a situation that 3 our of 4 young Kosovars are unemployed and 1/3 are looking to immigrate.

This is a double whammy, you get the picture that the original investment in Kosovo has not worked and on the other hand, as usual, the immigration problem is going to increase in western Europe. The far right has already picked up this story and is running with it on the blogs and mailing lists. I quote:

In Kosovo, 73% of young people are unemployed, and a survey has shown that a third of them are prepared to leave the country in search of fortune elsewhere. According to daily newspaper Koha Ditore, there is an increasing trend amongst young people to emigrate. The paper believes that this shows the authorities' inability to respond to the requests and needs of young Kosovars.

Not sure this has reached the upper reaches of the European political scene, who are busy being undemocratic over the Irish constitutional vote. That’s another interesting exercise. We, the political heads of Europe, are fully democratic, you will keep on voting till you vote the way we want you to vote. Like Henry Ford, eh? you can have any colour you want as long as its black. Bah!

Why are migrants better than British workers?

Not only are foreign born workers getting more jobs than British born workers but they are better able to hold on to the jobs that they have in the first place.

Can you see the difference of UK born versus people from outside? I quote some worrying figures from here.

An analysis of official statistics shows that the number of British-born workers in employment fell by 451,000, or 1.8 per cent, in the first quarter of this year compared with a year ago.

Over the same period, the number of foreign-born workers with jobs rose by 129,000, or 3.5 per cent. In the first quarter of this year, British-born workers left employment at roughly four times the rate of foreign-born workers.

what do you do? what do people say?

Roughly the same proportion of British nationals and foreigners are unemployed – one in 12 – but joblessness among Britons rose by 600,000, or 43 per cent, in the past year compared with a rise of 16,000, or 15 per cent, among foreign workers. Part of the divergence may be explained by non-Britons leaving the country as jobs became harder to find.

Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of campaign group Migrationwatch UK, said: “It is increasingly clear that foreign-born workers are faring better than British-born ones as the recession bites. We must face up to this and take serious measures to tighten the points-based [immigration] system for the benefit of British workers.”

The government isn't doing much to deal with the issues relating to Britons, and this is allowing the BNP to step inside and claim for very emotive and problematical land such as British jobs for British people or go into the racist mode. And nowhere do we see what the Government is doing to help the local chaps out, the investment in the public sector goes into unproductive places such as welfare and other aspects rather than going much more into education, funding, and the like.

Forget about helping the poor working class students get better educated and get better jobs. The proportion of students who go to the top universities in the UK is falling rather than rising. This not only has an impact on the poor and unemployed, but its also causing severe decline in social mobility, a key feature in every good egalitarian society.