Arizona Against Immigration
A controversial Arizona law has caused grave concern to immigrants
Dr. Uttam Kumar Das writes from Minneapolis, USA
The US immigration system has been an area of interest during my program here. I am taking a full-course on Immigration Law as part of my LLM (Master of Law) program this Spring Semester 2010.
The topic has dominated much of the discussions starting from the academic debates to professional conferences. Much has been in debate following the filing of an Immigration Reform Bill in the US Congress last December. However, when this law is going to be passed or implemented, no one could say.
In another development, a new legislation adopted in the southern border state of Arizona has sparked new debates.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has signed an immigration bill into law for the state on April 23. This is considered as the “toughest law against the illegal immigrant.”
Legal and judicial questions have also emerged whether a state could adopt such a law overruling the federal position with regard to immigration.
Though immigration is a federal matter, Arizona has challenged that principle. The Department of Justice is reportedly to challenge the legality and validity of the Arizona law.
The much debated law will take effect on July 29 unless its implementation is blocked by any legal or judicial intervention, i.e., court injunctions etc. So far, there have been three pending legal challenges already filed by a Hispanic clergy group, a police officer and another individual.
The law is likely to make it a crime if an immigrant doesn’t carry his or her immigration documents with them apparently at all times.
It also empowers the police to detain anyone who are “suspected of being in this country illegally.” The law’s reported aim is to “identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants.”
It has provisions that in enforcing law, police might question anyone about his or her “immigration status” if there is "reasonable suspicion." However, there is no definition in the law what this “reasonable suspicion” means. The Arizona law also makes it a state crime to be in the US illegally.
The critics of the law comment that the law will result in “racial profiling of Hispanics.” Some are opposing the new law because it seems to encourage “racial profiling” which is prohibited by numerous existing laws in the country.
The New York Times/CBS poll finds that only 0.51% of the public opinion is in favor of this new immigration law. Opposition is overwhelming.
On May 5, Mayor of Boston Thomas M. Menino and Boston City Council asked the residents of Boston to protest against Arizona’s new immigration law by “cutting ties with companies based in Arizona that agree with the new law,” according to Boston-based Irish Immigrant Newspaper. Mayor Menino whose grandfather was an immigrant comments that Arizona has opted for isolation adopting such as law.
This has a cost as well. Phoenix, a major city in Arizona has already reports loss of $90 million due to “immigration law boycott,” as the New York Daily News reports on May 11. Professional and other organizations are shifting their scheduled events out of Arizona.
However, there are other moves as well: at least 10 States are reportedly looking to copy Arizona’s law. Those States include Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and Maryland, according to the Huffington Post.
According to Minneapolis-based Senior Immigration Attorney Scott M. Borene who has been advocating for the reform process, it (immigration reform) is in the top three priorities of President Obama administration. The Attorney acknowledges that U.S. economy is benefited both from the legal and illegal immigrants. “We need immigrants to meet up the deficit in the workforce,” says Attorney Borene at a presentation at the Minnesota State Bar Association on April 19.
The reform aims to pave the way for legalization of an estimated 1.2 million illegal immigrants among others.
However, President Obama administration is now likely stuck with other priorities. After the battle over the health care reform bill, the administration has likely been busy with Afghan war, “home-grown terrorism” issue and at the latest fire in the oil reserve in the Mexico Gulf.
That is why observers see that it is very unlikely to pass the federal immigration reform by this year.
However, professional bodies like the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) have come up with bunch of recommendations. According to a release of AILA, it “…believes any effective, long-term solution to the immigration problem must: 1) require the undocumented population to come out of the shadows and earn legal status; 2) ensure that American businesses are able to hire the workers they need to help grow our economy while protecting U.S. workers from unfair competition; 3) reduce the unreasonable and counterproductive backlogs in family-based and employment-based immigration by reforming the permanent immigration system; and 4) protect our national security and the rule of law while preserving and restoring fundamental principles of due process and equal protection.”
I find no other recommendation but to support AILA’s ones to cover the issue as a whole. It is true that without a specific plan of action by President Obama and the Congress (especially support of the members from the opposition Republic) this new immigration reform bill may also embrace the reality of “no vote” like previous ones as happened in 2008 and 2009. And that is the fear of the related professionals and observers.
Dr. Uttam Kumar Das is a Bangladeshi human rights lawyer currently affiliated with the Human Rights Center and Law School at the University of Minnesota, U.S.A. as a Humphrey Fellow. E-mail: udas1971@gmail.com.
*Originally appeared in the PROBE News Magazine (Dhaka, Bangladesh), May 21-27, 2010; link: http://www.probenewsmagazine.com/index.php?index=2&contentId=6043.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Spark the human potentiality*
Column: Humanity
Spark the human potentiality
A reinvigorated spirituality offers the way to humanity’s enlightenment.
Published: 05/03/2010
Uttam Das
udas@mndaily.com
What is the purpose of human life? Answers have neither been exhaustive nor unanimously accepted, and they almost always open moral, ethical, philosophical, religious and spiritual dimensions.
I got a fresh reflection recently by attending two separate public lectures by Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Menchú won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and is a Guatemalan human rights activist. Shankar is a spiritual personality from India and founder of the Art of Living Foundation, which has branches in various countries, including the United States.
Menchú and Shankar represent different cultures, languages and religious beliefs, but I do find a unique commonality and similarity in their thinking and observations on human life and its values, purpose and how to be devoted to bringing common good to human beings. Among others, these two figures put unparalleled emphasis on the spiritual to make us creative and humane.
Menchú herself is a victim of violence in her country: She lost her parents, two of her brothers, a sister-in-law and several nephews and nieces during the Guatemalan Civil War. She had to take refuge in Mexico.
Menchú, who belongs to the K’iche Maya ethnic group, has been an activist promoting the rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemala.
Her observation is that human beings have lost their “common sense,” which explains why we face alarming racism, slavery and the exploitation of human beings. She sees the presence of genocide all over the world in various types and dimensions.
However, Menchú dreams of leaders who could solve problems rather than create them, and in this she believes the youth could be instrumental. However, to make such a contribution, someone needs to be of high esteem, creative and humane. She observes that we need to be able to meet basic needs — part of a healthy community spirit.
Menchú distinguishes between religion and spirituality. She laments a lost human spirituality and the violence and exploitation across the world that accompanies it. According to her, some religions have lost their spiritual dimensions, which also have an impact on their believers.
For his part, Shankar has been a promoter of stress-free and violence-free communities and a society of peace across nations. He “has inspired a global phenomenon of compassion and service” through his works, according to the Art of Living Foundation website. The initiative has reportedly impacted more than 25 million people worldwide.
Shankar observes that it is how we see and enjoy our lives that could make a change and bring a difference. If we are positive in our thinking and approach, then we could impact our potential accordingly and make an enormous contribution to the community and society. And that is the ultimate purpose of human lives, he believes.
“We all come to the world as enlightened ones, however, somehow on our ways we lost our potentiality,” Shankar said to a gathering of more than 1,000 people in Wayzata, Minn. He underscored the importance of “mental hygiene” — enhancement of one’s human ability through spirituality.
Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation promotes meditation as a way of eliminating stress and enhancing wisdom among individuals. The foundation has been working in 145 countries, including the United States, to promote human values and peace.
Shankar, who also sees spirituality beyond religions, observes that modern technology makes the world into a global village; thus, spirituality could make it into a family.
What Menchú and Shankar have been promoting should be our motto for the common good.
Hubert H. Humphrey once said that “each of us can make a difference.” He believed that “people posses the basic wisdom and goodness to govern themselves without conflict.”
We don’t need to be worried about success in our lives. He who is successful “has left the world better than he found it,” as Bessie Anderson Stanly wrote in 1904.
John C. Maxwell, in his book “How Successful People Think,” rightly advises us, “Instead of trying to be great, be part of something greater than yourself.”
South Asian mystic singer Lalon believed in reincarnation. However, he professed that to make this life worthy of living, one must act morally and humanely to others and act for good. Lalon stressed the immediacy of improvement because if time is over, we can do nothing.
The Dalai Lama has a say in this regard. For us, it is “really worthwhile to increase the power and influence of positive thinking and to reduce the occurrence of negative thinking.” According to him, if we let anger and hatred run loose, then we are lost. As sensible people, we should not want to get lost.
Therefore, what we are supposed to do is a matter of our individual choice, effort and action. Our gratefulness, thankfulness, humanity to others and urge to do good for others could make a difference. In this crisis-prone world, a change in spirit is well deserved. Let’s move on right now.
Uttam Das welcomes comments at udas@mndaily.com.
*Originally appeared in the Minnesota Daily; link: http://www.mndaily.com/2010/05/03/spark-human-potentiality
Spark the human potentiality
A reinvigorated spirituality offers the way to humanity’s enlightenment.
Published: 05/03/2010
Uttam Das
udas@mndaily.com
What is the purpose of human life? Answers have neither been exhaustive nor unanimously accepted, and they almost always open moral, ethical, philosophical, religious and spiritual dimensions.
I got a fresh reflection recently by attending two separate public lectures by Rigoberta Menchú Tum and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
Menchú won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 and is a Guatemalan human rights activist. Shankar is a spiritual personality from India and founder of the Art of Living Foundation, which has branches in various countries, including the United States.
Menchú and Shankar represent different cultures, languages and religious beliefs, but I do find a unique commonality and similarity in their thinking and observations on human life and its values, purpose and how to be devoted to bringing common good to human beings. Among others, these two figures put unparalleled emphasis on the spiritual to make us creative and humane.
Menchú herself is a victim of violence in her country: She lost her parents, two of her brothers, a sister-in-law and several nephews and nieces during the Guatemalan Civil War. She had to take refuge in Mexico.
Menchú, who belongs to the K’iche Maya ethnic group, has been an activist promoting the rights of indigenous peoples in Guatemala.
Her observation is that human beings have lost their “common sense,” which explains why we face alarming racism, slavery and the exploitation of human beings. She sees the presence of genocide all over the world in various types and dimensions.
However, Menchú dreams of leaders who could solve problems rather than create them, and in this she believes the youth could be instrumental. However, to make such a contribution, someone needs to be of high esteem, creative and humane. She observes that we need to be able to meet basic needs — part of a healthy community spirit.
Menchú distinguishes between religion and spirituality. She laments a lost human spirituality and the violence and exploitation across the world that accompanies it. According to her, some religions have lost their spiritual dimensions, which also have an impact on their believers.
For his part, Shankar has been a promoter of stress-free and violence-free communities and a society of peace across nations. He “has inspired a global phenomenon of compassion and service” through his works, according to the Art of Living Foundation website. The initiative has reportedly impacted more than 25 million people worldwide.
Shankar observes that it is how we see and enjoy our lives that could make a change and bring a difference. If we are positive in our thinking and approach, then we could impact our potential accordingly and make an enormous contribution to the community and society. And that is the ultimate purpose of human lives, he believes.
“We all come to the world as enlightened ones, however, somehow on our ways we lost our potentiality,” Shankar said to a gathering of more than 1,000 people in Wayzata, Minn. He underscored the importance of “mental hygiene” — enhancement of one’s human ability through spirituality.
Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation promotes meditation as a way of eliminating stress and enhancing wisdom among individuals. The foundation has been working in 145 countries, including the United States, to promote human values and peace.
Shankar, who also sees spirituality beyond religions, observes that modern technology makes the world into a global village; thus, spirituality could make it into a family.
What Menchú and Shankar have been promoting should be our motto for the common good.
Hubert H. Humphrey once said that “each of us can make a difference.” He believed that “people posses the basic wisdom and goodness to govern themselves without conflict.”
We don’t need to be worried about success in our lives. He who is successful “has left the world better than he found it,” as Bessie Anderson Stanly wrote in 1904.
John C. Maxwell, in his book “How Successful People Think,” rightly advises us, “Instead of trying to be great, be part of something greater than yourself.”
South Asian mystic singer Lalon believed in reincarnation. However, he professed that to make this life worthy of living, one must act morally and humanely to others and act for good. Lalon stressed the immediacy of improvement because if time is over, we can do nothing.
The Dalai Lama has a say in this regard. For us, it is “really worthwhile to increase the power and influence of positive thinking and to reduce the occurrence of negative thinking.” According to him, if we let anger and hatred run loose, then we are lost. As sensible people, we should not want to get lost.
Therefore, what we are supposed to do is a matter of our individual choice, effort and action. Our gratefulness, thankfulness, humanity to others and urge to do good for others could make a difference. In this crisis-prone world, a change in spirit is well deserved. Let’s move on right now.
Uttam Das welcomes comments at udas@mndaily.com.
*Originally appeared in the Minnesota Daily; link: http://www.mndaily.com/2010/05/03/spark-human-potentiality
Monday, May 3, 2010
Justice in Bangladesh after four decades*
Columns
Justice in Bangladesh after four decades
In trying crimes against humanity from the 1970’s, Bangladesh faces new challenges.
Published: 04/18/2010
Uttam Das
udas@mndaily.com
Bangladesh has begun trials for crimes perpetrated during the nation’s 1971 war of liberation. The New Age, a Dhaka daily newspaper, recounts that “horrendous crimes against humanity were committed during the liberation war.” Previous governments have been reluctant to bring the perpetrators to trial.
The ruling Awami League government has announced a three-member tribunal and separate teams for the investigation and prosecution of the crimes in a release hours before Bangladesh celebrated the 40th anniversary of its independence March 26.
Among crimes against humanity, the tribunal will try crimes against peace, crimes of genocide and violations of humanitarian law in line with the 1949 Geneva Convention, as Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star reported March 27. The trial will be conducted under a special national law, the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act of 1973.
The United Nations is to give technical support in facilitating the sharing of related expertise and experiences of other countries for the trial of similar crimes, the Star reported.
In a March 27 editorial, the Star commented: “The people of Bangladesh in 1971 were the victims of one of the worst genocides and other forms of war crimes in history.” However, “it is a travesty that the perpetrators, for some reason or the other, have eluded justice ’til now.”
The liberation war cost an estimated three million lives; 200,000 to 400,000 women and girls are reported to have been raped or violated by Pakistani forces and local collaborators who joined as auxiliary forces.
According to the United Nations, one out of seven Bangladeshis, ten million in total, had to take refuge in neighboring India during the war.
The trial of the war crimes has been a long-standing national demand in Bangladesh. The Awami League pledged this trial in its 2008 election manifesto. The Awami League is considered a secular and pro-Indian party.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the party led the nation in the war of liberation and formed a government thereafter.
On Aug. 15, 1975, then-Prime Minister Rahman, whom the Bangladeshis widely revere as a founding father, was assassinated along with family members. Only two daughters, including current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, survived the assassination.
After almost four decades, the trial has come as a huge challenge both for the Awami League and for the country, which is plagued with severe electricity crises, unemployment, a rise in radical militancy, deteriorating law and order and other problems. The culmination of these is likely to create public outcry and unrest which could bring an increase in demands for the government of the opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, to step down. The BNP is aligned more closely with pro-Pakistani interests.
The alleged perpetrators of the war crimes have been mainly linked to a religious-based political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and its allies, which reportedly have connections to Pakistan and the Middle East.
Ziaur Rahman, the founder of the BNP, which held power between 2001 and 2006, is credited with patronizing the alleged “war criminals” to come out of hiding in the late 1970s to launch political parties.
The Jamaat-e-Islami is on the defensive, sensing a mounting political and moral scrutiny by the public. According to the Star, Jamaat claims the government is attempting to prosecute in order to “eliminate” them from the “domain of politics.” Jamaat is preparing its defense.
For its part, the BNP is opposed to the government’s move. According to pro-BNP (and Jamaat) lawyers, the attempted trial has a “political motive,” as the Star reported March 17.
However, the mainstream human rights organizations and most of the media in Bangladesh appreciate the government working to, as a Star editorial sees it, “bring justice to the war criminals of 1971.” The influential daily newspaper Prothom Alo commented that the trial initiative brought forth a chance for bringing justice to the nation.
Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan in 1971 after a nine-month guerilla war waged by the Mukti Bahini. These freedom fighters were civilians of all ages and occupations, men and women alike, who fought Pakistani military forces.
But this trial process should be “a means of vindication not vengeance,” as the Star commented.
Columnist Sohrab Hassan wrote in Prothom Alo on March 31 that the attempted trial brings into question both the stability and the human rights record of Bangladesh. According to Hassan, party politics is unimportant. What matters is how the trial is conducted, whether the perpetrators are held to a just and moral standard and whether the trial process is accepted at home and abroad.
A trial of such historic, personal and civil proportion calls for national consensus. Given the staunch opposition from the BNP, only time will tell how the Awami League government handles the matter.
Uttam Das welcomes comments at udas@mndaily.com
All content © 1900 - 2010
The Minnesota Daily
ARTICLE URL: http://www.mndaily.com/2010/04/18/justice-bangladesh-after-four-decades
*Originally appeared in the Minnesota Daily (U.S.A.).
Justice in Bangladesh after four decades
In trying crimes against humanity from the 1970’s, Bangladesh faces new challenges.
Published: 04/18/2010
Uttam Das
udas@mndaily.com
Bangladesh has begun trials for crimes perpetrated during the nation’s 1971 war of liberation. The New Age, a Dhaka daily newspaper, recounts that “horrendous crimes against humanity were committed during the liberation war.” Previous governments have been reluctant to bring the perpetrators to trial.
The ruling Awami League government has announced a three-member tribunal and separate teams for the investigation and prosecution of the crimes in a release hours before Bangladesh celebrated the 40th anniversary of its independence March 26.
Among crimes against humanity, the tribunal will try crimes against peace, crimes of genocide and violations of humanitarian law in line with the 1949 Geneva Convention, as Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star reported March 27. The trial will be conducted under a special national law, the International Crimes (Tribunal) Act of 1973.
The United Nations is to give technical support in facilitating the sharing of related expertise and experiences of other countries for the trial of similar crimes, the Star reported.
In a March 27 editorial, the Star commented: “The people of Bangladesh in 1971 were the victims of one of the worst genocides and other forms of war crimes in history.” However, “it is a travesty that the perpetrators, for some reason or the other, have eluded justice ’til now.”
The liberation war cost an estimated three million lives; 200,000 to 400,000 women and girls are reported to have been raped or violated by Pakistani forces and local collaborators who joined as auxiliary forces.
According to the United Nations, one out of seven Bangladeshis, ten million in total, had to take refuge in neighboring India during the war.
The trial of the war crimes has been a long-standing national demand in Bangladesh. The Awami League pledged this trial in its 2008 election manifesto. The Awami League is considered a secular and pro-Indian party.
Under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the party led the nation in the war of liberation and formed a government thereafter.
On Aug. 15, 1975, then-Prime Minister Rahman, whom the Bangladeshis widely revere as a founding father, was assassinated along with family members. Only two daughters, including current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, survived the assassination.
After almost four decades, the trial has come as a huge challenge both for the Awami League and for the country, which is plagued with severe electricity crises, unemployment, a rise in radical militancy, deteriorating law and order and other problems. The culmination of these is likely to create public outcry and unrest which could bring an increase in demands for the government of the opposition, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, to step down. The BNP is aligned more closely with pro-Pakistani interests.
The alleged perpetrators of the war crimes have been mainly linked to a religious-based political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, and its allies, which reportedly have connections to Pakistan and the Middle East.
Ziaur Rahman, the founder of the BNP, which held power between 2001 and 2006, is credited with patronizing the alleged “war criminals” to come out of hiding in the late 1970s to launch political parties.
The Jamaat-e-Islami is on the defensive, sensing a mounting political and moral scrutiny by the public. According to the Star, Jamaat claims the government is attempting to prosecute in order to “eliminate” them from the “domain of politics.” Jamaat is preparing its defense.
For its part, the BNP is opposed to the government’s move. According to pro-BNP (and Jamaat) lawyers, the attempted trial has a “political motive,” as the Star reported March 17.
However, the mainstream human rights organizations and most of the media in Bangladesh appreciate the government working to, as a Star editorial sees it, “bring justice to the war criminals of 1971.” The influential daily newspaper Prothom Alo commented that the trial initiative brought forth a chance for bringing justice to the nation.
Bangladesh won independence from Pakistan in 1971 after a nine-month guerilla war waged by the Mukti Bahini. These freedom fighters were civilians of all ages and occupations, men and women alike, who fought Pakistani military forces.
But this trial process should be “a means of vindication not vengeance,” as the Star commented.
Columnist Sohrab Hassan wrote in Prothom Alo on March 31 that the attempted trial brings into question both the stability and the human rights record of Bangladesh. According to Hassan, party politics is unimportant. What matters is how the trial is conducted, whether the perpetrators are held to a just and moral standard and whether the trial process is accepted at home and abroad.
A trial of such historic, personal and civil proportion calls for national consensus. Given the staunch opposition from the BNP, only time will tell how the Awami League government handles the matter.
Uttam Das welcomes comments at udas@mndaily.com
All content © 1900 - 2010
The Minnesota Daily
ARTICLE URL: http://www.mndaily.com/2010/04/18/justice-bangladesh-after-four-decades
*Originally appeared in the Minnesota Daily (U.S.A.).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)