Monday, August 28, 2006

Should Elvira Arellano be deported?

The Christian Science Monitor had an interesting article about the deportation order for Elvira Arellano -- the illegal Mexican immigrant holed up in her church in Chicago. A single mom, her son was born in America, and hence is an American citizen. Unfortunately, she is not. The issue really is at the heart of the illegal immigration debate on-going throughout the US right now. Should Elvira be deported? What happens to her US citizen son? Should he go with her back to her country of origin or should he stay here?
She is here illegally -- actually she entered the U.S. twice illegally and was once already deported. She is therefore bared from re-entering the US for at least 10 years. Her son, Saul, is 7 years old -- that means he would be 17 years old before he could come back to America with his mother -- although he could come back to the US at any time. His mother could actually win derivative status from her US citizen son -- but only once he turns 18 years old.
So what is right and what is wrong here? Should Elvira be sent back to Mexico, or should she be allowed to stay in the US with her US born son? what do you think?

Sunday, August 27, 2006

The U.N.: Still a Useful organization?

In a recent Washington Post editorial, there was a suggestion that maybe the UN was still a useful organization -- just look at Lebanon and Darfur -- everyone turned to the UN for peacekeeping. Well, let's just look at that. It's quite striking to me that the war in Lebanon even took place to begin with and then was allowed to last so long. And Darfur? Well, the killing still continues on a daily basis -- African Union peacekeeping forces or not. So should we rate this as a success? After all, what other alternatives do we have, right?
That's just the point. The UN has failed miserably at peacekeeping and peacemaking. Should we be surprised? How could we be given the configuration of the international system? The UN is not meant to succeed -- and given its current configuration -- it never will.
Now this is not to suggest that we should turn to world government -- but if we truly want to have a more effective organization to curb war and human rights abuses we need to give it more power -- and by the way -- it can't simply be the lackey of any particular country or countries....

War against Euphoria

  Hate Hope and Human Rights  At least that's what the addicts describe it as. In 2020 alone, an estimated 9.5 million Americans, just A...