In U.S. visit, Mexican president to discuss drug war, immigration

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By William Booth
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 17, 2010; A08

MEXICO CITY -- President Felipe Calderón arrives in Washington this week for a two-day state visit that was supposed to be a celebration of U.S.-Mexican cooperation in his drug war. Instead, it is likely to showcase Mexico's frustration over Arizona's tough new immigration law, which Calderón has described as anti-Mexican.

The measure requires police enforcing another law to question a person's immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that the person is in the United States illegally. Its passage has put the hot-button issue of illegal immigration on the bilateral agenda.

At home, Calderón -- who is usually cautious, lawyerly and scripted in his public remarks -- speaks daily about the fight against the drug cartels, but rarely about immigration, although roughly 10 percent of Mexico's population lives in the United States.

He has been frank in his condemnation of the Arizona law, however, saying it "opens the door to intolerance, hate, discrimination and abuse in law enforcement" and noting that the U.S. economy was built with a lot of Mexican sweat, legal and not.

In remarks to Spain's El País newspaper Friday, he asserted that the law is creating tensions between the two countries.

In Mexico, the political class from right to left has closed ranks to deplore the Arizona measure, which has dominated front pages and TV news here. Elected officials from the three major parties are exhorting Calderón to challenge it in Washington, where on Wednesday he will be greeted with pomp and ceremony at the White House and feted with high-end Mexican fusion food at a state dinner, and will address a joint session of Congress.

But the atmosphere might be a little strained.

Soon after Arizona's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, signed the measure last month, Mexico issued a rare "travel advisory" to its citizens warning them of possible harassment in the state.

The governors of the six northern Mexican states that share a border with the United States have denounced the law and said they would boycott an upcoming governors' conference in Phoenix.

The Mexican Embassy in Washington is preparing amicus briefs to support lawsuits by civil rights groups seeking repeal of the measure. The head of Mexico's National Human Rights Commission declared the law "xenophobic." Mexican universities said they would suspend student-exchange programs involving Arizona. And cartoonists here have had a field day depicting an Arizona without Mexicans, where U.S. citizens are forced to cook their own food, cut their lawns, pick their crops and care for their children.

"So, yes, we don't like this law," Mexico's interior secretary, Fernando Gómez-Mont, said at a forum in Washington this month.

The drug issue

There are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona, most of them from Mexico. Mexican migrants, legal and not, sent home more than $20 billion last year, the second leading source of legitimate foreign income in the country after oil sales. Illegal drug sales may account for as much as $25 billion.

The U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual, who worked for six months to arrange the state visit for Calderón, has sought to calm emotions, repeating at every opportunity that President Obama and his administration consider the Arizona measure "misdirected" and are exploring legal challenges.

A former Mexican foreign minister, Jorge Castañeda, now a professor at New York University, has described the law as "stupid but useful," meaning that it may help create momentum for federal immigration reform.

The law also appears also to be feeding Mexican frustration -- usually expressed off the record -- that the United States is not doing enough in the drug war. Mexican officials are complaining more openly that authorities here are under grenade attack by drug-smuggling syndicates while pot pharmacies in Los Angeles sell bags of marijuana to so-called patients.

Authority figures in Mexico are coming under increasing assault. This weekend, a former presidential candidate mysteriously disappeared, and police think that kidnappers or drug gangs may be responsible. Diego Fernández de Cevallos, a powerbroker in Calderón's political party, went missing in the central state of Queretaro near his ranch, leaving his empty car and few clues.

Under the Merida Initiative aid package, U.S. taxpayers have contributed $1.3 billion to the fight, money that pays for Black Hawk helicopters, night-vision goggles and armored cars and trains for Mexican police and judges. Obama wants to continue the aid initiative and has asked for another $310 million for Mexico in 2011.

Calderón, who has described his northern neighbors as "the biggest consumers of drugs in the world," said last week that the binational struggle against drug trafficking will still be at the center of discussions in Washington.

"The president has to say something about the Arizona law in his speech, but he is really speaking more to Mexicans," said Raúl Benítez Manaut, an expert in national security issues and immigration at the Autonomous University of Mexico. "He also will be careful not to upset the Republicans in Congress, whom he needs to continue the fight against the cartels."

Systemic corruption

At home, Calderón has complained that billions of dollars in drug profits empower the cartels while the United States, with its freewheeling gun market, is the source of most of the weapons smuggled into Mexico.

More than 22,700 people have died in drug-related violence since Calderón declared war against the cartels in December 2006 and sent the first of 50,000 Mexican troops into the streets.

U.S. officials might push back, however. Although they have publicly applauded Calderón's courage in attacking the cartels, the fight has revealed systemic corruption in Mexico.

The latest shock was the discovery of a pile of documents that the government seized from the an associate of Mexico's most-wanted drug trafficker, Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán. The stash included lists of Mexican federal agents, their names and numbers and references to intelligence shared by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

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Earthquake aftershock in Haiti spurs exodus from Port-au-Prince

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By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Dana Hedgpeth and Theola Labbé-DeBose
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, January 21, 2010; A13

PORT-AU-PRINCE, HAITI -- Haitians pushed and clawed onto rusty boats and dented buses by the thousands Wednesday, hoping to escape a capital city newly unnerved by the strongest aftershock since the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The death toll now stands at 75,000 and is rising, according to President René Préval. A sign that appeared outside an open mass grave at the city's largest cemetery read: "Please. The hole is filled. It can't take more bodies."

About 200,000 people are injured, 1 million are displaced and half the buildings in Port-au-Prince are destroyed, according to the Haitian Directorate for Civic Protection. A new Haitian government estimate says homeless people have congregated in more than 320 fetid encampments across the capital, where pigs and dogs scavenge in the same rotting garbage piles as naked children and their parents.

United Nations officials said an exact toll of the dead and injured may never be known because the powerful earthquake was so widespread and destroyed hospitals and morgues, which traditionally track such figures.

The scale of the tragedy has overwhelmed a country ill-prepared to cope with disaster and outstripped the capacity of international relief agencies, prompting an exodus of poor Haitians, who have no guarantee of finding shelter in the villages and cities outside Port-au-Prince.

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At a ferry wharf in Port-au-Prince's Boulva slum, Manie Felix -- a 26-year-old mother of three -- hoped to travel to Haiti's Jeremie region, abounding with fruit trees. But she had no money to pay the inflated passage rate, which was equivalent to $15. "I have all these kids. I have no idea what to do," she said. Felix was asleep at the port when Haiti was shaken by Wednesday's aftershock, which registered at a magnitude of 5.9 and collapsed buildings in the capital.

Outside the U.S. Embassy, Josue Pierre's 4-year-old daughter looked up at him when the earth started shaking and said, "Daddy, Daddy, are we going to die?" The tremor made the 33-year-old Haitian American all the more eager to get permission to fly to Boston to meet his wife. "Something else is going to happen here," he said. "It is just too scary to stay. It is time to go away."

Rayhold Phanore, a pastor, said he saw a roof collapse on two neighbors. "You think everything is done and then it keeps shaking," said Phanore, a Haitian American who is hoping to take his 4-year-old daughter to Orlando, where he has family.

Nearby, in the Cite Soleil slum, where authorities say 3,000 people died and 15,000 were injured, police girded for the reemergence of gangs that held sway there before the quake. Police chief Azistude Rosemond returned to work after losing his wife, daughter and parents in the quake. Now he must cope without 17 of his 67 officers and is worried about escapees from a collapsed jail.

"They were in a tough fight before the earthquake," Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, the top commander of U.S. military forces here, said after touring the slum with Ambassador Kenneth Merten. "The quake is like a kick in the teeth for them."

The city has seen little violence, despite persistent fears that shortages of food, water and shelter will spark unrest. Still, looting remains a problem. Haitian SWAT teams patrolled the government buildings around the National Palace to keep away looters, said police Cmdr. Simon Francois.

"The looters are looking for the government safes, computers, anything that works, and even things that don't," Francois said. "The people are stressed, and that makes it more difficult for us to protect and serve."

Many business owners have refused to reopen because they fear being overrun by desperate quake victims. But several banks opened Wednesday; long lines formed and crowds grew agitated, mirroring the emotions after the morning aftershock.

The aftershock's damage wasn't limited to Port-au-Prince -- the United Nations said that an undetermined number of people were injured and that buildings collapsed in Jacmel, a seaside city known for its international film festival. While crews spread across Jacmel and Port-au-Prince to assess damage, the USNS Comfort arrived but stayed far from shore. Navy and Army divers plunged into the waters beneath the capital's central pier to gauge whether it could withstand cargo and masses of people.

The damaged and sorely inadequate infrastructure is further delaying the arrival of desperately needed relief supplies, and putting more pressure on Port-au-Prince's congested airport, which is now handling 100 landings a day -- four times the normal rate, according to the United Nations.

The air-traffic control tower was damaged in the initial quake, and there is just one runway to handle dozens of relief agency and military flights from around the world. "More people wanted to come in here than there's space, and they wanted to come in quickly," said U.S. Air Force Col. Ben McMullen, deputy commander for the Special Operations unit tasked with improving airport operations. The airport "was running on a first come, first serve" basis initially, he said.

To unload the planes, it was mostly "a bunch of good strong backs," he said. Since then, more forklifts and loaders have arrived, and the military is now requiring flight plans, hoping that will end the hours-long holding patterns imposed early on. A U.N. official said it is unclear when commercial flights might resume.

The Haitian government has signed an agreement giving the United States formal control of the airport, so U.S. officials have had to referee disputes between relief flights. On Saturday, a French plane carrying a portable hospital was diverted because the landing space was full.

"Everybody thinks their plane is a priority," said Maj. Nathan Miller, who helps coordinate air operations. Lionel Isaac, the airport's director, said that crowding has been a problem and that planes need to do a better job of alerting authorities about cargoes and arrival times. "They don't do it," he said. "They just fly in."

Once the planes are on the runway, they are Air Force Tech. Sgt. Adrian Jezierski's problem. "They tell me the size, and I figure out where to park it," said Jezierski, who is among those directing planes. "It's like a jigsaw puzzle."

Staff writers William Booth, Mary Beth Sheridan and Scott Wilson in Port-au-Prince and Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

Officials try to prevent Haitian earthquake refugees from coming to U.S.

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By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, January 18, 2010; A08

As a massive international relief effort lurches into gear, U.S. officials are stepping up measures to prevent last week's earthquake in Haiti from triggering a Caribbean migration not seen in two nearly two decades.

Experts see no signs for now of a seaborne exodus, although history shows that such events are difficult to predict. Still, South Florida counties have prepared contingency plans, immigration authorities have cleared space in a 600-bed detention center in Miami, and Obama administration officials have begun discouraging Haitians from attempting the hazardous 600-mile sea crossing to Florida.

"Please: If any Haitians are watching, there may be an impulse to leave the island and to come here," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Saturday at Homestead Air Reserve Base in Homestead, Fla., where she joined Vice President Biden in speaking to relief workers at a federal staging area.

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"This is a very dangerous crossing. Lives are lost every time people try to make this crossing," Napolitano said, adding that Haitians caught at sea will be repatriated. "Please do not have us divert our necessary rescue and relief efforts that are going into Haiti by trying to leave at this point."

The warnings come paired with a giant humanitarian operation to rebuild Port-au-Prince, position U.S. military assets in the area, and adjust U.S. and international immigration policies. In the long run, such measures would be the most effective tools to prevent a refugee crisis, current and former government officials said.

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With as many as 3 million people affected by Tuesday's quake, the stakes for the Obama administration in heading off a wave of migrants are high.

"We don't want to have destabilization in Haiti, and deaths of this magnitude in Haiti cause destabilization and have political implications," said Andrew S. Natsios, a veteran foreign aid official who led U.S. relief efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan and during the Asian tsunami in 2004.

"You cannot prohibit people from moving under international law if they feel threatened. But you can create incentives to stay," said Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2001 to 2006. "If you do the relief response right, most people will want to rebuild."

American presidents since Jimmy Carter have grappled with flows of migrants from the Caribbean triggered by political crises, wars and natural disasters. The sudden influx of 100,000 Cubans and 25,000 Haitians in the 1980 Mariel boatlift left some refugees in U.S. camps for years.

After a coup in Haiti in 1991, the U.S. government housed 12,000 Haitian migrants in Guantanamo Bay and admitted 10,000 before a new government was in place in 1994, a year in which the U.S. Coast Guard stopped and rescued 64,000 Haitians and Cubans at sea.

Spurred by reports that Cuban leader Fidel Castro was in failing health in 2006, the U.S. government embarked on an intensive contingency plan, called Operation Vigilant Sentry, signed by Michael Chertoff, then homeland security secretary, in 2007. A central feature of the plan is a public messaging campaign designed to dissuade Cubans -- then the focus -- from risking the life-threatening 90-mile journey across the Florida straits.

Although electronic mass media in Haiti is virtually nonexistent -- and the trip to America a harrowing three days instead of a few hours -- the enormous pending flow of aid, troops and official statements is conveying a similar message.

"It's not that the deterrence is the physical power; it's more the soft power," said Coast Guard Capt. Robert B. Watts, chief of drug and migrant interdiction policy from 2006 to 2008 and now a professor at the National War College. "You let people know you're there if you need help but that it doesn't make sense to leave."

Nations worldwide have pledged $400 million so far to Haiti, the Western Hemisphere's poorest country, led by $100 million by the United States. By comparison, when Hurricane Mitch devastated Central America in 1998, U.S. spending and debt relief totaled $900 million, most of which went to Honduras.

"The best thing we can do is spend as much relief aid as possible in Haiti," Natsios said. "Make sure food arrives promptly. Restart and stimulate Haitian markets. Restore people's lives."

U.S. officials are also adopting new immigration measures, combining carrots and sticks. On Wednesday, Napolitano suspended deportations of 100,000 to 200,000 Haitians in the country illegally, and on Friday, she announced that those in the country as of Jan. 12 could apply for temporary protected status so they can help send financial aid to their devastated homeland.

Homeland security officials, however, warned that Haitians caught trying to enter the United States illegally will still be detained and deported. Florida officials said contingency plans could call for housing migrants at the Homestead base if space beyond the federal Krome immigration detention center is needed.

Elsewhere in the region, the Bahamas set up processing facilities on its island nearest Haiti, beefing up medical, shelter and law enforcement resources.

Thad M. Bingel, former chief of staff of U.S. Customs and Border Protection from 2007 until March, said that under Vigilant Sentry, U.S. officials expect a warning of several days if residents begin to build or stage boats and a coordinated response of more than 30 federal, state and local groups to safely intercept migrants if Napolitano and the National Security Council activate plans.

In any mass migration, he added, "the challenges are recognizing that government has a humanitarian role as well as an enforcement role."

Staff writer Peter Whoriskey in Miami contributed to this report.

Girls' academic hopes disrupted as family plans return to Afghanistan

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By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010; C01

When Hussna Azamy was 5, she began her schooling in the living room of her family's apartment in Herat, Afghanistan. Her only classmate was a sister; their teachers were their parents. For up to five hours a day, they studied the Dari alphabet, fundamentals of math and science, and how to read the Koran.

Hussna and her older sister, Farah, came of school age in Afghanistan in the 1990s, when it was forbidden to educate girls and most of the country's schools had been destroyed. They yearned to see the inside of an actual school.

Their aspirations became real after the Taliban fell in 2001, and later, they carried their academic dreams thousands of miles to a country with one of the world's most renowned education systems.

But after less than a year in the United States -- where Hussna, 17, and her younger sister, Tamana, 13, quickly became A students in Prince William County schools -- the family plans to return to Afghanistan. Their father wants to help rebuild his country, work he has been unable to find here.

The girls, given a taste of American education, do not want to leave. They are afraid to entrust their ambitions to a system that is still vulnerable and far behind.

"I cry sometimes alone at night, sometimes with my sisters," said Hussna, a junior at Gar-Field High School in Woodbridge and an aspiring computer scientist. She worries that her lessons in Afghanistan will not be as up-to-date as those here or, worse, that girls might again be barred from schools.

Three decades of war left Afghanistan's schools in shambles, and many of its people are illiterate. Since the fall of the Taliban, the country has made strides in rebuilding, with help from foreign governments and international charities. There were 700,000 boys enrolled in primary or secondary schools in Afghanistan in 2001, according to Ministry of Education estimates. Since then, enrollment has swelled to about 7 million students, and 37 percent are female.

In recent years, the resurgence of the Taliban has brought fresh threats to the education of girls, particularly in rural areas in southern and eastern Afghanistan. But aid workers and analysts say the overwhelming demand for education and the momentum girls have achieved will continue.

The Azamys lived in Herat, a city in western Afghanistan, near the Iranian border. In 2001, the girls returned to school, donning black clothes and white head scarves to join hundreds of other girls at long tables under a big tent before moving into a renovated school building next door.

Each day, they checked around their desks for bombs and handed over their bags to be searched. Their mother, Farzana Azamy, walked them to and from school each day and worried for their safety in the hours they were away. But the girls enjoyed school and excelled in their studies.

Farah, now 21, received top marks on a grueling national college entrance exam, and in 2008, she became one of an elite group of Afghan women to enroll in a public university to study medicine.

She dropped out soon after she began college, though, because the family was preparing to move to the United States. The Azamys had long sought to join relatives in Virginia and to live far from bomb blasts in a place with good schools.

After years of waiting, their visas were issued by the U.S. consulate in spring 2008, and their departure seemed imminent. But paperwork continued to drag on. The family put schooling and jobs on hold and waited in Kabul and then Islamabad for a year before they could leave.

Last May, they moved in with a relative in Woodbridge, and their father, Ahmad Zahid Azamy, 46, began to look for work. The college-educated Azamy had spent nearly eight years working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. He traveled the country monitoring conflicts, human rights violations and the piecemeal development of local government institutions. He hoped to find related work in the United States as an adviser or researcher for one of the many Washington-based organizations focused on Afghanistan.

"I have done a lot for Afghanistan," he said. "I have this view that I can still do a lot . . . for peace in my country."

He was still unemployed in September when his family rented a townhouse in Woodbridge, spending savings accumulated over many years. Hussna and Tamana enrolled in school.

High school, U.S.-style

American high school was overwhelming and exciting for Hussna. Teachers helped her navigate the enormous building between periods, when hallways swarmed with students. She learned what it meant to be "tardy" and how to follow a schedule marked with blue days and red days.

She traded her head scarf and black clothes for brightly colored sweaters, jeans and sneakers. And she quickly adjusted to American-style education, with lots of student interaction.

Although not yet fluent in English, Hussna was bored at first by her courses, which included basic math and science, with extra help from an English teacher. Her teachers noticed her abilities, and within a few weeks she was enrolled in the school's rigorous International Baccalaureate courses for biology and advanced algebra.

One morning this month, she was surrounded by the bubbling sound of fish tanks in biology lab. The teacher divided the class into teams and asked them to draw pictures of the various stages of photosynthesis and respiration. Hussna grabbed a marker and began to sketch the Krebs cycle.

She easily explained to her classmates how the chemical reactions happen, ultimately yielding energy and carbon dioxide. Some students stared wide-eyed as she talked. One mumbled: "Wow. Someone who knows what she is talking about."

Biology teacher James Nolan said Hussna often takes the lead in class. "She has set the curve on a few tests already," he said.

Her report cards have been filled with A's, and an assistant principal said she should be considered for the school's gifted program.

But as she and her younger sister blossom at school, her family is struggling at home.

Farah had hoped to enroll in community college and eventually pursue a medical degree. But her family has no car and no money to pay for tuition. So she spends long days at home, listening to music and quizzing herself from a geometry textbook.

A father's frustrations

Her father spends his days worrying about money and watching the news from Afghanistan. "It's nearly one year now that I am jobless," he said.

He described a frustrating job search, filled with unreturned calls and e-mails and promises of help from former employers in Afghanistan that did not materialize.

His relatives here have found jobs in banks or driving taxicabs. But he does not want work that is unrelated to his expertise about Afghanistan, knowledge that he thinks is critical to this country's security. His job worries have been compounded by health problems that he and his wife could not afford to have treated here. Finally, this winter, he decided that the family should go back.

The plan is to move to Kabul, and to move soon, so Farah, after a two-year hiatus, can enroll again in college before the next term begins in March.

The father is deeply disappointed to be starting over again, but he hopes that his daughters will find new academic opportunities and that he will be able to support his family. Kabul is home to the country's flagship public university, which is undergoing extensive rebuilding.

There is also the recently opened American University, a private school that offers scholarships and computer science degrees.

The decision has pitted him against all the women in his family, who want somehow to stay. But they are slowly preparing to go.

Hussna has begun telling her teachers that soon she will be gone. "I know that we can't stay here," she said.

Prospective parents grow more worried about Haiti's orphans

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By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 17, 2010; A14

Adoption agencies and prospective parents across the United States are growing increasingly alarmed about the long-term fate of an estimated 50,000 children who were living in Haitian orphanages when the earthquake hit.

Between 800 and 900 of the children were in the process of being adopted by families in the United States. An additional 1,500 had been matched with European families, mostly in France and the Netherlands.

The remaining children include many who might not technically be orphans but whose families could not afford to care for them, said Tom DiFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, a Washington-based child welfare organization that has taken the lead on negotiating their status with U.S. authorities.

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So far, there have been no reports of deaths at orphanages, DiFilipo said. But many of Haiti's orphanages, which include 177 official government-approved facilities and 200 or so ad hoc groups providing care, remain unaccounted for. Those that have sent news often describe dire conditions.

"We're getting e-mails and texts from orphanage directors saying, 'We're out of water, our roads are blocked. We made it to the market, and there was nothing there because there was so much looting,' " DiFilipo said. "I can't put into words how worried I am. 'Extremely' doesn't cut it. It's at a crisis stage."

Although all Haitians in the earthquake zone require assistance, DiFilipo added, children in orphanages are among those with the toughest odds of survival.

"They don't have a next-door neighbor to lend them a hand. They don't have an aunt to bring them into their home or a grandmother to hold their hand and comfort them," he said. "They have a few people in an orphanage, and that's it."

Like many U.S.-based liaisons to Haitian orphanages, Diana Boni has been frantically alerting every humanitarian aid group she can think of to the plight of the orphanage she works with, BRESMA in Port-au-Prince. The nonprofit group cares for 150 children ranging from babies and toddlers to 13-year-olds.

One of the BRESMA's three concrete-block houses completely collapsed. A second was so badly damaged that the children are sleeping on the lawn outside. The third building emerged intact but is now crammed with the children from the first house.

Directing aid workers to the site is a challenge in a neighborhood that was hard to navigate even before the quake.

"I'm giving directions like, 'Go up the hill on Delmas where the Caribbean market used to be and turn left," said Boni, 39, who lives in South Dakota and is Haiti program coordinator for Kentucky Adoption Services, a nonprofit group.

By Friday afternoon, Boni's voice was hoarse from worry and lack of sleep. One of the houses was provided for, but if help doesn't reach the other soon, she said in a tearful whisper, "I'm out of water tonight."

Then her computer chirped with an e-mail arrival. "It looks like a CNN crew has arrived there!" she exclaimed. "I hope they've brought water."

For prospective parents in the United States, the wait for news has been equally excruciating.

Andrea Vanderhoff of Pella, Iowa, was thrilled to hear from an ABC news crew that a boy and his sister she has been waiting to adopt through the Central Texas Orphan Mission Alliance were safe. But "once that ABC crew leaves, there's going to be no one there," she said fretfully. "These are orphans. They have no one."

During the two years that Vanderhoff and her husband have been waiting for the adoption paperwork to go through, they have visited the children multiple times. "They are already calling us Mama and Papa," she said. "If we need to fly there to get them, I would do it today, but right now it doesn't sound like they would let us in."

In an effort to better coordinate relief efforts, the Joint Council on International Children's Services has started a database of orphanages and known orphans on its Web site, http://www.jcics.org.

The group hopes the list will eventually help it expedite moving the orphans to the United States and Europe. The easier cases are ones in which adoptions were already approved by Haitian authorities and the children were awaiting a U.S. or European visa. More complicated is the situation of children who were matched with a family but whose adoption had not been certified.

In an e-mail, Department of Homeland Security spokesman Matthew Chandler said, "We understand the deep concern these prospective adoptive parents feel about the welfare of these children, and we are actively working to identify available options in light of the recent tragedy."

Staff writer Tara Bahrampour contributed to this report.

Children of Hindu, Muslim immigrants drawn to hard rock

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By Russell Contreras
Saturday, January 9, 2010; B02

Artwork from the Punjab state of India decorates the Ray family home. A Johann Sebastian Bach statue sits on a piano. But in the basement -- cluttered with wires, old concert fliers and drawings -- Arjun Ray, 25, is fighting distortion from his electric guitar.

For this son of Indian immigrants, trained in classical violin and raised on traditional Punjab music, getting his three Pakistani American bandmates in sync is the goal on this cold New England evening. Their band, the Kominas, is trying to record a punk rock version of the classic Bollywood song, "Choli Ke Peeche" ("Behind the Blouse").

"Yeah," said Shahjehan Khan, 26, one of the band's guitarists, "there are a lot of contradictions going on here."

Deep in the woods of this colonial town boils a kind of revolutionary movement. From the basement of this middle-class home tucked in the woods west of Boston, the Kominas have helped launched a small but growing South Asian and Middle Eastern punk rock movement that is attracting children of Muslim and Hindu immigrants. It also is drawing scorn from some traditional Muslims who say their political, hard-edged music is "haraam," or forbidden. The movement, an anti-establishment subculture born of religiously conservative communities, is the subject of two new films and is a hot topic on social-networking sites.

The artists say they are trying to reconcile issues such as life in America, women's rights and homosexuality with Islam and old East vs. West cultural clashes.

"This is one way to deal with my identity as an Arab American," said Marwan Kamel, 24, lead guitarist in Chicago-based Al-Thawra. "With this music, I can express this confusion."

The movement's birth often is credited to the novel "The Taqwacore," by Michael Muhammad Knight, a Rochester, N.Y.-raised writer who converted to Islam. Knight coined the book's title from the Arabic word "taqwá," which means piety or God-fearing, and the term hard core. The 2003 book portrayed an imagined world of living-on-the-edge Muslim punk rockers and influenced real-life South Asians to form their own bands.

South Asian and Middle Eastern punk bands soon were popping up across the United States and communicating with one another on MySpace.

At the time of the book's release, Khan and Basim Usmani were experimenting with punk and building the foundation for the Kominas, which loosely means "scoundrels" in various South Asian languages. When Usmani, 26, came across the book, he was writing songs and sporting a mohawk -- just like the punk rocker on the novel's cover.

Usmani contacted Knight, who agreed to buy a bus on eBay for $2,000 to help launch the nation's first "Muslim punk rock tour" in 2007. Kamel bought a one-way ticket to Boston to join the tour, and Canadian drag-queen singer Sena Hussain met up with them along the way.

The musicians performed at several venues but were kicked off stage during an open-mike performance at the Islamic Society of North America convention in Chicago. Traditional Muslims at the convention decried the electric guitar-based music as un-Islamic, and others were upset that a woman dared sing on stage. The episode was documented by Pakistani Canadian filmmaker Omar Majeed in his documentary "Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam."

"These guys are not prophetizing or preaching anything specific about Islam," said Majeed, whose film is scheduled for release this year in the United States. "They just happen to be young and Muslim, and they write songs and do art that expresses that idea."

Imam Talal Eid, executive director of the Islamic Institute of Boston, said some traditional Muslims might object to such music because they focus on its sexual elements rather than its use for spiritual enjoyment. "But I think we can come up with a moderate opinion that distinguished what is forbidden from what is not," Eid said. "It's a new issue among Muslims."

The musical style of each group varies. Some songs on the Kominas's album "Wild Nights in Guantanamo Bay" lean toward the humorous and ironic, including "Suicide Bomb the Gap." In their song "Sharia Law in the USA," the lyrics mock the portrayal of Islamists: "I am an Islamist/I am the anti-Christ/most squares can't make a most-wanted list/but my-my how I stay in style." Their sound mixes hard-edged punk, ska and funk.

Al-Thawra sings about political events in the Middle East, with songs such as "Gaza: Choking on the Smoke of Dreams." Their music is closer to heavy metal.

Other bands include the District-based Sarmust and the Texas group Vote Hezbollah.

Usmani said he grew up as a "nonreligious" Muslim American, so his journey into punk caused few problems. He admits, though, that his family doesn't like the drinking and smoking that pervade the music scene. Khan and Kominas drummer Imran Malik, 25, also said they aren't as observant as their families might like.

"I mean, if you put a sword to us, one of us might pray," Usmani said. During a recent Kominas performance in a Cambridge, Mass., club, Usmani played guitar while wearing a round-topped hat known as a pakul and a traditional lungi, a cloth that South Asian men wrap around their waists. An Iraqi woman in a hijab bobbed her head to the music while others slammed-danced in front of the stage. At one point, audience members yelled jokingly that their music was forbidden and playfully threw shoes at the band -- an act that is an insult among Muslims.

The bands are doing what American kids have done for generations: forming bands and making loud music. That they are Muslim doesn't mean there's a hidden message; Vote Hezbollah goes so far as to denounce violence on its MySpace page.

Usmani said despite their obvious ironic messages, he fears that his band and others like it will keep getting "stupid questions" about subjects such as Sept. 11, 2001.

Usmani said a reporter once asked him how he felt about some Muslims being terrorists. He responded by asking her how she, as a white person, felt about the African slave trade.

"We have people asking us about [issues that have] nothing to do with chords we want to play," Usmani said. "Or how loud we want to be."

Census: Florida, Nevada had more Americans move out than in

Image via Wikipedia

By Carol Morello
Thursday, December 24, 2009; A01

After decades of rapid growth in which housing developments sprouted in swamps, farmland and deserts, the number of Americans moving to several states in the South and the West has slowed sharply because of the recession and housing bust, according to Census Bureau figures released Wednesday.

The longtime magnets of Florida and Nevada, which had benefited most as people fled the dreary cold of the Northeast and Midwest, saw more Americans move out than move in during the year that ended July 1. California also had a net loss of so-called domestic migrants, although in all three states the impact was blunted by immigration from other countries and by natural growth because of births.

The state population figures foreshadow a political realignment that will occur after the 2010 Census, which is used to determine the reapportionment of seats in the House of Representatives. Texas, which had the biggest population growth last year, 478,000 people, is among the states that stand to gain seats, and states in the Northeast and Midwest could lose.

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The economic downturn and the upheaval it has spawned are creating an unusual set of challenges for next April's national count. Foreclosures and job losses have caused many to give up their homes and move in with friends and family, and Census Bureau officials fear that those people could be undercounted. As the latest data suggest, hard times have led many people to abandon once-booming locales, and increasing numbers of others to stay put, when they cannot sell their houses or land new jobs.

The economy has also reshuffled the growth rates of states, transplanting some onto the losing side of the ledger for the first time in recent memory, according to William Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution.

Arizona, for example, was ranked in the top five states in population growth every year of this decade, until this past year. Just 15,000 Americans moved into the state, down from 55,000 the previous year. Georgia's growth rate, usually about 2 percent, has been cut in half.

Conversely, the District's growth rate of 1.6 percent almost tripled from the previous year. Virginia gained 87,000 people, more than half of them new residents. Maryland's population grew by 41,000, but the state had a net loss of 11,000 domestic migrants. That was offset by about 20,000 people who moved to Maryland from other countries.

California and New York had repeatedly been in contention for losing the most American residents to other states; both states are now losing fewer residents than before.

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But it is Florida and Nevada that had the most stark reversals of fortune. In the first half of the decade, they were usually among the top five in both population gain and growth rate. They now rank among 23 states that are losing more Americans than they gain.

These annual estimates are not an exact count. Although the census estimated that Florida gained 114,000 people last year because of immigration and births, researchers at the University of Florida said they thought the population had actually declined for the first time since the end of World War II, when many military personnel based in Florida left the state to go home, said Stan Smith, head of the school's Bureau of Economic and Business Research. Even so, the increase is the smallest since 1949, he said.

"Florida was a state people moved to," said Frey, adding, "It was a growth machine, and it just sort of stopped."

Nevada's population would have been virtually stagnant last year, if not for 11,000 newcomers from other countries who more than offset the net loss of 3,800 American residents.

Both states have built their economies around growth, and their state budgets are in dire straits.

"From Florida's point of view, it's cataclysmic," said Isaac Eberstein, director of the Center for Demography and Population Health at Florida State University. Florida has no personal state income tax, only taxes on sales and property, Eberstein noted. "We've shifted all taxes onto the people coming in, whether new residents or tourists," he said.

Smith said he expects that the state's population growth will pick up when the economy improves, although probably at a lower level. Baby boomers will retire soon, and the state should continue to attract immigrants from Latin America, he said. But birth rates are expected to decline, and other states are aggressively competing to attract retirees.

"I think it's more of a temporary blip than a permanent change," Smith said. "But temporary doesn't mean really short-lived."

Nevada faces hurdles as it tries to return to the growth rates of 3 to 4 percent that it enjoyed throughout most of the decade. Last year, its population increased just 1 percent.

Nevada State Demographer Jeff Hardcastle said legalized gambling in other states and on Indian reservations has ended Nevada's onetime monopoly on casino gambling, and rising fares for travel to the state are drags on any recovery.

"I used to joke a 3 percent growth rate in Nevada was considered a recession," Hardcastle said, with no humor discernable in his voice. "I don't think anybody was fully expecting this to happen. And I don't think anybody has a good handle on what's going to happen next."

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Papuans demand restriction of migrants - The Jakarta Post

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Nethy Darma Somba , The Jakarta Post , Jayapura, Papua | Fri, 11/13/2009 7:11 PM | National

People migrating to Papua have impacted upon the Papuans’ employment opportunities, thus necessitating further travel restrictions, a seminar hears.

Indigenous community representative Josias Serontouw told an international biodiversity conference in Jayapura on Friday that migrants in civil servant positions in the province outnumbered their native counterparts.

“Migration to Papua must be restricted as migrants are taking jobs from Papuans,” Josias said. “With more unemployed Papuans, trouble may arise.”

He called on the provincial legislative council to pass an ordinance curbing migration. He also called on another bylaw prioritizing to indigenous people in the civil servant recruitment test.

Papua has a population of more than 2 million, with migrant and indigenous numbers roughly the same. Migrants also prevail in the economic sector while many Papuans, particularly those living in remote villages, live below the poverty line.

Agus Sumule, adviser to the governor, said present restrictions had already taken effect.

According to a provincial ordinance, migrants who fail to find jobs after staying in Papua for six months will have to leave the province. The provincial government also issues special ID cards for migrants.

Meanwhile, Bintuni Bay regency in West Papua is drafting a bylaw to restrict migration into the gas-rich region in order to protect indigenous people. However, many say it is discriminatory toward migrants.

Number of Foreign-Born U.S. Residents Drops - washingtonpost.com

Image by mikebaird via Flickr

Construction, Manufacturing Job Cuts and Enforcement Cited in Loss of Hispanic Immigrants

By Carol Morello and Dan Keating
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 22, 2009

The number of foreign-born people living in the United States declined last year, particularly among low-skilled immigrants from Mexico, according to a Census Bureau report released Tuesday.

The immigrant losses were particularly pronounced in California, Florida, Arizona and Michigan, all states where the recession hit early and hard. The metropolitan Washington area gained about 1,000 foreign-born residents, but a jump in the Asian population was offset by a significant drop in Mexicans and Salvadorans, the largest Hispanic immigrant group in the region.

The nationwide total of about 38 million foreign-born people decreased slightly, by just under 100,000. That brought down the share of the overall population that is foreign-born from 12.6 percent to 12.5 percent. Although the drop is relatively small, it was the first official decline in at least four years.

Demographers and other analysts said immigration is bound to pick up once the economy improves, although some said stricter enforcement of immigration laws played a role in the decline.

"This is clearly a downturn related to the economy in the U.S.," said demographer William Frey with the Brookings Institution. "What looks like negative immigration is something that, two or three years ago, you wouldn't have expected at all. It shows immigrants respond to the economy."

The statistics were part of the American Community Survey, an annual Census Bureau report that also includes data on household incomes and health insurance. The survey, conducted year-round, is based on a sample of about 3 million addresses.

The Washington area remains among the wealthiest places in the country. The median household income of $85,824 last year -- up from $83,200 in 2007 -- is second only to San Jose. Blacks, whites and Hispanics in the region are all on average the highest earners in the nation, while Asians here are the third highest, behind their counterparts in San Jose and Raleigh, N.C.

For the first time, the survey measured how many people do not have health insurance. Nationally, 15 percent are uninsured, but the figure varied widely among states. Texas had the most uninsured, at 24 percent, and Massachusetts had the least, at 4 percent.

The Washington area reflected big disparities among adults ages 18 to 64. In Prince George's County, for instance, 20 percent of adults in that age group have no insurance, compared with 10 percent in the District and 9 percent in Arlington County. About 16 percent of adults in Virginia have no insurance, as do 15 percent in Maryland.

The new statistics on foreign-born residents confirm findings by other researchers showing an ongoing drop-off in immigrants from Mexico, who comprise a third of all foreign-born residents and two-thirds of all Hispanic immigrants.

The Census found about 325,000 fewer immigrants from Mexico last year, a fall-off of 2.8 percent. Without that decline, there would have been a small increase in the overall number of immigrants.

Latinos decreased in all regions except the Northeast, where the population stayed flat. In the Washington area, the Mexico-born population dropped about 9,600, a net loss of 19 percent. Salvadorans were down about 10,700, a 7.4 percent drop. Together, they negated the addition of 16,500 Asians, a 4.4 percent increase.

A study this summer by the Pew Hispanic Center concluded that since 2006, there has been a sharp decline in new immigrants from Mexico, while the number who return home every year has stayed about the same.

Many Hispanic immigrants work in construction and manufacturing, and they have been particularly affected by the economic downturn, said Mark Lopez, associate director of the Pew Hispanic Center.

Some might have been deterred by stricter immigration enforcement, too, he noted. In a 2008 Pew survey, 10 percent of foreign-born Hispanics said they had been stopped by authorities and asked for their immigration status, as had 8 percent of Hispanics born in the United States.

"Many Hispanics worry that they themselves, or someone they know, may be deported," Lopez said.

But Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors fewer immigrants, said his research suggests almost 1 million immigrants left the country in the past year alone, most of them Hispanic.

"People continue to come, but significantly fewer are coming, and many more are going home," he said. "It appears the decline began before the economy went south. That strongly suggests increased enforcement played a significant role."

Others contend that the floundering economy is solely to blame and that the drop is temporary.

"We've had a lot of enforcement in play for years," said Michael Cassidy, head of the Commonwealth Institute for Fiscal Analysis, a think tank that analyzes the impact of policy on low-income Virginians. "I think that points to the economic reasons behind the shift, as opposed to the enforcement reasons. When there are no jobs, people aren't coming and they're not staying."

Inside Indonesia - A disaster, but not genocide

Migration has caused many problems in Papua, but it is not part of a genocidal master plan

Stuart Upton

In the second of two pieces on demographic change in Indonesian Papua, Inside Indonesia here presents an analysis by Stuart Upton that suggests – in contrast to the first piece written by Jim Elmslie –there is little hard evidence to support claims of genocide in Papua.

Urban areas are where the population is most mixed, and where the best opportunities are Sergio Piumatti http://www.stockimagesnet.com/

The indigenous population of Papua has resisted Indonesian control from the start. Since the Dutch passed sovereignty over Papua to Indonesian hands in 1963 there has been recurrent violence in the territory, resulting from the heavy military presence there. The armed forces have committed many human rights abuses. These are well-documented and indisputable. What is problematic is how these and similar experiences are interpreted. Many people have claimed that this violence, along with attacks on Papuan culture and social structures, constitutes a program of genocide against the indigenous population. This emotive term has been widely used by both indigenous and Western activists in the last few years. However, the case in favour of using the term genocide to describe the Papuan situation is weak. It is also potentially damaging to the cause of positive change in Papua.

Demographic change

One of the common charges is that the Papuans are subject to genocide by stealth, in the form of migration by non-Papuan settlers. Through looking at the figures on lifetime migration and religious affiliation, the broad patterns of demographic change can be discerned. While there were issues with the coverage of the 2000 census, there have not been any substantiated claims that the statistical data have been manipulated for political reasons, and these figures remain our best guide for understanding population trends in Papua (by which I mean the two contemporary provinces of Papua and West Papua).

If there was genocide in Papua, we would expect the number of Papuans to be declining. The 2000 census recorded ethnic composition of the population, showing there were 1,460,000 Papuans in the province, up from 890,000 in 1971. The yearly growth rate of 1.7 per cent is only marginally less than that of Indonesia as a whole of 1.8 per cent. While Papuans made up only two-thirds of the province’s population in 2000, their numbers are only decreasing in relative terms.

The case in favour of using the term genocide to describe the Papuan situation is weak, and it is potentially damaging to the cause of positive change in Papua

Much of the eastern part of the archipelago, of which Papua is one part, has experienced significant economic development over the last three decades, prompting large numbers of migrants to move to these areas of growth using the improving transport system. Between 1971 and 2000, the population of Papua increased from just over 920,000 to nearly 2,440,000. This is a seemingly large increase but it is a population growth of only 3.1 per cent per year over these three decades, this rate being lower than other provinces in eastern Indonesia such as East Kalimantan (4.2 per cent) or Southeast Sulawesi (3.2 per cent). Papua is also not the only province to experience high levels of immigration, with the percentage of lifetime migrants in East Kalimantan in 2000 (35 per cent of the population) being far higher than in Papua (20 per cent). Put in their broader Indonesian context, population changes in Papua don’t look like genocide, they just look like part of the normal pattern of inter-island migration.

Papua is also not the only province to experience high levels of immigration, with the percentage of lifetime migrants in East Kalimantan being far higher than in Papua

Migration was an important factor from the first few years after the Dutch left and the Indonesians took over. Initially there was an influx of Indonesians taking the higher level public service positions. By 1971 there were over one thousand tertiary educated Indonesians in the province (mostly from Java) compared to less than 100 Papuans educated to this level. This was a blow for the Papuan elites because the government was the dominant employer. There were also some transmigrants settled in Papua prior to the so-called Act of Free Choice in 1969 (surely an indication that Indonesia had every expectation that the vote would go the way they intended).

Transmigration and military violence

There were relatively low levels of migration through the 1970s, unsurprising for such a remote part of the nation, with the 1980s bringing settlers from Java due to increasing transmigration projects. The figure of 90,000 migrants in 1980 rose to 260,000 by 1990. The settlement of transmigrants along the PNG border was a government attempt to cement the incorporation of Papua into the nation. Since then, transmigration has ceased to be a major factor in demographic change. The importance of this program diminished in the 1990s with the rising number of self-financed migrants from Sulawesi and Maluku taking advantage of the improving shipping system. It is hard to accurately estimate the proportion of migrants who have arrived through the transmigration program but they probably represent less than a third of migrants overall. The transmigration program was finally halted in 2000.

Instead, the great majority of newcomers were not part of the transmigration program and came to settle in the towns and cities along the coast with little or no government assistance. The chief force bringing them to Papua has not been government policy but instead pull migration for economic reasons, with the migrants mainly coming from eastern Indonesia, particularly Sulawesi and Maluku. In urban areas, migrants from these areas made up 23 per cent of the population compared to 12 per cent from Java in 2000. The impression on the ground is that the proportion of migrants from Eastern Indonesia is rising.

Another common accusation is that the Indonesian military has been responsible for so many attacks on the population that they amount to attempted genocide. But genocidal actions would be expected to lead to gaps in the population statistics such as missing men in particular age groups. My analysis of the figures from all the censuses carried out in the province shows no evidence of such gaps. There are low male-female ratios for the 20-29 year age group but these low ratios do not carry over to older age groups in later censuses. It seems that young men are simply not being counted in the census, possibly due to their avoidance of government agencies or through difficulties in the administration of the census. Similar issues with counting young men were encountered by the statisticians in charge of the latest census in Britain.

Genocidal military actions would be expected to lead to gaps in the population statistics, but my analysis of the figures from all the censuses carried out in the province shows no evidence of such gaps

For particular ethnic groups who have been the victims of violence from the military, such as the highland Dani, the 2000 census did not show evidence of men missing on a large scale. Additionally, there are no large decreases in population figures in particular districts which would point to massacres of whole villages in these areas. All this is not to deny that there have been serious human rights abuses, but it seems they have not been on such a scale as to leave their mark on the population records.

Explaining the charges of genocide

A glimpse of houses in the transmigrant settlement in Babo Bintuni, founded 23 years ago Iskandar Nugraha

The figures show that many of the provinces across Eastern Indonesia have experienced massive demographic change, change that has impacted greatly on the indigenous populations. So why are there suggestions of genocide in Papua but not in East Kalimantan or other eastern provinces? The reasons behind this are complex but involve the lower level of commitment to the Indonesian nation felt by Papuans, partly as a result of the separation of Papua from the new nation of Indonesia following the Pacific War. With the Dutch holding on to this half of New Guinea until 1962, an indigenous elite with an expectation of separate independence was born. The dashing of this hope by the Cold War politics of the time created resentment and little commitment to Indonesian nationalism.

There is also a subtext of racism implicit in much of the discussion of the genocide issue from both sides. Papuans suggest that they could never be part of Indonesia due to differences in skin colour (they are dark, Indonesians are light) or hair type (they have curly hair, Indonesians have straight hair). Such reliance on physical appearance in marking national identity – a racialist assumption of a sort that is repudiated these days in many parts of the world – is itself a response to the negative attitudes, including racist stereotyping, that many Indonesians show towards Papuans.

The charges of genocide also stem from Papuan social disadvantage. Migration patterns have indeed contributed to this disadvantage. The influx of economic migrants has impacted greatly on the indigenous populace, blocking them from gaining better education and employment in the coastal towns. Only one in five migrants in these towns are from another area of Papua, with the rest being migrants from outside the province. With most industries located along the coast, the better-educated migrants settling in these areas have tended to get the jobs in higher status sectors. For example, in the cities non-indigenous people are four times more likely to have jobs as traders than indigenous people. Overall, migrants hold more than 90 per cent of the lucrative jobs in trading.

The figures for rural areas are even more striking, with non-indigenous people being 16 times more likely to work in the trade sector than Papuans. Ethnic connections are important for getting jobs in Indonesia, and in helping migrants to establish themselves in towns. With few indigenous businesspeople, Papuans can’t use ethnic affiliation to obtain employment. The indigenous population continues to work in agriculture in rural areas, with the majority still in subsistence farming and only peripherally engaged with the modern economy.

Along with the majority of employment possibilities, the coastal urban areas have the best education opportunities. Illiteracy is only four per cent in the migrant-dominated capital Jayapura but it is nearly 60 per cent in the rural highlands of Jayawijaya. Migrants are more than twice as likely as indigenous people to have finished secondary school, and five times more likely to have tertiary qualifications. The poor standards of education in the areas where Papuans live, the distances between villages and schools (especially secondary schools), and financial obstacles to regular school attendance mean that many indigenous children do not obtain the education necessary to compete for employment.

The results of all these factors are that indigenous people have little chance of migrating to the towns, are unable to compete in the job market and do not see their children getting an education that will enable them to compete in the future. Rather than simply being the result of human rights abuses in the province, the current sense of a shared Papuan identity is more the result of the marginalisation of the indigenous people, and the understandable resentment and jealousy felt by this group towards the economic success of the newcomers.

With little realistic prospect of independence, working with the Indonesian side to implement policies to reduce corruption and the power of the military in Papua would be a vital first step to create trust in the government among the indigenous population

With little realistic prospect of independence, working with the Indonesian side to implement policies to reduce corruption and the power of the military in Papua would be a vital first step to create trust in the government among the indigenous population. In the longer term, policies to address the poor education standards of Papuans, assist indigenous small-businesses and enable more equality in employment are needed.

The claims of genocide in the province are mistaken and misleading. Such dramatising of the situation in Papua is only likely to result in the alienation of those Indonesian groups who are in a position to implement meaningful change. The ‘Papua Road Map ’ drawn up by the Indonesian Institute of Sciences suggests that some in the Indonesian academic community are willing to embrace such change. Let us hope that there are those in the bureaucracy and the military who can do the same in the future. ii

Stuart Upton (suptons@optusnet.com.au) completed his PhD about migration in Papua at the University of New South Wales in 2009.

Israeli Settlements: Obama Should Know Better

Photo courtesy of Mairav Zonszein

Early in the morning on July 7, an excited crowd of more than 100 gathered in Ben-Gurion International Airport to greet 232 new Jewish immigrants to Israel who arrived from North America on an El Al charter flight organized and funded by Nefesh B'Nefesh (which means "Soul in Soul" in Hebrew). The airport's old and defunct Terminal 1 has been transformed into a celebratory arrival hall for new immigrants brought by the nonprofit organization, which was founded in 2001 with the aim of revitalizing immigration to Israel from North America and Britain.

• Mairav Zonszein: Obama says he wants a freeze on Israeli settlement expansion. If that's the case, he should turn his attention to the US-based nonprofit that encourages American immigration to the West Bank.

Recently considered by the Jewish Agency to be serious competition when it comes to immigration, NBN is now recognized as the official operator of North American immigration to Israel. After some years of animosity and tension between the two groups, the Jewish Agency, along with the Israeli government, signed a contract with NBN last September that not only grants formal recognition to NBN but also guarantees that the government and the Jewish Agency will each fund a third of NBN's $12 million annual budget. The remaining third comes from private donors. It is noteworthy, given the fact that Israeli taxpayer money goes toward this enterprise, that so few Israelis have heard of it.

NBN's declared mission is to remove any obstacles that may stand in the way of those who wish to move to Israel. As such, it offers incentives, primarily cash. In addition to the "absorption basket"--a set of social and financial benefits provided by the government--new immigrants are flown over in an El Al plane, given their immigrant certification upon arrival and receive a lump sum of money. This money is stipulated as an advance, awarded only after the olim (immigrants) have lived at least three years in Israel. Amounts vary, depending on family size and financial situation. Although all immigrants sign a contract with NBN requiring that they "agree not to disclose the amount of the advance of funds to any person," a single man who moved from the United States in 2006 was willing to divulge that he was granted $4,000 when he moved.

In the years since its first plane landed, NBN has brought 20,000 immigrants to Israel from North America and Britain. Of those 20,000, NBN PR and communications manager Renana Levine claims that fewer than 3 percent (600 people) have moved beyond the Green Line to settlements in the West Bank.

However, on this last flight alone, seven families were reportedly moving to Ma'ale Adumim, the largest settlement in the West Bank. Even if we take the modest amount of three members per family (despite the fact that it is surely more, as one family had five children), that is already twenty-one people on a plane of 232, making it nearly 10 percent of the flight. And this is only one settlement. A representative of the Efrat Council, a long and narrow settlement in Gush Etzion, said that he expected fifteen families to move there this summer. The 3 percent claim is thus highly suspect.

While some of the territories beyond the Green Line, such as Gush Etzion, are considered by most Israelis to be "consensus areas"--places they assume will remain part of Israel in any final resolution with the Palestinians--they are nonetheless settlements undergoing population growth from outside Israel, which is in blatant disregard of President Obama's call to freeze all settlement growth. Yet this does not seem to bother the new immigrants or NBN staff, who appear disturbingly oblivious to recent tensions between Israel and the United States over settlement expansion and their direct role in changing facts on the ground in the West Bank. When asked why he chose Ma'ale Adumim, one new immigrant responded that it reminded him most of his home in Montreal.

NBN clearly does not differentiate between destinations on either side of the Green Line. One need look no further than its website to see that settlements throughout the West Bank figure prominently as ideal destinations. "It is hard to imagine a more hospitable place for religious Olim than Gush Etzion," NBN proclaims. "Kedumim's residents feel very connected to the area's historical roots and are actively working to increase the community's size. They are making a special effort to reach out to North American olim."

When asked about the political implications of NBN's support for Americans moving to the West Bank--where construction is considered by both the international community and the US State Department to be a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention--Levine responded that where the immigrants move to is "up to them. We do not promote one location over the other. We are an apolitical organization." But how can a US-based nonprofit that works in conjunction with the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency, and does not differentiate between the West Bank and Israel, possibly consider itself to be "apolitical"?

At the jovial July 7 welcoming ceremony, the newly instated Jewish Agency chairman, Natan Sharansky, a Soviet refusenik turned Israeli success story, addressed the crowd, informing them that they could use the Bible as their destination guide. He enumerated several ideal locations to move to, including Efrat and Bethlehem, where the Jewish settlement of Har Homa stands, severing Palestinian-controlled Bethlehem from East Jerusalem.

When asked about whether Obama's policy has hindered NBN's operations, a staff member responded happily: "No, we are seeing a rise in numbers." Settlement growth last year, at least, was up 69 percent. Of that amount, 39 percent of the new construction was built outside "consensus areas." According to Peace Now, only 60 percent of growth in the settlements last year was "natural" (resulting from internal reproduction), while the remaining 40 percent was the result of immigration to settlements from Israel and abroad. The staff member, himself an NBN immigrant and resident of Gush Etzion, admitted that he does consider himself a settler.

In addition to Israel's foot-dragging on the evacuation of outposts, the Obama administration faces another obstacle in its effort to put a freeze on Israeli settlement growth: American citizens moving to the West Bank. If Obama aims to crack down on Israel's blatant expansion of settlements, he should start from within his own borders.

About Mairav Zonszein

Mairav Zonszein is a Jerusalem-based, American-Israeli Ta’ayush activist and former executive director of the Union of Progressive Zionists. She maintains the blog ibnEzra with Joseph Dana at: www.josephdana.com.