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The Sunday Times International - Features

Immigrants’ battle
Asians see discrimination in US immigration reforms
By P. Parameswaran
WASHINGTON: Asians may not account for the large majority of illegal immigrants in the United States, but are in the forefront of protests of what they see as increasingly discriminatory moves to regulate immigration.

In recent days, dozens of Asian groups joined mammoth Hispanic-led protests from California to the grounds of Capitol Hill demanding better treatment for immigrants amid plans for a draconian crackdown on illegal immigration.
"Asians were historically discriminated against emigrating to the United States for about 200 years, so we are very wary," said Traci Hong, director of the immigration programme at the Asia America Justice Centre, a national group defending the civil and human rights of Asian Americans.

Mr Hong, an attorney, cited the period from the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first US law to ban immigration by race or nationality, saying national origin quotas that discriminated against Asians were not fully eliminated until 1965.

Her centre is among 40 Asian groups up in arms over a bill passed by the House of Representatives that would make it a felony to be in the United States without proper papers, and a federal crime to aid illegal immigrants.
The groups, some of whom likened the bill as the harshest legislation directed at immigrant workers since the Chinese Exclusion Act, said regulations and policies have been used to "systematically" exclude Asians from the United States.

"This bill is the latest and the most egregious in a long line of increasingly harsh, anti-immigrant enforcement-only legislations that has not and will not fix our broken immigration system," they said.

The groups are concerned that the Senate, currently debating immigration reforms, could adopt key provisions from the House bill, including one which basically allows the police to detain suspects first and verify citizenship status later.

"Now how would an officer come to such a presumption: would it be because the person 'did not look American? Would it be because the person had an accent?' It would disproportionately impact the Asian American community," Hong said.

Led by the Chinese, some one million of the 14 million Asians in the United States are illegal immigrants. There are 1.5 million Asians in the backlog of applications for permanent residency status or citizenship.

The Pew Hispanic Centre estimates that of more than 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States, 78 percent are from Mexico or other Latin American countries.

Many have children and other relatives who are US citizens and are banking on citizenship as a license for their future. Lawmakers should pass legislation that enables 'a path to legalisation' for undocumented aliens, said Don Shin of the New York-based Young Korean American Service and Education Centre.

Mr Shin, who was among 100 Korean Americans who attended an inter-faith rally outside the US Congress building this week in a bid to press for immigrant rights, said his own father took advantage of a 1986 amnesty to regularise his legal status and now works as a real estate agent in the Los Angeles area.
One in every five Koreans in the United States, numbering around one million, are undocumented, he said.

Many who come to the United States on student or tourist visas stay on illegally because they are able to make a good living here, he said.
"There's no lack of work here. They're able to raise a family and provide for their family," he said.

Treading gingerly ahead of crucial Congressional elections in November, President George Bush favours a guest worker programme but has firmly rejected amnesty for those who entered the country illegally. Polls have shown that Americans do not favour granting a blanket amnesty to illegal immigrants.

Mr Bush, speaking at a naturalization ceremony this week, said Washington would continue to press foreign governments, like China, to take back citizens staying illegally in the country. China has reportedly been reluctant to accept its illegal immigrants, including 19,000 being held by American authorities.

"The Asian immigrant population in the US is actually the fastest growing segment in part because it is smaller to start with than the Hispanic population but nevertheless it is definitely growing very fast," said Jack Martin, special projects director of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes Mr Bush's guest-worker programme. -AFP

Paradise regained for expelled Chagossians — for a few days
By Paul Reynolds, BBC's World Affairs Correspondent
Islanders who were forced into exile by Britain to make way for the US Indian Ocean base on Diego Garcia are finally setting sail this week for a return visit.
They will be taken by ship from Mauritius and will go to a number of the outer islands in the Chagos archipelago, as well as Diego Garcia. There, they will tend graves, hold services and wander among derelict former plantations, where some of the older ones once lived. A plaque marking the visit will be set up on each stop.

There will be 102 Chagossians, two priests, a stonemason, a doctor, a nurse and a British official on the 12-day visit. No British media have been allowed to attend, a move said to be for reasons of space. The total Chagossian population these days is some 4,000. Most of them live in Mauritius, though some have moved to Britain.

The Chagossian leader, Olivier Bancoult, will be accompanying his mother on the visit. "Everyone is very excited to make the trip," he told the BBC news website. "We haven't been able to see our birthplace, we haven't been able to put flowers on the graves of our ancestors. It will be an unforgettable opportunity for us. We need to pay tribute to the people buried there.

"My plan for the future, together with the group, is to continue with our struggle. We will continue with our struggle because we need the right to live on our birthplace, and compensation to right all the wrongs we have suffered."
No resettlement However, the chances of them being allowed back to settle there in the foreseeable future are very low.

"It is not practical," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told reporters.
The main obstacle is the agreement between the US and the UK, which dates from 1966. An exchange of notes gives each country a veto on who is allowed onto the islands. According to Foreign Office officials, the US government reaffirmed in 2005 that not even the outer islands could be re-inhabited because of the new security situation created after the attacks of 9/11.

There are about 2,000 US personnel on the base, with 2,000 support workers from the Philippines. However, the presence of these workers is regarded as a lesser security risk than having residents who could come and go at will.
"As long as there is a need for security, I don't see how they can go back," said Mr. Straw.

The agreement lasts until 2016 and can then be renewed for another 20 years. The base has played a key role in all the operations undertaken by the US Air Force in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years. Mauritius has been promised sovereignty, but only when there are no more defence requirements.
The British government also has a practical reason to deny any return. A feasibility study carried out in 2002 found that life on the outer islands would be "precarious" and would need "costly" support from the government, which it is not prepared to give.

At the time of their forced departure, the islanders' main employment was in the production of copra -- coconut fibre and oil. The oil was traditionally used in lamps. However all that is now abandoned.

Court case pending
The only hope the islanders have is a judicial review of Orders in Council made by the British government in 2004. Hearings were held in December and January, and a ruling is expected in April. The orders -- decisions taken by the government alone under powers granted by law -- prevent the islanders from going back by making any landing in the Chagos subject to immigration control.
The orders themselves replaced the original ejection order, made in 1971, which was declared invalid by the High Court in 2000. The court was scathing about that ordinance, saying that it had "no colour of lawful authority" and was "an abject legal failure".

The ordinance was issued by a commissioner appointed when the Chagos Islands were split off from Mauritius, to enable construction of the base to go ahead unhindered. The court said the commissioner had been in charge of "peace, disorder and good government", and this meant that the inhabitants had to be "governed, not removed".

However, despite reports to the contrary at the time, the ruling did not declare the actual expulsion unlawful, only the mechanism by which it had been achieved, something the UK sought to rectify with the Orders in Council.

The history
The story of the Chagos islanders is not one of Britain's finest hours.
The court case in 2000 revealed that the British government had created what it itself called the "fiction" that the inhabitants were simply contract workers not entitled to rights of residence.

One document quoted a Foreign Office official as saying that the government had to be "very tough about this" and that "the object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee (the Status of Women Committee does not cover the rights of Birds)."

The islanders are still demanding further compensation, though a British court ruled in 2003 that the resettlement assistance they have been given over a number of years, amounting to £14.5m ($25m) in today's terms, had settled those claims.

Over recent years, the government has apparently felt that some amends should be made. The visit is one example. Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was known to feel bad about the Chagossians, and they were granted British citizenship in 2002.

The trip is said by the Foreign Office to be simply a "humanitarian" one. And, if all goes well, another visit might take in future.
But resettlement is a long, long way off. - BBC NEWS

Oxygen-starved fish looking for ladies
WASHINGTON - Scientists call the growing oxygen-starved patches of world waterways "dead zones." That also could describe the not-so-swinging mating scene for some of the fish that live there.

For zebrafish, low oxygen levels in the water turn their habitat into the equivalent of a freshwater locker room. When oxygen is reduced, newly born male zebrafish outnumber females 3-to-1, and the precious few females have testosterone levels about twice as high as normal, according to a scientific study released Wednesday.

Earlier studies also have found reproductive problems for males in other species in oxygen-starved waters. And though all the research is conducted in controlled laboratories, scientists say the gender bending is something that could explain what they are seeing in the nearly 150 dead zones worldwide.
This could be a serious problem because with the expansion of dead zones -- such as the massive Gulf of Mexico area now the size of New Jersey -- fish die, and those that don't die may not be able to keep the species alive, scientists say.

Having too many males "is not a good strategy for survival," said Alan Lewitus, who manages the dead zone program for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The world's dead zones add up to about 100,000 square miles and most of those zones are man-made because of fertilizer and other farm run-off, said Robert Diaz, a professor of marine sciences at the College of William and Mary. More than 30 dead zones are in U.S. waters and are part of key fisheries.
The stress of hypoxia -- the lack of oxygen in water -- tinkers with the genes that help make male and female sex hormones, said study lead author Rudolf Wu, director of the Centre for Coastal Pollution and Conservation at the City University of Hong Kong. Wu's peer-reviewed study will appear in the May issue of the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Wu restricted the oxygen of zebrafish, which are freshwater aquarium fish, but said similar changes are possible in other species of fresh and saltwater fish. Fish often change genders during their lives, but this is different, he said.
"Since development of sex organs is modulated by sex hormones, hypoxia may therefore affect sex determination and development," Wu wrote in an e-mail interview. "Hypoxia covers a very large area worldwide, many areas and species may be affected in a similar way."

Wu and others said oxygen starvation may be a more powerful sex hormone-altering problem than the chemical pollution that has gotten widespread attention.

In the Gulf of Mexico, sexual development problems have been found with shrimp and croakers, said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. The trend is worrisome, said Peter Thomas, professor of marine sciences at the University of Texas.

"Hypoxia is emerging as a really important stressor, possibly of even greater significance than chemicals," Thomas said. "When it does act, it shuts things down completely."- AP

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