Editorial

Dear Reader,

In these times of war it is more difficult than ever to write a newsletter that is completely issue-related. Maybe some of you will even expect us to give our opinion on the conflict. Some reactions to our online newsletter survey over the past weeks (we will get back to that) at least gave us that impression. However, since an information medium like this should remain neutral we have decided not to comment on this. We feel compelled to remain neutral to ensure an objective coverage of US-related topics and, after all, we are very far away from what is happening in the US at the moment. We hope that this will also meet your expectations as readers and customers.

The long-term effects of September 11 and the Iraq conflict can be observed in the visa regulations, new forms and processing times. Find detailed information about this in our Breaking News section. For internal reasons, we cannot yet give you the complete results of our online survey. We will make up for that as soon as possible, but we would already like to thank you for your helpful and constructive suggestions. We will try to realize as many as possible in the near future. It was important for us to know that many of our readers would still like to receive the mere text version of the newsletter so that we will abandon the idea of the html version. We will take the survey results into consideration for choosing the topics of our next newsletters and also restructure everything a bit starting with the next edition. In the meantime, we invite you to continue taking part in our little poll.

Other than that, you will, of course, again find something interesting to read about the US in our Story. Today, something about the probably most famous German immigrant, Henry Kissinger, who is said to have mentioned that he could be everything he wanted as a green card holder - just not US President. Our (expanded) How To section will today be dealing with the rather dry topic of taxation in the US, which is the first reaction to the suggestions you made. And, as always, you will find little stories about the US to lighten things up, for example about the "freedom fries" that are now being served in the US House of Representatives, about the change of US immigration from INS to BCIS etc. As always, have fun reading!

All the best,

The AMERICAN DREAM team