From all four corners of the US

STATISTICS: RECORD HIGH OG IMMIGRANT NUMBERS REACHED

The US statistics agency has recently published some numbers according to which the number of people born abroad has reached the record height of 32.5 million. That is 11.5 percent of the total population of 282.1 million. The report also says that a total of three million more immigrants than two years ago is living in the US today. It continues that even though the number of immigrants is higher than ever before, the number of people entering the US had decreased significantly since 2001. The Brooking Institute reports that between March of 2001 and 2002, 1.4 million people had entered the country, in 2002 the umber was 2.4 million. According to the renowned research institute, the reason is above all the closing of loopholes in the US immigration system, tightened admission controls as a consequence of September 11 and the general weakness of the US economy.

According to research by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, the economic downturn and the consequences of September 11 have not really had a significant effect on the number of legal and illegal immigrants who are looking for employment. The wish for a better life was b far stronger than the negative economic developments and the current visa restrictions. According to estimates of the new Department of Homeland Security (that now also oversees US immigration) there are currently between 7 and 8.5 million people in the US illegally, that's 3.5 million more than ten years ago.

...and some more numbers:

US immigration has released their annual statistics report for 2001. Just a few highlights for our statistics fans: 38% of all immigrants were born in North America (19% in Mexico), 33% came from Asia. 65% of immigrants wanted to live in six states: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New Jersey. The most popular cities are with 20% each New York and Los Angeles. Almost half of all non-immigrants (32.8 million) were from the following countries: Japan (15.4%), Great Britain (14.9%), Mexico (13.2%), and Germany, with at least 5.3%. Almost half all H-1B work visa holders were from India, followed by the Chinese with 9.2%. 608,225 people became naturalized.

Goodbye INS -LONG LIVE THE BCIS

After almost the 70 years the INS, the American immigration authority, has closed on February 28. The successor, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration, short BCIS, will be subdivided into three departments and be a part of the new Department of Homeland Security that had been created as a consequence of September 11. Reorganizing the new administration with 36,000 staff members will be the greatest task since Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of Naturalization had been combined into the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) in 1993. For you, by the way, nothing will change, all forms remain the same. The local consulates will remain as well as the superordinate INS Service Centers.

UNIVERSITY SERVER HACKED

Hackers in Austin, Texas have landed a special coup: they hacked the university's server and stole the data of 55,000 students, graduates and employees of the university. Names, email addresses, and Social Security Numbers - that was what they found. Reportedly, they have not hacked the server just once. According to the server protocols, the server was hacked on February 26 for the first time and a few times again later. Only in the beginning of March was this discovered - university employees discovered the breach. It remains to be seen whether the hackers have used the stolen data improperly.

FAST FOOD WITH INTERNET

McDonald's has started equipping the first of its fast food restaurants with WLAN. The plan is one hour free surfing with each meal. After that, you have to either pay - or eat more. WLAN is becoming more and more popular, it is already available in public parks, beer gardens and cafés. The first ten restaurants who have not only food, but also internet access on the menu will be activated this week in New York. From then on, you can surf the net while you eat - just watch your keyboard. The internet is free for one hour if you buy a meal with fries, coke and burger. After that, you will have to pay $3 per hour - or you just order more food. A popular idea - Starbucks has been doing the same for about one year already. McDonald's promised to have 300 restaurants online by the end of the year - at first only within the US. It remains to be seen when the restaurants abroad will be equipped with the same technology.

SPEAKING OF FRIES: FRENCH FRIES NOW "FREEDOM FRIES"

First, it seemed like a protest against the Iraq policies of France, now it is official:

The US House of Representatives has decided to rename the well known French Fries into Freedom Fries. So, the cafeteria in the House of Representatives will soon serve their fries as a patriotic side dish - according to a decision by the administrative committee under Republican leadership on Tuesday, they are now called Freedom Fries. The menus in the government building are to be changed over the next days. By the way, also the French Toast will be liberated and offered as Freedom Toast in the future. With this renaming decision the government reacted to the decision of many other restaurants throughout the country who had taken French fries off their menus to protest against the French attitude towards the war in Iraq.

BUGGING OF US BOOK STORES

FBI agents may spy on people in book stores and libraries to find out what they are reading. A measure to protect against terrorists, says the Bush administration. A threat to freedom of opinion, say appalled civil rights activists. First booksellers are already destroying their customer lists. Buying objectionable or controversial literature could soon be a thing of the past. For the FBI, this may already make you a potential terrorist. Tomorrow already FBI agents may walk into bookstores and demand to see the customer lists. In order to write down who has bought which book at what time. And then the bookseller has to give them all the customer information - and is not even allowed to tell anyone about it.

That, at least, is what the USA Patriot Act wants, a law by the Bush administration as a consequence of September 11, passed by Congress six weeks after the attacks. The consequence: the government's rights to spy on their citizens have been drastically increased. So now, as a measure of defense against terrorism, the police may ask all businesses for information on the activities of its customers. Also book stores and libraries. Customers are already starting to think twice before buying books that are critical of the government or said to be unpatriotic. Civil rights activist show growing dismay about the consequences of the Patriot Act. And some parliamentarians have already said that at least booksellers should be excluded with another amendment.

BIG BROTHER MAY BE WATCHING YOU

US customs knows everything about you before you have even landed in New York or Los Angeles. Because since May 5 authorities can access the booking databases of all airlines flying to the US and also to European system "Amadeus" (we informed about this). All this, according to an agreement between the EU Commission and the US, is aimed at fighting terrorism. While US customs has been insisting on getting all passport data from the airlines for a long time, the Americans now also want the data from the Passenger Name Record (PNR). In this system is all the data necessary for the booking. A critical point is information about connecting flights, hotel and rental car reservations and credit card numbers that are saved in Amadeus. However, the Americans cannot access the data for returning flights and all flight information may only be accessed up to three days after the flight. By the way, all customers who do not agree to have their data released to US authorities will be excluded from the flight. The airlines are facing a dilemma themselves: if they have a passenger on board whose data has not been submitted to US customs prior to departure, the plane may be denied landing.