Short News

News about the LIFE Act: We discussed the LIFE Act in detail in one of the last newsletters. The ‘deadline' for the visa application was April 30, 2001. Now, a number of people, such as the US president himself, as well as an increasing number of Members of Congress have spoken out in favor of an extension of that deadline, among them also the acting director of US immigration services Kevin Rooney (who usually doesn't openly comment on things like that). One of the reasons - more than 200,000 people eligible for the visa have not yet submitted their applications. The authorities are expecting a total of 2.3 million applications.

Multicultural nation? A recent poll established that the Americans are rather concerned about the rapid population growth. Many of them believe this is due to the increasing diversity of population groups living in the US. Research by the Pew Research Center for population and media shows that more than half of the respondents see the increasing immigrant numbers a ‘bad thing.'

Back to nature...? The Hmong American Community, a charity of the Californian Central Valley, is promoting the development of a vegetable garden farm with a training center near Fresno. The small research and training center is looking for students who have immigrated into the US recently and are interested in setting up their own farm, especially business students.

Senate majority changed Senator James Jeffords, a dinosaur of the Republican party, has announced to leave the party and become an independent. This changes the majority ratio in the Senate in the Democrat's favor and has led to panic reactions on Capitol Hill and in the White House. This is not good for the new president, who has to rely on the slight majority in the Senate for many of his bills.

Jeffords' leaving the party is especially dangerous because the 1.35 trillion tax reform and the reform of the education system has not yet passed Congress. The White House fears that the time frame for both bills will now have to be changed and some changes will become necessary upon request by the Democrats.

The Republicans in turn are now trying to get the Democrat Zell Miller from Georgia back on their side to balance Jeffords' catastrophic decision.

A really young nation ... (some statistics) According to a recent survey by the "Boston Globe," 40% (!) of all people who have immigrated into the US over the past 10 years are between the ages of 10 and 19. The roughly 11 million immigrants over the past 10 years, who have come to the US in the 90s, make up for 1/3 of population growth over this period. Of course, this remarkable trend has serious consequences for US society.

The biggest group of adult immigrants is also very young - the group between 25 and 34-year olds. Since the US population is growing older in average, foreign experts will still be important for the US economy in the future, not only to fill jobs, but also to contribute to the maintenance and expansion of the social security system.