CUNY Academic Commons

Frontier Justice: The Global Refugee Crisis and What to Do About It By Andy Lamey (Doubleday Canada, 416 pp., $39.95) Since the end of World War II, there hasn’t been a time when refugees and asylum seekers didn’t factor into national politics. First, there were Jewish refugees escaping the Nazis. Then there were those fleeing the […]

It’s graduation season. Famous people are out making commencement speeches and images of bright shiny students in their caps and gowns populate the evening news. Job prospects for new college graduates aren’t the best, but that’s not stopping people from crossing the stage to pick up their diplomas. The truth is, even in a recession, […]

By now, we’ve all heard of the boats leaving Libya and Tunisia bound for Malta and Italy’s Lampedusa. It’s not a particularly new phenomenon, though the increased numbers resulting from the Arab Spring upheavals are.  This week, though, more than one actor chose to ignore a failing boat of refugees adrift in the Mediterranean, resulting […]

This week, Attorney General Eric Holder continued to chip away at the Defense of Marriage Act. While not a big story when compared with the demise of Osama bin Laden, the weakening of this ugly piece of legislation means a great deal to a great many.  On Thursday, Holder vacated a Board of Immigration Appeals […]

Lampedusa. It’s a tiny Italian island that lies closer to North Africa than it does to the Italian mainland.  European vacationers know it as a holiday destination.  Thousands of African economic migrants and asylum seekers know it as their best hope to enter Europe. Since mid-February, this image has become more reflective of Lampedusa than this one . That’s […]

After the DREAM Act died last spring, it seemed little hope existed for kids brought to this country illegally by their parents. Stuck somewhere in between the countries they were born in and the country they grew up in, undocumented students lacked options following high school. This legislative season is, however, offering some surprises, including […]

When I read about a displaced Japanese woman named Kyoko, my first urge was congratulate her on her organizational brilliance and foresight. Kyoko has tracked each of her family’s movements on a pocket calendar from the day they left their home in Iwaki on March 12 th to their first night in a Tokyo shelter on the […]

My heart is in my throat. We’ve all seen the same footage: black rolling water, splintered villages, floating fires, and the blank haunted stares of survivors. This is Japan. Right now. But last year in Haiti we saw similar buildings in similar heaps. We saw vast muddy waters move across Pakistan. We watched buildings disappear […]

I am not an expert on the economy or on balancing anything more substantial than my checkbook, but I do know that many of the programs slashed by House Republicans this week are not the cause of our financial woes. Groups specifically targeted include homeless veterans, low income women and children, those benefitting from mosquito […]

The annual attack on the 14 th Amendment and birthright citizenship is underway. Jus soli is the granting of citizenship to anyone born within a country regardless of the citizenship of the parent. Those seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship claim that a misinterpretation of the 14 th Amendment has led to a plague of anchor babies. Each baby […]