Targeting Employers of Undocumented Immigrants

The Obama administration is quietly trying to deal with undocumented immigration by conducting silent raids of companies in which they audit records to determine which workers are here legally and which are not, and the undocumented workers are fired on the spot. The employers then claim that they are left without workers, while some members of Congress complain that the policy is too lax—it leads to workers being fired, but not deported—at a time when Americans are desperately seeking jobs. Somehow these two perspectives seem to be miles apart.

Undocumented Immigrants in Israel

The Israeli population is growing more slowly than the Palestinian population and this has created labor shortages in Israel that were once met by Palestinians, but since the intifada, the New York Times reports that Israel has imported workers from elsewhere in the world, especially Asia, and is now facing the problems of illegal immigrants, human trafficking, and the exploitation of foreign workers. This adds a whole new demographic dimension to the human drama in this volatile region.

World Population Day

The 11th of July was World Population Day, as declared by the UNFPA. The United Nations is emphasizing the importance of responding to the census as we move into a new decade of census-taking, whereas USAID naturally emphasizes the family planning programs that it supports as a way of empowering couples to have no more children than they want. This is probably as close as either organization wants to get to endorsing anything that might be thought of as a population policy.