immigrants

The Arab population in the United States has grown more than 75 percent since 1990, more than triple the rate nation’s overall growth, a Census Bureau report released Wednesday shows.

Yet Arabs represent a tiny fraction of the entire population in the United States, estimated at just 0.5 percent. The Census Bureau’s five-year American Community Survey ending in 2010 places the U.S. Arab population at 1.5 million, up from 850,000 in 1990.



The biggest groups are:
Lebanese, estimated at 485,917
Egyptian, 179,853
Syrian, 147,426
Palestinian, 83,241
Moroccan, 74,908
Iraqi, 73,896
Jordanian, 60,056
Yemeni, 29,358

People of Arab ancestry have higher median household incomes than the overall population – $56,433 to $51,914 – with the highest incomes being Lebanese ($67,264) and Egyptian ($62,812).

Arabs also tend to be from larger households, with 2.93 people per household vs. 2.59 for the U.S. population as a whole. Yemeni households average 4.34 people, the census report shows (pdf). See source for more


How Unique is the New U.S. Open Data Policy?


The White House’s new Executive Order may be significantly different than the open data policies that have come before it on the federal level, but where does it stand in a global — and local — context?

Many folks have already jumped at the chance to compare this new US executive order and the new policies that accompany it to a similar public letter issued by UK Prime Minister David Cameron in 2010, but little attention has been paid to one of the new policy’s most substantial provisions: the creation of a public listing of agency databased on an internal audits of information holdings. As administrative as this provision might sound, the creation of this listing (and the accompanying scoping of what information isn’t yet public, but could be released) is part of the next evolution of open data policies (and something Sunlight has long called for as a best practice).

So does this policy put the U.S. on the leading edge?

http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/g...

Feds to Open Data Access in a Big Way

One aspect of the feds’ new Open Data Policy presents both an opportunity and a challenge. It specifically calls for improved interoperability as a way to advance open data implementation. “Right now, standards setting for interoperability seems to be nobody’s job — and the federal government has the opportunity to take the lead here,” said Hudson Hollister of the Data Transparency Coalition.

Making money from accessing the vast amounts of information collected by the U.S. government has been the basis for many commercial enterprises. The widespread use of Census Bureau data alone has been a great business resource for decades — with a relatively new twist as a component of Google Maps.

Now the U.S. government has undertaken a major effort to make tons of federal information from all agencies more accessible for the general public and the business community. The government’s Open Data Policy requires federal agencies to put most of their information resources into electronically accessible configurations.

“One of the things we’re doing to fuel more private sector innovation and discovery is to make vast amounts of America’s data open and easy to access for the first time in history,” said President Obama when he announced the program in a May 9 executive order. The Office of Management Budget supplemented the order with an implementation directive. >>more<<



Transparency and Open Government
Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies

SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public.

Government should be participatory. Public engagement enhances the Government’s effectiveness and improves the quality of its decisions. Knowledge is widely dispersed in society, and public officials benefit from having access to that dispersed knowledge. Executive departments and agencies should offer Americans increased opportunities to participate in policymaking and to provide their Government with the benefits of their collective expertise and information. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public input on how we can increase and improve opportunities for public participation in Government.

Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty III, former White House Chief of Staff for the Clinton administration.

Prior to his tenure in the White House, Mr. McLarty served as Chairman of Arkla, a Fortune 500 natural gas company. During his tenure Arkla grew into the nation’s largest natural gas distributor, with customers in 11 states and significant exploration and pipeline operations. The company was recognized by Forbes and Wall Street Transcript for management excellence, and by other national organizations for environmental initiatives and minority enterprise development. Mr. McLarty began his business career as a third generation participant in McLarty Companies, where he helped build the business his grandfather founded into one of the nation’s largest transportation companies.

Mr. McLarty serves on the boards of a number of corporate and non-profit institutions including Union Pacific, the Acxiom Corporation, the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund, the Council of the Americas, the Inter-American Dialogue, Ford’s Theatre, and the Center for the Study of the Presidency. In addition, he is senior counselor to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Senior International Fellow at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

John Brummett: Mack McLarty and amnesty
Published Thursday, September 06, 2001

In case you wondered what became of Thomas F. “Mack” McLarty, the former Arkla chairman and the first White House chief of staff and later Latin American liaison for his boyhood friend, Bill Clinton, I need only refer you to international political news.
The article revealed that the man who now is Mexico’s foreign minister, Andres Rozental, buttonholed McLarty at a black-tie affair at Tavern on the Green in New York City in the winter of 2000. The Mexican diplomat persuaded McLarty, now an international consultant in partnership with Henry Kissinger, to become the American chairman of a bilateral commission of political, educational and business leaders to study American-Mexican migration under the aegis of the Carnegie Foundation.

The commission’s report, delivered in February by McLarty to Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, recommended a policy commonly referred to, and probably over-stated, as amnesty — meaning a process for legalizing at least some of the millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants gainfully employed in the United States and free of criminal complications except for the basic illegality of their presence. The report became a factor in Bush’s decision to float the idea of amnesty. >>>MORE<<<

WASHINGTON — The political risks of supporting an immigrationoverhaul have long been apparent to Senator John McCain, as evidenced by his evolving position on the topic over the years. This week offered another sharp reminder of what getting out in front of the issue can mean when crowds at back-to-back town-hall-style meetings in Arizona turned hostile toward Mr. McCain’s plan to introduce legislation that could lead to legal residency for some who broke the law in entering the country.

“Everybody in this audience, you’re taking away from Social Security to give it to a dependent class of people,” shouted one man, who Mr. McCain eventually called “a jerk.”

The senator, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, said he was undergoing “an Orwellian experience” as his constituents shouted that he needed to build the “dang fence” that he had once promised in a notable campaign ad. Attendees also suggested that guns were the only way to stop the influx of immigrants from coming across the border. MORE


VIDEO OF TOWN HALL MEETING

Obama’s Policy Positions and Voting Record as State Senator, U.S. Senator, and Presidential Candidate:

During his eight-year career in the Illinois state senate, Barack Obama avoided making controversial votes approximately 130 times — which, according to other Illinois state senators, is much higher than average. Rather than vote “yea” or “nay” on the legislation in question, Obama on those occasions simply voted “present.” In the Illinois state senate, this was the equivalent of a “nay” vote when tallying up support or opposition to a given bill. But, as David Freddoso points out:

“<F>or rhetorical purposes, a ‘present’ vote is different in that critics and journalists must discuss it differently. For example, Barack Obama did not vote against a bill to prevent pornographic book and video stores and strip clubs from setting up within 1,000 feet of schools and churches — he just voted ‘present.’ Obama voted ‘present’ on an almost unanimously passed bill to prosecute students as adults if they fire guns on schol grounds. He voted ‘present’ on the partial-birth abortion ban and other contentious issues …”<1>

Gun Control:
During his time teaching at the University of Chicago, Obama told then-colleague John Lott directly: “I don’t believe people should be able to own guns.”
As a candidate for the Illinois State Senate in 1996, Obama promised to support a ban on “the manufacture, sale & possession of handguns.”

While running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama spoke in favor of federal legislation to block citizens nationwide from receiving concealed-carry permits. “National legislation will prevent other states’ flawed concealed-weapons laws from threatening the safety of Illinois residents,” he said

Criminal Justice:
Obama as a lawmaker opposed the death penalty and authored legislation requiring police to keep records of the race of everyone questioned, detained or arrested.<7>

Obama promised that as President, he would work to ban racial profiling and eliminate racial disparities in criminal sentencing. “The criminal justice system is not color blind,” he said, “It does not work for all people equally, and that is why it’s critical to have a president who sends a signal that we are going to have a system of justice that is not just us, but is everybody.”

Immigration:

Obama’s voting record clearly reflects his desire to expand entitlements for illegal aliens.

Obama opposes immigration raids designed to identify illegal aliens in workplaces or housing units. He says the U.S. should “allow undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.” “When I was a state senator in Illinois,” Obama has said, “I voted to require that illegal aliens get trained, get a license, get insurance to protect public safety. That was my intention. The problem we have here is not driver’s licenses. Undocumented workers do not come here to drive. They’re here to work.” In short, he is in favor ofpermitting illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses.

Obama voted in favor of allowing former illegal aliens who had previously worked at jobs under phony or stolen Social Security numbers, to someday reap the benefits of whatever Social Security contributions they may have made while they were so employed. Much MORE