From the Archives: Actress Tracey Ullman reflects on citizenship and equality at Monticello

Actress Tracey Ullman reflects on citizenship and equality at Monticello
July 4, 2010 4:28 PM MST

Tracey Ullman at Monticello, July 4, 2010

At the 48th annual Independence Day naturalization ceremony at Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello on July 4, the featured speaker was actress and comedienne Tracey Ullman, who has won seven Emmy Awards® for her work in television. Her self-named Fox-TV show of the 1980s introduced the world interstitially to The Simpsons.

Ullman is a dual British-American citizen. Born and raised in Slough, England, she has lived and worked in the United States for 25 years and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2006.

In her remarks to the 71 immigrants from more than two dozen countries (from Afghanistan and Armenia to Uzbekistan and Vietnam), Ullman emphasized how her early impressions of America were those of “confidence,” that the American attitude was one of “if you want it, come and get it.”

After the ceremony, Ullman sat down for a one-on-one interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner, answering questions about citizenship, the American dream, and what she finds valuable in the American founding.

Subjects and Citizens
Noting that it was recently revealed that, in his draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote the word “subjects” and smudged it out so he could replace it with “citizens,” Ullman talked about the difference between “subject” and “citizen,” because she has been both.

She said she was pleased to learn about Jefferson’s editing, that “he changed it, that he moved on, that he made the change.”

“Yes,” she said, “I have been a subject and now a citizen and it’s interesting. I just think that we are equal. There’s no one better than us. We’re not paying people millions of pounds to be better than us,” as the British pay their royal family.

“I’ve never been a royalist,” Ullman explained, “and that [equality] is something that really appealed to me about America.”

Image of Confidence

When she was growing up as a girl in England, Ullman absorbed many images of America that she saw on television. What most impressed her, she said, “was the Olympics,” not only because American athletes won so many gold medals, but “it was the confidence,” they exhibited.

In addition, she said, “it was that ‘you can be anyone you want to be’” attitude and “kindness,” as well as “inspirational people like Lily Tomlin. I impersonated her at my school when I was like 10. I said, ‘I want to be Lily Tomlin. I want to be Gilda Radner.’”

Ullman joked that “our images of America were like Dallas, when I was a kid, like soap operas and things” but even so, when she first arrived in the United States at the age of 20, she was “very inspired.”

Citizenship Test
Since Ullman so recently went through the naturalization process, she spoke about the most surprising things she learned as she prepared for the citizenship test.

One was, she laughed, a question about two forms used by the immigration authorities, the N-200 and the N-400. That’s “a real question,” she said, and applicants had to know the difference between those forms. “I think they’ve dropped that one now, it’s a little obscure.”

She was most impressed, however, by the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, which is why, she said, it is so inspiring “to be here, where Thomas Jefferson” lived. He was “so forward thinking,” for his time, Ullman remarked, and that is why she remembers “really being impressed with the words of the Founding Fathers, in particular Thomas Jefferson, who was just so enlightened and so brave and so incredible at that time and still holds up” today.

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on July 4, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Guest Post: The Slippery Slope to a Constitution-Free America

By John W. Whitehead

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”—Benjamin Franklin

The ease with which Americans are prepared to welcome boots on the ground, regional lockdowns, routine invasions of their privacy, and the dismantling of every constitutional right intended to serve as a bulwark against government abuses is beyond unnerving.

I am referring at this particular moment in time to President Trump’s decision to deploy military forces to the border in a supposed bid to protect the country from invading bands of illegal immigrants.

John W. Whitehead

This latest attempt to bamboozle the citizenry into relinquishing even more of their rights is commonly referred to as letting the wolves guard the henhouse.

Never mind that using the U.S. military as a police force constitutes a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. Never mind that America’s police have already been transformed into a standing army. Never mind that the borders have always been porous—a fact that the government and its corporate partners profit from greatly when convenient. Never mind that Trump’s infatuation with heavy-handed military and police power could pave the way for far greater threats to our liberties than a few underfed, unemployed migrants entering the country.

We are long past the stage where the government—at any level—abides by restrictions on its powers.
What we are dealing with is a run-away government hyped up on its own power, whose policies are dictated more by paranoia than need.

Watching the state of our nation unravel, I can’t help but think of Nazi Field Marshal Hermann Goering’s remarks during the Nuremberg trials. As Goering noted:

It is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

It works the same in every country.

The same propaganda and police state tactics that worked for Adolf Hitler 80 years ago continue to be employed with great success in a post-9/11 America.

We keeping returning to the same sticking point, forced to make the same choice over and over again: essential liberty or temporary safety.

Time and again, we keep sacrificing our liberties for phantom promises of safety.

Whatever the threat to so-called security—whether it’s rumored weapons of mass destruction, school shootings, or alleged acts of terrorism—it doesn’t take much for the American people to march in lockstep with the government’s dictates, even if it means submitting to martial law, having their homes searched, and being stripped of one’s constitutional rights at a moment’s notice.

Moreover, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s a Democrat or a Republican at the helm, because the bureaucratic mindset on both sides of the aisle now seems to embody the same philosophy of authoritarian government.

The lesson is this: once a free people allows the government to make inroads into their freedoms or uses those same freedoms as bargaining chips for security, it quickly becomes a slippery slope to outright tyranny.

This is fast becoming a government that has no respect for the freedom or lives of its citizenry.
Yet there are warning signs we cannot afford to ignore.

First off, there is no such thing as a “border” in the eyes of these military patrols. The entire United States of America has become a Constitution-free zone.

According to journalist Todd Miller, the “once thin borderline of the American past” is “an ever-thickening band, now extending 100 miles inland around the United States—along the 2,000-mile southern border, the 4,000-mile northern border and both coasts... This ‘border’ region now covers places where two-thirds of the US population (197.4 million people) live… The ‘border’ has by now devoured the full states of Maine and Florida and much of Michigan.”

As part of its so-called efforts to keep the nation safe from a host of threats, the U.S. government has declared that ever-expanding border region a Constitution-free zone.

Miller explains:

“In these vast domains, Homeland Security authorities can institute roving patrols with broad, extra-constitutional powers backed by national security, immigration enforcement and drug interdiction mandates. There, the Border Patrol can set up traffic checkpoints and fly surveillance drones overhead with high-powered cameras and radar that can track your movements. Within twenty-five miles of the international boundary, CBP agents can enter a person’s private property without a warrant.”

To recap: 66% of Americans (2/3 of the U.S. population, 197.4 million people) now live within this 100-mile-deep, Constitution-free zone.

That’s a lot of ground to declare off limits to the Constitution.

The result, as Miller notes, “is a permanent, low-intensity state of exception that makes the expanding borderlands a ripe place to experiment with tearing apart the Constitution, a place where not just undocumented border-crossers, but millions of borderland residents have become the targets of continual surveillance.”

Be warned: government agents continue to roam further afield of the so-called border as part of their so-called crackdown on illegal immigration, drugs and trafficking. Consequently, greater numbers of Americans are being subject to warrantless searches, ID checkpoints, transportation checks, and even surveillance on private property.

Second, this de facto standing army that has been imposed on the American people is in clear violation of the spirit—if not the letter of the law—of the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the government’s ability to use the U.S. military as a police force.

America’s police forces—which look like, dress like, and act like the military—have undeniably become a “standing” or permanent army, one composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband, which is exactly what the Founders feared. With the police increasingly posing as pseudo-military forces—complete with weapons, uniforms, assault vehicles, etc.—a good case could be made for the fact that SWAT team raids, which break down the barrier between public and private property, have done away with this critical safeguard.

Unfortunately, the increasing militarization of the police, the use of sophisticated weaponry against Americans and the government's increasing tendency to employ military personnel domestically have all but eviscerated historic prohibitions such as the Posse Comitatus Act.

Indeed, there are a growing number of exceptions to which Posse Comitatus does not apply. These exceptions serve to further acclimate the nation to the sight and sounds of military personnel on American soil and the imposition of martial law.

This begs the question: if the borders constitute a Constitution-free zone, who will police those policing our borders and hold them accountable for misconduct and wrongdoing?

We’ve seen what happens to domestic police charged with wrongdoing: they get little more than a slap on the wrist. Just recently, in fact, the U.S. Supreme Court shielded a police officer who shot a woman four times in her driveway as she stood talking to a friend while holding a kitchen knife. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor acknowledged in her dissent in Kisela v. Hughes, “It tells officers that they can shoot first and think later, and it tells the public that palpably unreasonable conduct will go unpunished.”

Third, there’s the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, an arm of the Department of Homeland Security made up of more than 60,000 Customs and Border Protection employees, and supplemented by the National Guard and the U.S. military. 

A national police force imbued with all the brutality, ineptitude and corruption such a role implies, the DHS—aptly described as a “wasteful, growing, fear-mongering beast”—has been ruthlessly efficient when it comes to establishing what the Founders feared most: a standing army on American soil.

The third largest federal agency behind the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense, the DHS—with its 240,000 full-time workers, $40 billion budget and sub-agencies that include the Coast Guard, Customs and Border Protection, Secret Service, Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)—extends its tentacles into every aspect of American life.

In fact, just about every nefarious deed, tactic or thuggish policy advanced by the government today can be traced back to the DHS, its police state mindset, and the billions of dollars it distributes to police agencies in the form of grants to transform them into extensions of the military: militarizing police, incentivizing SWAT teams, spying on protesters, stockpiling ammunition, distributing license plate readers to police agencies, contracting to build detention camps, tracking cell-phones with Stingray devices, carrying out military drills and lockdowns in American cities, using the TSA to carry out soft target checkpoints, directing government workers to spy on Americans, conducting widespread spying networks using fusion centers, utilizing drones and other spybots, funding city-wide surveillance cameras, and carrying out Constitution-free border control searches.

Finally, there’s this whole question of martial law.

Technically, a good case can be made that the Constitution-free border regions within the United States are already under martial law carried out by a standing army comprised of militarized police and the U.S. military.

Then again, for all intents and perhaps, the American police state is already governed by martial law, is it not? Battlefield tactics. Militarized police. Riot and camouflage gear. Armored vehicles. Mass arrests. Pepper spray. Tear gas. Batons. Strip searches. Drones. Less-than-lethal weapons unleashed with deadly force. Rubber bullets. Water cannons. Concussion grenades. Intimidation tactics. Brute force. Laws conveniently discarded when it suits the government’s purpose.

This is what martial law looks like, when a government disregards constitutional freedoms and imposes its will through military force, only this is martial law without any government body having to declare it. This is martial law packaged as law and order and sold to the public as necessary for keeping the peace.

It doesn’t matter whether the so-called threats to national security posed by terrorists, extremists or immigrant armies ever became a reality. Once the government acquires—and uses—additional powers, it does not voluntarily relinquish them.

The damage has been done.

For those who can read the writing on the wall, it’s all starting to make sense: the military drills carried out in major American cities, the VIPR inspections at train depots and bus stations, the SWAT team raids on unsuspecting homeowners, the Black Hawk helicopters patrolling American skies, the massive ammunition purchases by various federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Education, the IRS and the Social Security Administration.

Viewed in conjunction with the government’s increasing use of involuntary commitment laws to declare individuals mentally ill and lock them up in psychiatric wards for extended periods of time, the NDAA’s provision allowing the military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, including American citizens, only codifies this unraveling of our constitutional framework.

Throw in the profit-driven corporate incentive to jail Americans in private prisons, as well as the criminalizing of such relatively innocent activities as holding Bible studies in one’s home or sharing unpasteurized goat cheese with members of one’s community, and it becomes clear that “we the people” are the real enemies of the state.

We’re the ones in the government’s crosshairs.

That wall being built at the border won’t be just for keeping illegal immigrants out—it’s to keep us trapped within the punishing confines of the American police state.

Our freedoms—willingly relinquished in response to endless scare tactics—have been breached, undermined, and eroded time and time again. We’re being conditioned to this life in a police state.
As for this latest maneuver, it’s just another means of poking a hole in the already-tattered fabric of the Constitution.

In other words, it’s a test to see how hard we will fight to hold onto what remains of our freedoms.

If this is a test, we’re failing abysmally.

Face it: we are sliding fast down a slippery slope to a Constitution-free America.

We’ve been heading in this direction for some time now, but this downward trajectory has picked up speed since Donald Trump became president.

This state of near-lockdown has been helped along by government policies and court rulings that have made it easier for the police to shoot unarmed citizens, for law enforcement agencies to seize cash and other valuable private property under the guise of asset forfeiture, for military weapons and tactics to be deployed on American soil, for government agencies to carry out round-the-clock surveillance, for profit-driven private prisons to lock up greater numbers of Americans, for homes to be raided and searched under the pretext of national security, for American citizens to be labeled terrorists and stripped of their rights merely on the say-so of a government bureaucrat, and for pre-crime tactics to be adopted nationwide that strip Americans of the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty and creates a suspect society in which we are all guilty until proven otherwise.

All of these assaults on the constitutional framework of the nation have been sold to the public as necessary for national security.

Time and again, the public has fallen for the ploy hook, line and sinker.

We’re being reeled in, folks, and you know what happens when we get to the end of that line? We’ll be cleaned, gutted and strung up.

Incredibly, no matter how many times Americans are lied to, cheated, swindled, robbed, manipulated, and doublecrossed, they still keep falling for the government’s tired, thinly disguised ploys to amass more power at the expense of the citizenry.

Remember when George W. Bush claimed the country was being invaded by terrorists post-9/11 and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the government and its gun-toting agents greater powers to spy, search, detain and arrest?

The terrorist invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired police powers made possible by the USA Patriot Act.

Remember when Barack Obama claimed the country was being invaded by domestic terrorists and insisted the only way to keep America safe was to give the military the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights, label them extremists, and detain them indefinitely without trial?

The invasion never really happened, but the government kept its newly acquired detention powers made possible by the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Now you have Donald Trump claiming the country is being invaded by immigrants and insisting that the only way to keep America safe is to empower the military to “assist” with border control.

Mind you, Trump is not the first president to deploy military forces to the border.

Nevertheless, you can rest assured that this latest call for boots on the ground (whether those boots belong to the National Guard or the armed forces is mere semantics) to police the American border is yet another Trojan Horse that will inflict all manner of nasty police state surprises on an unsuspecting populace.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the menace of a national police force—a.k.a. a standing army—vested with the power to completely disregard the Constitution, cannot be overstated, nor can its danger be ignored.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.

Reprinted by permission of The Rutherford Institute.

Briefing with Congressman Tom Garrett and Afghan and Czech Ambassadors

Fifth District Congressman Tom Garrett on Friday hosted several diplomats on a tour of Thomas Jefferson’s home at Monticello. After the tour, he and two of them – Ambassador Hamdullah Mohib from Afghanistan and Ambassador Hynek Kmonícek from the Czech Republic – answered questions from the local Charlottesville news media.

Garrett explained that even though, as a slaveholder, Thomas Jefferson was a flawed individual, the Declaration of Independence that he drafted was a “brilliant” document that led to freedom not only in the United States but around the world. Both Ambassador Mohib and Ambassador Kmonícek acknowledged that they learned things about U.S. history and Jefferson himself by taking the tour of Monticello, and that there are lessons they could convey to their compatriots back home.

(Ambassador Kmonícek joked that, where he comes from, a 200-year-old house is considered new.)

You can see the entire press conference here:

Congressman Garrett also answered questions about current domestic policy. Tyler Hawn of the Charlottesville Newsplex asked him about the budget bill that was passed late in the night and signed Friday morning by President Trump, and whether the process was frustrating. Garrett replied (starting at the 9:28 minute mark in the video):

It’s ironic that we stand at the home of Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, which was signed by people who knew when they put their name on that paper that if they were captured they would be killed. We’ve devolved into a political class with the inability to say “no.”

I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act even though people would describe me as a hawk, because thirty-plus years ago department of defense agreed with other federal agencies to be audited – it’s never been audited.

To continue to spend and spend and spend is a symptom of a political class without the courage to do what they think is right when it’s too difficult and standing for reelection having done what you said, even when it was difficult or uncomfortable, is the hallmark of who we are supposed to be as a people.

I voted against that. I think President Trump was wrong to capitulate on heightened spending. He can spin it however he likes. We need to draw lines and assure that taxpayer dollars are being spent efficiently and on the core functions of government. We’re not doing that. It wasn’t OK when President Obama spent profligately. It’s not OK when President Trump does it. So, yes, I’m frustrated.

Garrett also answered a question (about 10:40 in the video) about pending immigration legislation and how it will affect participants in DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

That’s going to start in the Senate, for sure, because that’s the chamber where I think they can get something out. I’ve spoken with dozens of DACA recipients – dozens may be low – they can prove it because they’ve filmed me. I’d love to have a solution for DACA. I don’t think deferred action is the proper long-term solution but I’m not going to vote for anything until we secure our southern border.

To do the same thing again and again and expect a different result is the definition of insanity. And I’ve said this to these people with whom I’ve spoken: I think border security should be this AND that, not a this THEN that. We tried this in ’86 with a this-then-that and it failed. And I haven’t had any of the people with whom I’ve spoken who are DACA recipients have a problem with that.

So, I think if we set aside some of the hyperbolic rhetoric that we can get something done but right now people need to step back from the rhetorical edge, acknowledge the existential reality to the young people who are DACA recipients, and also acknowledge that it makes no sense not to take action to secure our southern border.

There are plenty of other gems in the conversation, from both the ambassadors and from Congressman Garrett, who said he would like to do more programs like this, perhaps three or four times each year, bringing ambassadors from Washington to Charlottesville to visit both the University of Virginia and Monticello.

In addition to Tyler Hawn of the Newsplex, Pete DeLuca of NBC29 covered the press event in the Robert H. and Clarice Smith Gallery at Monticello's David M. Rubenstein Visitor Center.

This article was previously published, in slightly different form, on Bearing Drift.

From the Archives: What is the DREAM Act, and why is it important? A conversation with Claire Gastañaga

What is the DREAM Act, and why is it important? A conversation with Claire Gastañaga
September 5, 2010 9:05 PM MST

At Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s town hall meeting in Harrisonburg on August 26, one of the questions from the audience was posed by a young lady wearing an academic mortarboard.

According to the Harrisonburg Times, the questioner was Isabel Castillo, a magna cum laude graduate of Eastern Mennonite University. Castillo identified herself as an undocumented immigrant who was brought to the United States as a 6-year-old child. She asked McDonnell whether he supports the DREAM Act; he said he does not.

The DREAM Act (an acronym of the title of the Senate version of the bill, S. 729, the “Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act”) would help regularize the immigration status of undocumented students.

The day after McDonnell’s town hall, the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner spoke with Claire Gastañaga, a Richmond-based attorney and self-described “immigrant advocate,” who was attending the weekly Fridays After Five concert at the Charlottesville Pavilion.

‘Expedited path’
“What the DREAM Act does,” she explained, is to allow “an expedited path for children who were brought here by their parents, who made no decision on their own to come here, to regularize their status, to become legal by becoming full participants in our society and preparing themselves to make a meaningful contribution.”

The legislation, she said, “would allow somebody who had been to public schools in the United States, who had grown up here for a period of time, but who was technically not here with [legal] authority, to make commitments and make certain pledges and then be able to go to college and become fully functioning parts of our community and our society by becoming legal permanent residents and ultimately opening the door to citizenship.”

The proposed law would not create “reverse-chain migration” that would permit the affected students to serve as an anchor for other members of their families seeking to immigrate to the United States.

‘Live the American dream’

Most of those for whom the law would apply “have been paying taxes because they’ve been in the community,” explained Gastañaga. “They have strong connections. Many of them came here when they were 2 or 3 years old. They speak English. They have no affinity for their prior country. They consider themselves Americans. What it does is allow them to actually become Americans and to live the American dream.”

Passage of the DREAM Act has been held up because both sides in the immigration debate – those who want stricter laws and those who want more liberalized laws – have deferred action on it in favor of the types of comprehensive immigration reform that they prefer.

‘Being held hostage’
The bill has been “caught up in this kind of all or nothing environment,” Gastañaga lamented. “It’s being held hostage because some people think it’s so attractive for bipartisan support that it’s somehow a carrot to bring people into the conversation who wouldn’t otherwise participate.”

Gastañaga thinks “that’s a mistake,” mentioning that the DREAM Act is falling between the cracks just like the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act (HR 1136) and a proposal for agricultural jobs.

Both sides are responsible for this delay, she said.

“The Hispanic Caucus won’t let anything go forward if it’s not comprehensive, and the folks on the other side won’t let anything go forward unless it includes their secure borders” features of comprehensive reform. “So everybody’s holding these things hostage,” she said.

Bipartisan support
Neither of Virginia’s senators (Jim Webb and Mark Warner) have cosponsored the DREAM Act. The House version of the bill (known as the American Dream Act, HR 1751) has only one cosponsor from Virginia, Representative Jim Moran (D-VA8). Both bills have bipartisan support.

GOP cosponsors in the House include Joseph Cao (R-LA2) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL18). Senate Republican cosponsors include Richard Lugar of Indiana, the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee. Nicole Allan, writing for Atlantic.com, called the DREAM Act “An Immigration Measure Republicans Could Get Behind.”



Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 3, 2010. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

From the Archives: Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode talks politics on Labor Day

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on September 3, 2012. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site went dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Constitution Party presidential nominee Virgil Goode talks politics on Labor Day

Former Virginia congressman Virgil Goode is running a populist campaign for President as the nominee of the Constitution Party, but first he has to face a hurdle in his home state, where the Republican Party is challenging the validity of the petitions Goode circulated to place his name on the ballot.

The Republican challenge will be formally presented to the State Board of Elections at the board’s regular meeting on the morning of September 4 in Richmond.

Goode spoke to the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner at the annual Buena Vista Labor Day parade and candidates forum, saying his campaign is preparing a response to the GOP’s attempt to get him off the ballot.

“We’re going to present a response to the State Board on [Tuesday], if they will accept it then,” Goode said.

‘Voters deserve a choice’
The Republican Party of Virginia, he explained, “is challenging the Libertarians and us. It’s really sad. They’re trying to stamp out persons who have differing views and giving the voters a choice. I think voters deserve to have a choice.”

Drawing an analogy, Goode pointed to “the squelching of Ron Paul at the Republican convention” as a similar tactic by the GOP establishment.

In Tampa, he said, Congressman Paul was faced with “changing the rules right when [he] got there after he had already met the rules. He should have had some role; he didn’t.”

Now, he said, “in Virginia they’re trying to get us off the ballot any way they can [but] I hope the State Board will see through what the Republican Party is doing.”

Goode affirmed that the State Board of Elections had found that his campaign did “have sufficient signatures statewide and in every district,” contrary to the assertions being made by Republican lawyers.

Differences with Greens and Libertarians
Unless the Republican challenges are successful, there will be three third-party presidential candidates on the ballot in Virginia: Goode, Green Party nominee Jill Stein, and Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson.

Goode said he parts company from the other two candidates.

“On social issues we differ significantly,” he said. “I’m pro-life and pro-traditional marriage and I don’t believe either of them are.”

On the other hand, he added, “I’m for balancing the budget now; I think Gary [Johnson] shares that with me.”

Restricting legal immigration
Goode pointed out that he is “the only candidate running for president who recognizes the need for jobs in America to go to American citizens first. I’m calling for a near-complete moratorium on green card admissions into the United States. Last year, for example, we had 1.2 million admitted green card holders. This takes jobs from U.S. citizens. A green card holder can get a job in about any state doing about anything. And those jobs should go to American citizens when unemployment is at 8.3 percent.”

In his speech at the Buena Vista LaborFest, Goode elaborated his stance on immigration, noting that he would maintain the ban on legal immigrants to the United States “until the unemployment rate is below 5 percent.”

Goode’s goals for his presidential campaign are modest and ideologically populist.

“We hope America eventually will wake up and say, ‘We don’t want either the Democrats or Republicans.’”

Both those parties, he explained, “are controlled by multibillionaire interests with the SuperPACs funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to both sides. We’re a grassroots [campaing] and 2012 may be the year that America says, ‘I’m tired of the big money controlling the Republicans and the big money controlling the Democrats [so] I’m going to vote for an ordinary, average citizen running a grassroots, shoe-leather campaign, Virgil Goode.’”

Western strategy
Although his career in politics in Virginia has spanned more than three decades, Goode expects to win more votes in other states.

“I think in some of the western states we’re going to do well. I think in Wyoming we’ll do well. We’ve got some support in Ohio, some support in Florida, so we’re going to do well in a number of states.”

He added that he is “hoping to be on the ballot in New York and get some votes there” and that he is “on the write-in ballot in Texas. I think we’ll get some votes in Texas and North Carolina” where he is also a write-in candidate.

Asked to reveal his preference in the U.S. Senate race in Virginia this year, where former Governors George Allen and Tim Kaine are facing each other, Goode demurred.

“I’ll be voting,” he smiled. “I like one candidate better than the other but my focus right now is on the presidential race and I’m going to be voting for Virgil Goode for president.”

Suggested Links

Libertarian author Brian Doherty compares Ron Paul and Gary Johnson
Presidential hopeful Gary Johnson on health care, marriage, and Colbert
Rasmussen Reports founder discusses opinion trends, future of polling methods
Author David Lampo brings gay-rights message to conservative Republicans
Michael Barone comments on Virginia politics, campaigns, and elections

From the Archives: Immigration laws may make United States poorer, says economist Daniel Lin

Publisher's note: This article was originally published on Examiner.com on February 22, 2014. The Examiner.com publishing platform was discontinued July 1, 2016, and its web site was scheduled to go dark on or about July 10, 2016.  I am republishing this piece in an effort to preserve it and all my other contributions to Examiner.com since April 6, 2010. It is reposted here without most of the internal links that were in the original.

Immigration laws may make United States poorer, says economist Daniel Lin

America is, “on average, poorer” because immigration laws limit the number of willing workers who can come to the United States and offer their services to willing employers.

That was one of the points made by economist Daniel Lin during an interview with the Charlottesville Libertarian Examiner after he delivered a lecture at the University of Virginia on the topic, "Who Wins? Who Loses? The Economic Effects of Immigration."

Educated at UCLA and George Mason University, Lin teaches economics at American University, where his research interests include the industrial organization of entertainment industries, the theory of the firm, and the antitrust implications of various theories of competition. His lecture at UVA was sponsored by Young Americans for Liberty and the Institute for Humane Studies.

“Most of the discussion about whether we should allow more immigrants” into the United States, Lin said in the interview, focuses on the question, “Is the increase in well-being that we see for the immigrants, is that enough to justify the fact that Americans suffer?”

'Foreigners benefit us'
Even if you don't “say that foreigners are worth just as much as Americans,” he continued, “you can say that we should focus on Americans first.”

Still, Lin added, “what this discussion is missing is: Do we really know what's happening to Americans? And are we really paying attention to how much foreigners benefit us when they come here?”

The purpose of his lecture, he said, was to point out how “we're not really sure about either of those things. It turns out the effects on Americans, when we allow more foreigners, are not conclusively negative.”

Some “respectable economists,” he explained, argue that “when we allow more foreigners in, it allows more Americans to specialize in higher-wage jobs, to do more,” and the wages of Americans “go up.”

Complementing Americans
Part of the reason for this is complementarity, meaning that immigrants do jobs that free up Americans to do other jobs, often jobs that pay higher wages and are more productive.

“When we see workers coming in,” Lin explained, “we often think that they directly compete with all Americans, but that's not quite correct. When new workers come into this country, they are also complements to American workers.”

He offered the example of someone who is a programmer or a scientist.

“If you have that person mow his own lawn, or cook his own food, or make his own clothes, he's going to have to take time away from being a scientist [or] being a programmer,” he said.

If, instead, someone else performs those tasks, the American “can focus more time on being a scientist, being a programmer, and do more work, be more productive,” Lin explained. “The helper is not a direct competitor to the scientist or the programmer or the teacher or researcher, whatever.”

The immigrant is instead “a complement, who makes that person [the American] better off. That is why you don't see people who are hiring nannies or gardeners recoiling when they do that. They're not forced to do those things. They want to do those things. It's the laws that are trying to prevent those things from happening.”

The people “who are doing the hiring and the people who are doing the working,” Lin pointed out “both benefit when they are allowed to contract with each other.”

Making Americans poorer
Having laws that impede immigration into the United States makes everybody poorer, he explained.

“The current laws allow foreigners to come in but it is a trickle compared to the number of people who want to come in and the number of people who Americans want to hire,” Lin said.

“If you look at the waiting list for visas” for people who want to work in the United States, which are often multiple-years long, Lin said, “we certainly can conclude that America is, on average, poorer because we block these types of contracts from happening – these exchanges from happening.”

When people who want to work in the United States “are being prevented from coming here and the Americans who would benefit from having these extra workers are not allowed to have those benefits,” he argued, “we certainly do see Americans on the whole being poorer than otherwise they would be.”

The stereotype that immigrants are hard-working and ambitious is “rooted in truth,” Lin said, because of “selection bias” that comes from people who are “willing to overcome the cultural differences, the language differences, moving apart from [their] home town [and] family,” in order to come here to work, as well as who are “willing to put up with a lot of bureaucracy” to get that “golden ticket” permitting them to work in the United States.

SUGGESTED LINKS

Charlottesville entrepreneur Paul Jones sells non-lethal self-defense products
What is the DREAM Act, and why is it important? A conversation with Claire Gastañaga
Omidyar Network's Karol Boudreaux offers optimistic view of African economies
Economist Peter Boettke deflates candidates’ concept of ‘energy independence’
James Robinson discusses 'why nations fail' at George Mason University

Original URL:  http://www.examiner.com/article/immigration-laws-may-make-united-states-poorer-says-economist-daniel-lin

Why Is This Crime Not Like the Other?

In a letter to the editor of the Washington Post published January 3 (and the print editions of January 4), Mark S. Allen of Alexandria sets up a hypothetical case in which he robbed a bank 17 years ago, invested the money, raised a family, and lived an otherwise exemplary life until his bank robbery was discovered by police and he had to face the consequences. "Should I be prosecuted," he asks, "or does the fact that I built a model family exempt me from punishment for my crime?"

He then compares this to another man's situation recently described in a Post news article:

Now try this question: How is this different from the situation facing Jorge Penate, who broke U.S. immigration law when he entered the United States in 1997, as reported in the Dec. 30 Metro story “A family’s uncertain future”?

The difference should be apparent.

Crossing a border without proper paperwork is a crime only because the government says it is. Robbing a bank is a crime because it violates the rights of other people (the bank's owners, its creditors and account holders, customers, bystanders).

To compare breaking an arbitrary rule to a clear violation of someone's rights indicates that the letter-writer has not thought his simile through, and that he does not understand what a real crime is compared to one that is politically created.

More Video from the 2008 Virginia Film Festival

The past couple of weeks have been unusually busy for me, so it has taken some time to edit the video recordings I made of several of the introductions and post-screening discussions that took place at the Virginia Film Festival during the last two days of October and the first two days of November.

I previously posted video clips of the arrival of celebrities at the opening of the festival (and thanks to the Movie Monday Blog Carnival for linking to that post at Observations from Missy's Window) and the panel discussion on Lake City (which opens this weekend) with co-stars Sissy Spacek and Troy Garity and co-directors Perry Moore and Hunter Hill.

After the big opening of Lake City on Thursday evening, filmgoers dispersed -- some to the gala party, some to additional screenings.

My choice was to attend a screening of George Pal's 1952 film version of The War of the Worlds. (Earlier in the evening, a small audience at the University of Virginia Observatory were able to listen to the radio play of the same name, the one directed by Orson Welles that terrorized the nation precisely on October 30, 1938.)

The film was introduced by Justin Humphreys, who is writing a biography of producer George Pal.

On Friday morning, I saw John Sturges' 1955 film, Bad Day at Black Rock, starring Spencer Tracy, Robert Ryan, and a cast of some of Hollywood's best character actors (Oscar-winners Ernest Borgnine and Walter Brennan, to name two). The screening was followed by a panel discussion featuring the director's son, Michael Sturges, and led by Sean McCord. There were about 200 high school students in the audience, who were seeing the film as part of their studies. (My video from that event is still being processed, and I will add it here later.) Following Bad Day at Black Rock, I was able to see -- for the first time on a big screen -- the Robert Wise/Jerome Robbins 1961 film version of Leonard Bernstein and Steven Sondheim's West Side Story. In the discussion that followed, it was noted that librettist Arthur Laurents is directing a new stage production of West Side Story, which will, in fact, have a pre-Broadway tryout at Washington's National Theatre in December, just as the original production did back in 1957. (Not a bad project for a nonagenarian.) Having seen West Side Story on stage many times, including one particularly memorable West End revival, and on television once or twice, the wide-screen (Super Panavision 70), full Technicolor version was quite an experience. Some things don't hold up well -- the fake slang terms, for instance, are even less believable on screen than they are on stage -- but the overall production still looks like something that deserved the many awards it received. The discussion was led by Rich Collins of the University of Virginia and Ted McKosky of Radford University.

Part I: Part II:

That night there was an unusual panel discussion featuring director Rodrigo Garcia via Skype (he was in Los Angeles) and producer Julie Lynn, with co-star David Morse, discussing the new film, Passengers. (I am still processing this video, as well. Look for it later.) The last screening I attended on October 31 was Galaxy Quest, the 1999 parody of sci-fi television starring Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, and Justin Long (among others: look for a pre-Office Rainn Wilson in a small supporting role as a space alien). Galaxy Quest was introduced by producer Mark Johnson, who went on to produce The Chronicles of Narnia series and who is a member of the Virginia Film Festival's board of advisors.

I will be adding more videos as they become available. For those particularly interested in the whole list, check out my YouTube channel, where my videos appear before they are posted here. (Film images courtesy of the Virginia Film Institute.)

The Pain of Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo. I surely am not the first to suggest that this is a holiday that no doubt causes a sort of brain freeze for certain self-described conservatives.

Why is that? Well, Cinco de Mayo celebrates a battlefield victory by the Mexicans over the French.

Which disfavored group shall we root for? Oh, my brain hurts ...

Charlottesville to Be Invaded by Aliens

The Virginia Film Festival has announced its theme for 2008, in a news release distributed earlier today:

Virginia Film Festival organizers have issued an alert to all citizens: prepare for an alien invasion. Scheduled from Oct. 30 through Nov. 2, the 21st annual Virginia Film Festival will explore the theme of “Aliens!” as more than 150 films and speakers address cinema’s fearful and alluring images of immigrants, outsiders and extraterrestrials.

Hosted by the University of Virginia, the Virginia Film Festival takes place at venues throughout Charlottesville. Designed as a four-day course on a cultural theme in which the public is invited to enroll, the festival brings major talents to Charlottesville each year. Recent guests have included Morgan Freeman, Vanessa Redgrave, John Sayles and Robert Duvall.

"The prominence of the immigration issue in this year’s election inspired us to tackle this theme," said Richard Herskowitz, the festival's artistic director. "There is a rich history of films about the alien-ness of immigrants and outsiders, including science-fiction films like 'The Brother from Another Planet' and dramas like 'El Norte.' And there are many great filmmakers, from Luis Bunuel to Ang Lee and Mira Nair, whose frequent border crossings and perpetual alien-ness, it can be argued, have sustained the vitality of their work."

Advising Herskowitz on the programming of this year's event will be the first Virginia Film Festival Fellow, Hamid Naficy, the John Evans Professor of Communication at Northwestern University. Naficy’s book, "An Accented Cinema," explores the different types of cinema made by exilic, diasporic and ethnic filmmakers who live and work away from their country of origin. Naficy will participate in several screening discussions and panels, and will conduct a short course on the festival theme for U.Va. students in October. Naficy has written extensively about theories of exile and displacement, exilic and diasporic media, and Iranian and Third World cinemas.

The festival will bring back, for the fifth year, the highly successful Adrenaline Film Project. Thirty student and community filmmakers will be launched on a three-day filmmaking blitz, culminating in a lively public screening. Harry Chotiner will return to conduct "Behind The Scenes: A Festival Symposium," where 20 student and adult learners meet festival guests for in-depth discussions. For the second year, Paul Reisler’s Kid Pan Alley will lead Charlottesville kids in musical accompaniment to a classic silent film on Family Day, scheduled for Nov. 1 at the Paramount Theater.

The festival will also feature more than a dozen new feature film premiere selections screening in advance of their national release. And, as always, filmgoers can expect an extensive catalog of art exhibits, musical performances and gala parties related to the festival theme.

Cinema buffs are invited to submit their suggestions of alien films and filmmakers through the Director’s Blog on the festival's Web site, www.vafilm.com, where Herskowitz will review recommendations and share behind-the-scenes stories as the program comes together. The site also includes year-round announcements about the Virginia Film Society.

I wonder if there will be any special events for Halloween, considering it falls in the middle of this "Aliens!" film festival.

Immigration and Identity

Given the vexatious debate about immigration policy that shows no signs of abating in this country, I was fascinated to find an article in the LSE Magazine (a quarterly for alumni) that looks at how immigrants to the United Kingdom view themselves in terms of national identity. The article is based on a longer, scholarly discussion paper.

Both authors are, as one might expect, associated with the London School of Economics and Political Science. Alan Manning is a professor of economics there and he is director of the Labour Markets Programme at the School’s Centre for Economic Performance. Sanchari Roy is a doctoral student in economics and a member of the LSE's Economics of Organisation and Public Policy research group.

In their article, "Culture clash or culture club?" -- also the title of the discussion paper -- Manning and Roy unpack some of their findings about how members different ethnic and religious groups think of themselves after they have immigrated to Britain. Their research was sparked by some of the statements attributed to the July 7 terrorists:

There is widespread belief that a growing fraction of Muslims who live (and in many cases were born) in Britain do not think of themselves as British, have no aspiration to do so and do not want their children to either; that they are subscribing instead to some other identity and creating little enclaves that resemble, as far as is possible, the countries from which they came or a model of the good society very different from what is generally thought of as ‘Britain’.

Such fears tend to be magnified by the statements by some British Muslims, which appear to explicitly reject a British identity and affirm another one. One of the 7 July bombers appeared in a video released after the London bombings and said: ‘Your democratically elected governments continuously perpetuate atrocities against my people and your support of them makes you directly responsible, just as I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters’, with the use of the words ‘my’ and ‘your’ clearly expressing the people with whom he did or did not identify. We wanted to find out how widespread this kind of identification is in the UK.

The researchers were just as surprised by their findings, which were based on a survey of more than one million participants, as their readers might be:

Among those who are born in Britain, over 90 per cent of all groups of whatever religion or ethnicity think of themselves as British. In particular there is no evidence that Muslims are less likely to think of themselves as British than other groups....

Of those describing themselves as Christian 99.1 per cent report themselves as British. But of those describing themselves as Muslim the proportion is a slightly higher 99.2 per cent to report, exceeded only by those who identify as Jewish. Percentages reporting a British identity are lower for Buddhists, Sikhs and Hindus, but are above 95 per cent for all groups. It is hard to look at these figures and see grounds for concern. Of course, this does not mean that Muslims see themselves as British and not Muslim: it is just that they see no conflict in being both.

One striking discovery from the survey is this:

There is, however, one group that stands out as reporting an extremely low level of British identity – Catholics from Northern Ireland. From our research, it appears that any identity conflict among British born Muslims is an order of magnitude smaller than that among Catholics from Northern Ireland.

How about that? People born in the UK feel less "British" than people born elsewhere! But other findings are equally interesting:

This process of assimilation is faster for some immigrant groups than others, but not in the way that might be expected. For example, Muslims are not less likely to feel British than those from other backgrounds, and immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh assimilate into a British identity much faster than average, while those from Western Europe and the United States do so more slowly, with Italians standing out as the group which assimilates least into a British identity. We find evidence that immigrants from poorer and less democratic countries assimilate faster into a British identity. Part but not all of this can be explained by a greater tendency among the latter group to take up citizenship.

Manning and Roy find that the process of assimilation applies as much to the holding of political and cultural values as well as an amorphous sense of "identity":

... immigrants are very slightly less likely to have views on rights and responsibilities that are generally held by popular concensus to be ‘desirable’, but the differences are much smaller than the differences among the UK born population of different ages and with different levels of education. It is also true that the immigrant groups who emerge as having different values from the UK born population are not the ones which have become the focus of the most public concern, for example, Muslims do not have significantly different values.

These findings strongly suggest that the UK is not riven by large scale culture clash, contrary to what many people seem to believe. This is not to deny the existence of some people who are prepared to use violence to further their agenda but our evidence suggests that these are a tiny minority. For example, the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey asked the respondents to say whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement ‘Muslims are more loyal to Muslims than to Britain’. Of the non-Muslim respondents only 9 per cent disagreed, with a further 25 per cent neither agreeing nor disagreeing. But, among the Muslim respondents (who we might expect to be better-informed on the subject) 45 per cent disagreed, a significant difference even though the survey only contained 20 Muslim respondents. And 62 per cent of non-Muslim respondents thought there was a fairly or very serious conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims in Britain, compared to 27 per cent of Muslims. Another question about conflicts in the world as a whole between Muslims and non-Muslims had 85 per cent of non-Muslims saying they thought there was a fairly or very serious conflict, but only 67 per cent of Muslims saying so.

Considering that the process of assimilation in the United States tends to be swifter and more complete than that in Britain or in Europe -- or so we have assumed for a long, long time, since American society is less socially stratified and more mobile than European and British societies are -- the research of Manning and Roy could have applications here at home. It is certainly something worth pondering during the legislative and cultural debates taking place about immigrants and immigration policy in the United States.

I recommend visiting the original articles in order to examine the illuminating charts and graphs that the authors have included with their text.

Aliens Among Us

It is a rare occasion when I find myself in accord with Red Ken, the flaming socialist mayor of London.

Yet when I opened up this morning's Washington Times, I read an article in which Ken Livingstone's views are presented as fully in line with mine.

In a Bloomberg News article (which does not, strangely, appear on the Washington Times web site) about the influx of Polish immigrants to Britain since 2004, Livingstone is paraphrased as saying he thinks immigrants are good for London's economy:

Attracted by jobs and higher pay, immigrants are transforming neighborhoods as shops stock Polish goods, jobseekers post notices in their native language and attendance at Catholic churches booms. The new residents are weakening "community cohesion," lobbying group Migration Watch says.

"Londoners are being displaced by the arrival of immigrants, which is changing the makeup of the city," said Andrew Green, the organization's chairman "It simply isn't sustainable."

Mayor Ken Livingstone disagrees, saying immigrants help the economy grow. The city is investing in transportation, housing and police services to keep pace with the inflow, he said.

It is hard to see how Polish immigrants might be taking jobs from British natives: The unemployment rate in the UK is now about 3 percent, compared to 11 percent or more in Central Europe.

The article goes on to note the long history of Polish settlers in London, including novelist Joseph Conrad and refugees from Nazi- and Communist-occupied Poland in the middle of the 20th century. I remember having lunch at a Polish restaurant in Chelsea as long ago as 1987, when one of the habitués asked me if I was Polish. (I had to pause to think about my answer, finally settling on, "No, I'm American. But my ancestors were Polish." He seemed satisfied by that.)

Around that same time, I saw a terrific play at the National Theatre called Coming in to Land, written by Stephen Poliakoff and starring the incomparable Dame Maggie Smith as a Polish refugee -- or not -- trying to gain asylum in Britain. Smith's character's name was Halina Sonya Rodziewizowna. (The play, directed by Sir Peter Hall, also included Anthony Andrews and Tim Pigott-Smith in the cast.)

Althought the political situation was far different then than now -- this was the height of the Cold War, remember -- some of the themes echo from the play today. Here's a speech from Act I; you'll notice the parallels as the speaker catalogues the reasons Halina may not be able to stay in Britain:

Firstly, Halina has waited, which is usually fatal. There is a detestation of casual applications -- unless you arrive screaming at the airport, I can't stand it back home and I'm not safe there, demanding immediate asylum, they are intensely suspicious, they are paranoid about all sorts of odds and sods being dumped on them from Eastern Europe...

Secondly, every attempt to land is made in context -- the context of world events, and that isn't too good at the moment is it. The recent sudden squall of East West tension, the expulsion of five Polish students in the US for industrial and military espionage, and three Russians from here...

Moreover Halina does not wishto get involved in ritual 'hate' propaganda about her homeland, understandably.

(Sharply.) Lastly -- Halina is not unfortunately a famous dissident, or even a member of Solidarity, no fashionable reason here, nor obviously is she something nationally desirable, like a ballerina, olympic athlete, boxer, squash player, or even a film director!

What the critics of Polish (and other East European) immigration to London fail to recognize is that London is the premier cosmopolitan city. It was, in fact, the first truly cosmopolitan metropole to emerge since the fall of Rome, and it did so during the Renaissance. London attracted more and different peoples earlier, and in greater numbers, than any other town or city in Western Europe.

That London was a crossroads is a significant -- if not the most important -- factor in Britain's true claim to be the leader in the Industrial Revolution. London attracted thinkers from both the French and Scottish Enlightenments. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, the dining clubs in London of the 18th century had the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge gathered in one place -- with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

London was the destination for many different types of Britons -- Welsh, Scots, Irish, Geordies -- for centuries. French Huguenots and Jews expelled from continental Europe settled there because it was a safe haven. And it had a Chinatown long before New York or San Francisco did. Recent decades have seen many other lands represented among London's population. As the Bloomberg story explains:

Poles are just the latest wave of newcomers to try their luck in London. Migrants from India, Pakistan and Africa boosted the population in the 1990s. Twenty-eight percent of Londoners were born outside the U.K., according to the 2001 census.

The article includes this astonishing tidbit:

London businesses are adapting to their new customers. Nil Kanth Patel said he learned Polish to serve customers better at his newsstand in Hammersmith.

"The neighborhood has gone through lots of change, especially since 2004," said Patel, who is from Uganda and has run the shop for 17 years. "It's been great for my business, as half of my customers are now Polish."

What could be more emblematic of London's cosmopolitanism -- and indeed of the global economy itself -- than an African immigrant with an Indian surname learning Polish in order to build a better business?

A few weeks ago, I read University of Chicago historian William H. McNeill's memoir, The Pursuit of Truth. The book -- which is worth a review all of its own -- describes McNeill's intellectual struggle to create a coherent "world history" and to make that sub-discipline respectable within the community of professional historians.

One insight that McNeill had is so simple that its profundity might be missed: namely, that progress depends on the interactions of strangers, or, as McNeill puts it,

the continual innovative effect of contacts and and exchanges between civilizations and peoples round about, with special attention to technological transfers....

London has for centuries been a nexus of exchange among strangers. It is, and has been, for that reason, a great city -- if not the greatest. In the 21st century, the contributions of Polish immigrants and others from the new member states of the EU will make London even greater.