Illegal immigration has long been a staple of the US political system and that will certainly be true in the 2016 Presidential contest. Meanwhile, the European Union also faces an illegal immigration crisis of its own that is only made worse thanks to escalating anti-immigration sentiments and violence. From the perspective of small countries like Lebanon and Jordan, which are hosting millions of displaced Syrians, their situation is no different from Europe and the United States, except for the Western world’s apparent distain when asked to care for their neighbors. That said, there is more to the story.
Sadly, a record number of 38 million people around the world have been internally displaced, which means illegal immigration is certain to rise as people flee from violence and desperate poverty. Recognizing Westerners face a global economy where increasing economic disparity, they are struggling with more and more poverty, it is understandable why Westerners fear increased competition for jobs. At the same time, the strain of accepting and assimilating massive waves of immigrants into their countries would be overwhelming to their governments and their debt-burdened national budgets.
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British Royal Family gets bigger: the role of traditional leadership in a democratizing world?5/5/2015 As the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge celebrate the birth of their second child, Princess Charlotte Elizabeth Diana, with their family, their joys echo throughout the world. The exploits of the Royal Family People have served as “reality television” and the source of “entertainment news” for the British long before these concepts even made it into the vocabulary of Americans, yet the ongoing saga of Princess Diana’s son Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton has truly become a global soap opera.
A bit silly, the obsession actually clears the way to ask the far more serious question of what role will traditional leadership play in our democratizing world. Clearly, the British, Spanish, and the Japanese have found a way of preserving their cultural inheritance while embracing democracy. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, however, struggle, because their monarchies do not want to surrender the bulk of their power, which the British monarchy did. Overshadowed in the United State by those protesting the death of Freddie Gray caused by apparent police negligence, so-called May Day, or International Workers' Day, demonstrations were seen throughout the world. Harkening back to the days of the Haymarket affair, 10,000 police officers on May 1st moved to suppress those marching in Istanbul, particularly those headed to the infamous Taksim Square. Although the intent of May Day demonstrations is to take a global stand for the rights of workers, this example demonstrates the fight for economic justice is akin to the fight for equal representation and proper governance.
Unfortunately, May Day‘s socialist and communist roots distract people in the capitalist world from the significance of the global effort to embrace worker rights. Despite the historic framing of unions and labor rights movements as socialist and communist endeavors, the truth is that unions and labor negotiations are part of a healthy capitalist system. Market forces can only balance the interests of workers with businesses, if both the workers and the businesses have enough leverage to conduct meaningful negotiations that properly balance those interests. In other words, adequate worker representation is necessary to determine the proper value of labor. |
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