As Egypt spent the last few weeks proving, strongmen are a great means to maintain an unpopular policy status quo -- until they're not. Policymakers in Washington were famously glad to do business with Hosni Mubarak as long as he kept peace with Israel; now they have to worry that a democratically elected Egyptian government may not feel inclined to honor the pact.

But Americans and Israelis aren't the only ones now realizing the shortsightedness of this kind of realpolitik. Europeans in particular have made more than their fair share of devil's bargains with Arab regimes. And it seems like they'll be the first to reap the consequences:

The Italian government has declared a state of emergency and asked for EU help in blocking thousands of Tunisians from reaching its shores…

Some 3,000 people from Tunisia arrived over the weekend on the Italian island of Lampedusa following the ousting of Tunisian dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in recent days, according to Rome…

Anti-immigration policies lie at the core of Mr Berlusconi's government. He has sealed similar deals with other authoritative regimes, such as Tunisia's neighbouring Libya, irrespective of the abuses and bad treatment of refugees.

Europe has long been codependent on Arab regimes with less-than-scrupulous human rights records. Like the United States with its extraordinary rendition program, the European Union has kept its hands clean by outsourcing its illegal immigration problem to neighboring dictators: For the promise of good relations and sizable foreign investment, Tunisia's Ben Ali and Libya's Qaddafi have been willing to use their security forces to ensure that poor Africans don't reach European shores. But what happens when those forces are accountable to the public's common good, rather than a leader's personal deals? The answer probably involves Europe enjoying a brief period of denial and then building much more housing for asylum applicants.

A strange story of 80 men trapped in geopolitical limbo since the end of the Cold War: 

Tesgaye, once an aspiring fighter pilot, was one of 80 Ethiopian cadets sent to a Soviet military training facility in the remote republic of Kyrgyzstan in 1989 to master the art of flying combat aircraft.

"At that time in Ethiopia there was a military government, and because of an agreement between the Soviet Union and Ethiopia, they used to train pilots for the country's air force," Tesgaye explained.

Within two years, both the Soviet Union and Ethiopia's Marxist regime had collapsed, forcing the cadets to think carefully about their options for their future in a strange and foreign land.

Almost 20 years later, still fearing reprisals back home for the small role he played in the brutal rule of deposed Marxist leader Mengistu Haile Mariam, Tesgaye is marooned here — a world away from a family that has grown older without him.

The cadets have endured some horrific racial abuse during their time in exile, an ironic parallel to the thousands of Kyrgyz migrant workers who receive similar treatment in Russia. 

After a decade-long legal battle, President Barack Obama's Kenyan aunt, Zeituni Onyango -- remembered as "Auntie Zeituni" in Obama's Dreams From My Father, has won the right to remain in the United States. 

The basis for Onyango's asylum request was never made public, but her lawyer Margaret Wong said last year that Onyango first applied for asylum "due to violence in Kenya." The East African nation is fractured by cycles of electoral violence every five years.

Onyango initially came to the U.S. in 2000 just for a visit, Wong said. Her first request for political asylum in 2002 was rejected, and she was ordered deported in 2004. But she didn't leave the country and continued to live in public housing in Boston.

Onyango's status as an illegal immigrant was revealed just days before Obama was elected in November 2008. Obama said he did not know his aunt was living here illegally and believes laws covering the situation should be followed. Wong has said that Obama wasn't involved in the Boston hearing. The White House also said it was not helping Onyango with legal fees.

Onyango's lawyer Margaret Wong says the judgment "really does give people hope." Though I'm not really sure how inspiring the case really is for those facing similar battles without nephews in the White House. 

Mexico's government no longer believes its citizens are safe in the state of Arizona: 

The Mexican government Tuesday took the unusual step of issuing a travel alert urging extreme caution by Mexicans working, studying or otherwise spending time in Arizona. The warning came in response to that state's tough new immigration measure, which is to go into effect this summer, requiring people in Arizona to carry proof of their legal right to be in the United States and requiring police to check for it.[...]

"As was clear during the [Arizona] legislative process, there is a negative political environment for migrant communities and for all Mexican visitors," the alert said, posted in Spanish and English on the ministry's website.

Although details on how the law will be enforced remain unclear, the alert said, "it must be assumed that every Mexican citizen may be harassed and questioned without further cause at any time."

Obviously addressing the probelm of illegal immigration is going to require taking action on both sides of the border, and thanks to Arizona, Mexico now seems a lot less likely to cooperate in efforts to find an effective remedy. 

 

The big domestic news today is the Conservative Political Action Committee conference, or CPAC, where dozens of major Republican and conservative thinkers (from Minority Leader John Boehner to Glenn Beck) are speaking to 10,000 members of their base. The big news out of CPAC is the Mount Vernon Statement, a commitment to Constitutional-conservative positions with signatories including Grover Norquist, Edwin Meese, and Tony Perkins.

Here is an excerpt:

Each one of these founding ideas is presently under sustained attack. In recent decades, America's principles have been undermined and redefined in our culture, our universities and our politics. The selfevident truths of 1776 have been supplanted by the notion that no such truths exist. The federal government today ignores the limits of the Constitution, which is increasingly dismissed as obsolete and irrelevant.

Some insist that America must change, cast off the old and put on the new. But where would this lead -- forward or backward, up or down? Isn't this idea of change an empty promise or even a dangerous deception?

The change we urgently need, a change consistent with the American ideal, is not movement away from but toward our founding principles. At this important time, we need a restatement of Constitutional conservatism grounded in the priceless principle of ordered liberty articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

The Mount Vernon Statement draws support from a number of conservatives, including many members of the Tea Party movement. Here's the problem. The Mount Vernon folks espouse sticking to the letter of the Constitution. But many of them also vocally support some things the Constitution does not -- like military commissions for enemy combatants and closed borders.

According to the Constitution, enemy combatants should be tried in civilian courts. And the Declaration of Independence lists the British crown's restriction of free immigration as one of its grievances: "[The king] has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."

Some Constitutional conservatives -- like Norquist -- do not attempt to square this circle. They instead support free immigration policies and trying terrorists in civilian courts. Others, it seems, reconcile themselves to an elastic constitution in some circumstances. Either way, it is the subject of feisty debate among conservatives.

In the wake of this week's earthquake, the United States has halted the deportation of undocumented Haitian immigrants. Now, immigrants' rights advocates and Florida lawmakers are pushing the administration to grant Haitians Temporary Protected Status, a special dispensation given to immigrants who cannot return to their homelands:

On Wednesday, South Florida's three Cuban-American Republican members of Congress -- Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen -- sent a joint letter to Obama requesting TPS for Haitian nationals, along with immediate humanitarian aid for Haiti. They have organized a news conference on Thursday to talk about the issue.

"How much does Haiti have to suffer before Haitians in the United States are granted TPS pursuant to law?'' said Lincoln Diaz-Balart Wednesday. ``The reason TPS exists in the statute as an option for the president is precisely for moments such as this in Haiti.''

The other countries whose nationals are currently eligible for TPS are El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Somalia and Sudan. Given Haiti's traumatic recent history and promximity to the U.S., I have to wonder why isn't already on that list.

 

Earlier today, Yoani Sanchez posted questions to U.S. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raúl Castro regarding U.S.-Cuban relations on her blog, Generación Y. Sanchez, who was recently denied a visa to visit New York City to attend an awards dinner after she was awarded a Marie Moors Cabot Prize from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, received a direct response from Obama himself.

Obama addresses each point with steadfast poise, sticking to his administration's usual positions on the topic. He categorizes Cuban affairs as a domestic and foreign policy issue for the U.S. and emphasizes democratic rule, freedom of speech, and human rights, familiar rhetoric from the president. He also does not rule out a visit to the island in the future, not to work on his tan, but rather as a "diplomatic tool":

 I look forward to visit a Cuba in which all citizens enjoy the same rights and opportunities as other citizens in the hemisphere.

No word yet if Castro intends to reply. However, his mind may be on other things after Human Rights Watch's release of the report "New Castro, Same Cuba," condemning his regime:

In his three years in power, Raúl Castro has been just as brutal as his brother. Cubans who dare to criticize the government live in perpetual fear, knowing they could wind up in prison for merely expressing their views.

Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images 

 

Russian analyst and ex-KGB operative Igor Panarin wants the U.S. to enjoy its last eight months. Because after that, the world's sole superpower will be embroiled in a civil war that will destroy it. This message has found an audience in the radical right wing Tea Party movement.

Mass immigration, economic decline, racial tensions and moral degradation will spark the war that leads to this civil war and subsequent splitting of the United States. These are same fears expressed at Tea Party rallies throughout the US.

In Panarin's dystopia the south will go to Mexico. The Northeast will go to the E.U. The Midwest will go to Canada. The West Coast will go to China and Alaska will go back to Russia.

This theory has become moderately popular in Russia; however the Tea Party movement in the United States is his newest fan.    

Fans of irony take note. The people who say the U.S. is headed toward Socialism, or Fascism, or both, or whatever, are paying an ex-KGB academic to speak at their conferences. At a speech in Houston, Panarin said Texas' talk of secession -- consisting largely of Chuck Norris' offer to run for president and the controversy surrounding immigration is a sign that the end is nigh for the U.S.A.

Image via Richard Conn Henry/Wikipedia

In the Financial Times on Wednesday, Chris Cook argues that British immigration laws are giving an unfair edge to soccer clubs with more money.

Clubs with deep pockets hire the small number of local and foreign gifted players available, while poorer clubs must make do with the remaining, potentially much weaker, local journeymen.

Not only that, he says, but the protectionist measures of allowing non-European workers only if the fit certain high-skill benchmarks also inflate wages for less-skilled Europeans, raising ticket prices.

Cook contends tougher competition would boost the English national team:

The impact of more foreign players on the elite band of players who might conceivably play for the national team is that they need to play better to keep their places in their club teams. So, they improve. The English team has markedly improved since foreign footballers started pouring into the country’s top league.

Would some British and European soccer players be pushed out of work if rules were liberalized? Probably, but a more competitive league would be worth it Cook says.

Consumers of an increasing range of products will soon feel the pain in their wallets already endured by so many fans on a Saturday afternoon, who routinely complain that they pay ever-greater sums to watch a football league dominated by just four clubs. What English football needs is fewer English footballers. 

Not knowing that much about the economics of the Premiere Leage, here's a question: If teams in the lower half of the standings became much more competitive, would it increase their revenues? Higher ticket sales? More advertising?  

Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images 

The weirdly persistant belief held by many Americans that President Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen of the United States has been back in the news lately thanks to Major Stefan Cook, the "birther" soldier who was granted has requested conscientious objector status because he refused to fight for a president he believes is illegitimate. There's also a bill gathering some support in the House that would change election law to require candidates to prove their citizenship.

The birther phenomenon is predictable form of paranoia given the president's unusually exotic (for a president, anyway) background. But isn't the larger scandal that the anachronistic natural-born citizenship requirement in Article II of the constitution still even exists?

Let's imagine that Barack Obama had been born in Indonesia or Kenya or anywhere else for that matter, and hadn't become a citizen until moving to Hawaii to live with his grandparents. Is there one good reason why that would make him less fit to be president?

Put another way, is there one good reason why foreign-born governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jennifer Granholm can't legally run for president but Mark Sanford and Sarah Palin can?

Naturalized citizens like Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Madeline Albright have been allowed into the highest positions in the U.S. national security establishment without anyone questioning their loyalty. Why shouldn't voters be allowed to decide whether a foreign-born candidate is American enough to be president? New York voters didn't mind the fact that Hillary Clinton had never lived in the state before running for its senate seat.

The fact that children of immigrants like Barack Obama, Bobby Jindal, Colin Powell and Rahm Emanuel were born in the United States rather than their parents' home countries seems like a pretty arbitrary distinction. A person can't help where they were born any more than they can help the color of their skin or their gender.

The last election saw the first person of color elected president and a woman get closer than ever before. Pretty soon, more than 15 percent of the U.S. population will be foreign-born. It's time that they had same shot. 

Photo by David McNew/Getty Images

The New York Times' Julia Preston, who reports today on Barack Obama's plan to start pushing for immigration reform as early as May, seems to doubt the political wisdom of the U.S. president's move.

As she notes, it could get extremely ugly, with immigration opponents likely to "mobilize popular outrage against any effort to legalize unauthorized immigrant workers while so many Americans are out of jobs."

And indeed they will. Lou Dobbs is going to have a field day, and the Republican base is going to lose its collective head. It doesn't seem even remotely plausible that Obama will get a bill passed in this economic climate.

That said, perhaps the president has another aim in mind. Maybe he doesn't expect to pass legislation this time around. Maybe he's thinking ahead to the 2010 midterm elections, and looking to give the Republicans just enough rope to hang themselves on this issue. If he moves forward, the GOP's worst elements will come to the fore, branding the party for years to come as narrow-minded and regressive. Without George W. Bush as the voice of tolerance and reason on immigration, the party's base will swiftly alienate Latino voters once and for all, and meanwhile frighten white suburban voters who are repulsed by racial appeals.

At least, that's the only explanation that makes sense.

In an ironic twist that was bound to happen sooner or later, the job of watching the U.S.-Mexican border to keep illegal immigrants from coming to take American jobs...has been outsourced. Thanks to live streaming videos, anyone with an Internet connection can now log on and keep an eye on the Texas border and report illegal immigrants or drug smugglers to the authorities. (I watched a section of the Rio Grande for about three minutes yesterday but then I got bored. Sorry America.)

Interestingly, foreigners seem particularly taken with the project:

Anyone with an internet connection can now help to patrol the 1,254-mile frontier through a network of webcams set up to allow the public to monitor suspicious activity. Once logged in, the volunteers spend hours studying the landscape and are encouraged to email authorities when they see anyone on foot, in vehicles or aboard boats heading towards US territory from Mexico.

So far, more than 100,000 web users have signed up online to become virtual border patrol deputies, according to Don Reay, executive director of the Texas Border Sheriffs' Coalition, which represents 20 counties where illegal crossings and drugs and weapons smuggling are rife.

"We had folks send an email saying, in good Australian fashion, 'Hey mate, we've been watching your border for you from the pub in Australia'," he said.

Since the first 15 of a planned network of 200 cameras went live in November, officials claim that emailed tips have led to the seizure of more than 2,000lb (907kg) of marijuana and 30 incidents in which "significant numbers" of would-be illegal immigrants were spotted and turned back. Some tips came from Europe, Asia and beyond, but most online watchers are based in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, three of the four US states that share a border with Mexico.

In early January, Egypt starting deporting Eritrean refugees  -- somewhere between 45 and 65 are thought to have been sent home. These refugees tried to enter Isreal through the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. And the deportations say much less about the refugees themselves than the perilous but staunch relationship between Israel and Egypt.

In short, Israel has turned up the pressure on Egypt in recent months to secure that country's side of the Sinai peninsula border -- a hot spot for trafficking of humans (like the Eritreans), goods, and weapons into the Gaza strip).

In June of last year, just as a 6-month ceasefire with Gaza went into effect, 1,200 more Eritrean refugees were detained and later deported. Recently, during the Gaza crisis, Human Rights Watch researcher Leslie Lefkow says she believes Egypt has sent between four and six flights of refugees back to Eritrea.

From the looks of it, pressure to clamp down on migrants is both formal and implicit. Israel imposed a strict policy to limit non-Jewish immigrants in 2007, facing what it feared was a tsunami of Africans seeking work or amnesty. In April 2007, Israeli and Egyptian authorities reportedly agreed on a policy of 'hot returns' -- wherein all illegal border-crossers caught in Israel would be handed over to the Egyptians within 48 hours. The plan faced resistance from refugee advocates, but it's not clear that the process ever stopped.

Now, with Gaza smuggling at an all time high, Egypt is in the hot seat to get all border crossings under control. The change in Egypt's actions on the border -- at least on refugee policing -- is apparent. "Egypt has always been respectful of refugee law, but this is a different scenario," Abeer Etefa of the UN High Commission for Refugees in Egypt told me. 

Sinai has always separated Egypt and Israel -- in geography and politics alike. This time, it's refugees caught in the middle.

Photo:  JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Proposition 8's defeat in California isn't the only thing making headlines for the gay rights movement as of late. According to the Washington Post, gay Mexican citizens who seek asylum in the United States are facing an increasingly uphill battle. Changes to the general asylum policy and a few rejected cases have resulted in what many fear is the end of a practice that provided safety for dozens since the mid-1990s. 

Persecution based on sexuality, in a country where machismo and conservative Catholic ideals run deep, once made a strong enough case for gay Mexicans seeking refuge up north. But liberalized laws on homosexuality and an increase in gay pride efforts have made the case a harder sell. Mexico City now recognizes civil unions, and the city's gay pride parade draws more than a million people each year. 

So why should the United States leave open the possibility of asylum? Despite the gains, negative attitudes in Mexico about homosexuality persist, leading to workplace discrimination and brutality against gays. Between 1995 and 2006, more than 1,200 Mexicans were killed because of their sexual orientation. And for all the good they might have done for the country's gay rights movement, liberalized laws have provoked a backlash from homophobic parts of society -- including some members of the Mexican police force.

Another reason to leave the asylum option? Consider the impact these homophobic attitudes and actions have on the spread of HIV/AIDS. Men who have sex with men in Mexico are over 100 times more likely to contract HIV than the general population. Says Martin Martinez Sanchez, a Mexico City hospital employee, of gay men in the capital city:

They have sexual encounters in clandestine areas, and in parts of the city that are just horrible and dangerous... Later they go home and have unprotected sex with their wives. Many gays feel they have to have a wife for appearances."

For many, asylum might not just mean escaping discrimination -- it can mean a lifeline to better care. Mexico's routine medication shortages mean inconsistent treatment for the disease, which usually requires daily pill dosages. As long as prevention and treatment measures for AIDS lag, the United States ought to think twice before closing its doors.