Now that the Senate has passed its immigration bill, the future of reform lies in the hands of the GOP-led House, where the debate will center on allowing a path to citizenship for 11 million immigrants living in this country without legal status. Opponents of this path often claim that low-skilled Mexicans, who make up the largest subgroup, are not fitting into U.S. society ― that they don’t want to assimilate and are fated to remain a permanent underclass.Solid evidence suggests these claims a

There’s no shortage of pundits eager to tell Shinzo Abe how to shake up Japan’s economy. Instead of looking to academics for advice, though, the prime minister should get into the trenches with some of the nation’s more unconventional corporate heads. Abe talks, for example, about wanting to make Japanese companies worldlier. For pointers, he should study what Tadashi Yanai has already accomplished at Fast Retailing Co., home of the Uniqlo brand. Yanai has become Japan’s richest man ― and the on

Ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden fled the job he held for three months, taking four laptop computers full of U.S. intelligence with him to Hong Kong and Russia, other countries have become “outraged” by the Snowden disclosures about American intelligence practices. What, exactly, is so alarming? Apparently, the fact that spies actually spy. Give me a break.The average person might be excused for being surprised at what spies actually do, and by Snowden’s revelations about passive

Egypt has undergone a military coup, carefully choreographed and wrapped as a democratic act, but a coup d’etat nonetheless. How badly this ends will depend entirely on what the army and the Muslim Brotherhood do next. It’s true that this wasn’t an ordinary military seizure of power. The generals won’t, for example, be taking any formal political position; they acted on a wave of genuine popular anger at President Mohammed Morsi; and they set out a road map for new elections. They also lined up

On June 25, Texas State Senator Wendy Davis held an 11-hour filibuster that successfully delayed the passage of a new abortion regulation in the state. In order to block the bill that would close most of the abortion clinics in Texas and ban abortion for women over 20 weeks pregnant, she needed to keep talking on the rostrum until midnight when the legislature session ended. She was not allowed to drink, eat or have a toilet break. She could not sit or lean on anything or anyone. She had to stay

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s conservative stance on political reform has led to a major split within the princeling community, whose members share a common interest in preserving the ruling status of the Chinese Communist Party.Hu Dehua, the third son of the late party chief Hu Yaobang, openly criticized Xi at a seminar held by the liberal magazine Yan Huang Chunqiu in mid-April. It was by far the most severe criticism lodged against Xi since the latter became CCP general secretary last Novemb

At a time when the situation in East Asia has become increasingly unstable, cooperation between Japan and South Korea is becoming even more important. Both sides should step closer to each other to put bilateral relations back on a more normal footing.Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se recently held talks in Brunei and agreed to stably develop a “future-oriented” bilateral relationship.These were the first such talks between Japanese and South Korean fo

So here’s a question that’s nagging at me as we watch millions of Egyptians express their loathing for Mohammed Morsi, their hapless, power-grabbing president, and for his Muslim Brotherhood movement: How exactly did the U.S. come to be seen by Egyptian secularists and liberals as the handmaiden of a cultish fundamentalist political party whose motto includes this heartening sentiment: “Jihad is our way, and dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope?” I mean, how did the U.S. fail to formula

DUBLIN ― Both sides of the austerity debate that is now gripping economists and policymakers cite Ireland’s experience as evidence for their case. And, however much they try to position the country as a poster-child, neither side is able to convince the other. Yet this tug-of-war is important, because it illustrates the complex range of arguments that are in play. It also demonstrates why more conclusive economic policy making is proving so elusive.Here is a quick reminder of Ireland’s sad recen

Mohammed Morsi holds a singular distinction.As Egypt’s president, he is the world’s only democratically elected leader to motivate more than 20 million of his people, one-quarter of the population, to sign a petition calling for his ouster.Millions of these people began showing up at angry, sometimes violent demonstrations in Cairo and other cities on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of his rule. They’re irate about Morsi’s blatant leadership failures. Egypt is riven with enervating economic, po