Commentary by Cat Stevens

Today’s LA Times has a commentary by Yusuf Islam on his interception by U.S. authorities.

Cat Stevens vs. U.S.

Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, plans to take legal action against the U.S. for removing him from the U.S. According to Asa Hutchinson, under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, Islam was not allowed to stay in the U.S. due to “a connection to some type of terrorist activity.”

Broken Promises?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the driver license bill, which would have allowed undocumented individuals in California to apply for a driver’s permit.

Machine-Readable Passports

October 26, 2004 is the deadline for which Visa Waiver Program travelers from 21 countries must present a machine-readable passport at a port of entry to be admitted to the U.S. without a visa.

U.S. Immigration Statistics

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Immigration Statistics issued its 2003 Yearbook which reports the following highlights:
- Legal immigration in 2003 (705,827) was lower than in 2002 (1,063,732).
- Sixty-three percent of all immigrants intended to reside in six states: California, New York, Texas, Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois.
- Refugee arrivals increased in 2003 by 5 percent to 28,306 after declining by 61 percent in 2001 to 2002 and the DHS naturalized 463,204 persons in 2003.
- The number of deportations increased almost 24 percent to more than 186,000.

H1-B Visas for Highly Skilled Temporary Workers

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services recently announced that it has received 45,900 H-1B petitions that will be counted against the Congressionally-mandated cap for fiscal year 2005 (October 1, 2004 - September 30, 2005). The limit for H-1Bs for FY 2005 is 65,000.

2004 World Population

The world’s 10 most populous countries are China, India, United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Russia, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Japan.