Pakistanis Are Largest Foreign-Born Muslim Group in Silicon Valley

Pakistani-Americans are the largest foreign-born Muslim group in San Francisco Bay Area that includes Silicon Valley, according to a 2013 study. The study was commissioned by the One Nation Bay Area Project, a civic engagement program supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.

 Overall, US-born Muslims make up the largest percentage at 34% of all Muslims in the Bay Area, followed by 14% born in Pakistan, 11% in Afghanistan, 10% in India, 3% in Egypt and 2% each in Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Yemen.

Silicon Valley Pakistani-American by the Numbers:
Bay Area Muslims by Country of Birth 

There are 35,000 Pakistani-born Muslims in San Francisco Bay Area,  or 14% of the 250,000 Muslims who call the Bay Area home, according to the study. Bay Area Muslim community constitutes 3.5 percent of the area’s total population and is one of the highest concentrations of Muslims in the country.

As of 2013, South Asian Muslims, including Pakistanis, have the highest income levels, with nearly half (49%) of them having a household income above $100,000. In comparison, those groups with the lowest proportion of household incomes above $100,000 were Hispanic Muslims (15%), Afghans (10%), and African American Muslims (10%).

The Bay Area Muslim community is very diverse in terms of race and ethnicity:

South Asians (30%)

Arabs (23%)

Afghans (17%),

African Americans (9%)

Asian/Pacific Islanders (7%)

Whites (6%)

Iranians (2%)



Based on the survey findings, the majority of Muslims live in the following three counties:

Alameda (37%)

Santa Clara (27%),

and Contra Costa (12%)

Pakistani-American Techies:

Thousands of Pakistan-born techies are working at Apple, Cisco, Google, Intel, Oracle and hundreds of other high-tech companies from small start-ups to large Fortune 500 corporations. Pakistani-Americans are contributing to what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe as "The Second Machine Age" in a recent book with the same title.

A Representative Sample of Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley

Pakistani-American entrepreneurs, advisers, mentors, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants and lawyers make up a growing ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Dozens of Pakistani-American founded start-ups have been funded by top venture capital firms. Many such companies have either been acquired in M&A deals or gone public by offering shares for sale at major stock exchanges. Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN) has become a de facto platform for networking among Pakistani-American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.

Pakistani-American techies presence in Silicon Valley has been recognized in a popular HBO show called "Silicon Valley" that stars a Pakistani actor Kumail Nanjiani playing a Pakistan-born Silicon Valley techie.

Silicon Valley's biggest tech start-up incubator Y-Combinator is now headed by Qasar Younis, a Pakistani-American born in the Pakistani village of Lala Musa. Younis was a keynote speaker at the Pakistani-American entrepreneurs conference called OPEN Forum 2016 just last month in Silicon Valley.

Islamophobia in America: 

Muslim-Americans, including Pakistani-Americans are thriving in the high-tech Bay Area in spite of the recent rise of Islamophobia in parts of America where the Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump appears to be popular.

But Muslim-Americans can not afford to ignore the gathering clouds of Islamophobia and xenophobia in America. The economic difficulties of many Americans are being exploited by demagogues like Donald Trump who is blaming foreigners for their unemployment and underemployment which can be traced to the twin forces of automation and globalization.

First, it was the manufacturing jobs that moved offshore in 1980s and 1990s in an effort to save costs and fatten profits. This forced many factory workers to move into service industries and take pay cuts. Now the service sector jobs are also falling prey to outsourcing and automation.

Instead of addressing the root causes of economic difficulties faced by many Americans, Republican front-runner Donald Trump's presidential primary campaign is blaming immigrants and Muslims for their problems. This is  giving rise to forces of racism, bigotry, xenophobia and Islamophobia in America.

Summary: 

It's in the best interest of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, particularly Muslim-American entrepreneurs, to pay attention to the economic difficulties being faced by many Americans who are losing jobs to automation and globalization. These difficulties lie at the root of growing xenophobia and Islamophobia. The Muslim-American entrepreneurs need to think of new ways to help people who are being left behind. They need to explore ideas such as helping build new skills needed for the new economy, promote policy discussions on the idea of universal basic income and expansion of safety nets and development of new gig economy to ensure full employment with decent incomes. Failure to do so could lead to significant social strife and cause irreparable damage to the very foundations of the system that has brought great wealth and power to America as a nation.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

The Trump Phenomenon

Islamophobia in America

Silicon Valley Pakistani-Americans

Pakistani-American Leads Silicon Valley's Top Incubator

Silicon Valley Pakistanis Enabling 2nd Machine Revolution

Karachi-born Triple Oscar Winning Graphics Artist

Pakistani-American Ashar Aziz's Fire-eye Goes Public

Two Pakistani-American Silicon Valley Techs Among Top 5 VC Deals

Pakistani-American's Game-Changing Vision 

Minorities Are Majority in Silicon Valley 

Comments

Riaz Haq said…
#Houston, #Texas # Republican tries to block nominee, Syed Ali, from party office for being #Muslim. #Islamophobia

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/05/19/his-beliefs-are-total-opposite-republican-tries-to-block-nominee-from-office-because-he-is-muslim/

A Christian pastor in the nation’s third-most-populous county tried to stop a Muslim man from serving in the local Republican Party because of his religion.

The massive jurisdiction of Harris County, Tex. — with 4 million residents in the city of Houston and its surroundings — has more than 1,000 precincts, and the Republican Party appoints a chair for every single one. Approving the people picked by a committee to fill some of those spots should have been a run-of-the-mill task.

But Trebor Gordon stood up at a meeting of the county’s GOP on Monday night. He said that Syed Ali — a 62-year-old Houston resident who has been a loyal Republican since the Reagan administration — should not be appointed.

Gordon said that Ali should be blocked “on the grounds that Islam does not have any basis or any foundation. It is the total opposite of our foundation.”

“Islam and Christianity do not mix,” Gordon said. Party chairman Paul Simpson said that Gordon serves as chaplain for the Harris County Republican Party and is a part-time pastor at a Houston-area church.

“During my prayer, this man did not bow his head. During the pledge of allegiance, he did not utter a word. He didn’t even try to fake it and move his lips,” Gordon said at the meeting, where attendees said nearly 200 people were present. “If you believe that a person can practice Islam and agree to the foundational principles of the Republican Party, it’s not right. It’s not true. It can’t happen. There are things on our platform that he and his beliefs are total opposite.”

Seeing her party chaplain make such a motion, precinct chair Felicia Winfree Cravens said she was stunned. “There were more shocked faces in that room than you could count,” she said. Cravens’s camera happened to be rolling — she said she was showing a friend how to use the new Facebook Live tool, so she was broadcasting the otherwise humdrum party meeting. Suddenly, she found herself capturing the discussion of Ali’s religion on tape.

The Houston area has more Muslim residents than most other parts of the United States. More than 1 percent of the city’s residents are Muslim, and the city has more than 80 mosques and at least 10 Muslim schools, according to the Houston Chronicle.

The debate over the motion was brief but contentious. One man brought up the party’s rules prohibiting discrimination on the basis of religion. That prompted another man, identified by Simpson and Cravens as precinct chair Mike Robertson, to stand up to ask whether Islam is a religion at all.

“Can I have a point of information?” Robertson said. “Has there been any factual information provided that Islam is a religion?”


Ali did not speak during the debate. One precinct chair, Dave Smith, came to his defense. “In our founding document, the Constitution, even back 230 years ago, when our founding fathers were establishing rules by which our country would be governed, they specifically put in there: no religious test,” Smith said. “No religious test is good enough for the founding fathers. It’s good enough for me.”

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Cravens said that as someone active in Republican politics, she is seeing much more anti-Muslim sentiment in her Facebook feed lately, in conjunction with the rise of Donald Trump. “If there were a hashtag more intense than #NeverTrump, I would be it,” she said.

But she does not know whether Trump has increased anti-Muslim viewpoints or just exposed them. “I don’t know how much of that is preexistent that he’s tapped into, or how much of that is him making people feel safe to say things like that, or if I just didn’t notice it,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to lay at the feet of Donald Trump something that he merely capitalized on.”
Riaz Haq said…
#Republican Sen. Bob Bennett from #Utah Apologized to Muslims for #Trump While on Deathbed. #MuslimBan http://nbcnews.to/1sAuGuA via @nbcnews

In the final days of his life, former Utah Republican Senator Bob Bennett turned to his son and asked him, "Are there any Muslims in this hospital?"

The question caught his son, Jim Bennett, off-guard. It felt like a non-sequitur, and he thought it may have had something to do with his father's recent stroke.

But Jim said his father, even after the stroke, was "sharp as a tack."

"So I was standing there with him in the hospital and out of nowhere he asked me, 'Are there any Muslims in this hospital?'" Jim Bennett told NBC News Wednesday evening.

"I said, 'Yes, dad, I'm sure there are.'" Jim said of the conversation, which was first reported by the Daily Beast. "And he was very emotional and said, 'I want to go up to every single one of them and apologize, I want to go up to every single one of them and tell them how grateful I am that they are in this country and apologize on behalf of the Republican Party for Donald Trump.'"

Jim Bennett said that when he later spoke to his mother, Joyce Bennett, about the conversation, she told him that expressing a sense of inclusion for ostracized populations, especially Muslims, had become "something that he was doing quite a lot of in the last months of his life."

Joyce told her son that his father had approached people wearing hijabs in an airport to "let them know that he was grateful they were in the country and the country was better for them being here."

Bennett, a three-term Republican Senator who lost in Utah's 2010 Republican primary to two tea-party opponents, had become increasingly concerned with Trump's rhetoric in recent months, even after he had initially written off the billionaire businessman when he first jumped into the race.

"I think he got increasingly troubled as he saw the Republican Party becoming the party of Trump," Jim told NBC News. "I think Trump's rise was really the motivation for him to recognize the importance of expressing his desire for inclusion. He just felt it was his responsibly to push back."

Jim said that his father became interested in Islam after 9/11, citing a desire to be informed about the religion while making policy decisions in the wake of terrorist attacks.

"He spent a lot of time studying Islam and wanting to be informed enough to that he wouldn't be making decisions on the floor of the Senate ignorantly," Jim said.

Bennett also took issue with Trump's comments related to immigration, considering the former Senator's support for comprehensive immigration reform was a contributing factor in his 2010 defeat.

"He felt like immigration required a comprehensive solution," Jim said of his father, "And that didn't go over well with Utah delegates who just thought that building a big wall, in a Donald Trump fashion, was the only way to go."

Jim Bennett told the story about his father's comments about Muslims at both memorial services for his father, telling NBC News he "was so grateful to be able to see that demonstration of integrity when there were so many other things that could have been front of mind for him during that time."

"I was just very proud of him," Jim said. "It just demonstrated the integrity of my father wasn't just a public front, that even in personal moments of his last days, this was something that was of deep concern to him, and that he was thinking of other people before he was thinking of himself."
Riaz Haq said…
Global Migration? Actually, The World Is Staying Home

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/why-global-migration-statistics-do-not-add-up-a-1090736.html


The refugee debate creates the impression of unprecedented mass migration. That image is completely incorrect. The real question, when we look at migration globally, is why there is so little of it.


Take a tape measure. Unroll the tape to about two meters (six feet) and place one end against a wall. The distance between you and the wall corresponds to the world population of about 7.3 billion people. The number of people worldwide who left their native countries in the last five years -- in other words, migrated -- takes up about one centimeter (three-eighths of an inch) of the tape measure. That number amounted to 36.5 million, or 0.5 percent of the world's population. All others, or 99.5 percent of the global population, are non-migrants, or people who were living in the same country in 2015 as in 2010. They represent the other 199 centimeters on the tape measure.

The basic problem, Abel explains, is that all migration figures come from the United Nations, which measures migration by combining the numbers of migrants and refugees from all countries. The UN defines migrants as "persons living in a country other than where they were born." The data are derived from individual countries' censuses and refugee registries.

In a recent press release, the UN announced the latest total number as follows: "The number of international migrants -- reached 244 million in 2015 for the world as a whole, an increase of 71 million, or 41 percent, compared to 2000."

244,000,000: What a huge number!

41 percent -- an increase of almost half!

Well.

First, let's take a look at the 41 percent increase. It relates to absolute numbers, which are not reasonable benchmarks here. In 2000, the UN counted 173 million migrants. That was 2.8 percent of the global population of 6.1 billion at the time. Since then, the world population has grown to 7.3 billion, so that the 244 million migrants in 2015 make up 3.3 percent of that total.

So why doesn't the UN communicate the information as follows: "Since the year 2000, the share of migrants in the world population grew by 0.5 percentage points?" Because it sounds less concerning?

Here's the situation. The UN doesn't receive enough money. Its World Food Program, for example, is radically underfunded, as are its aid campaigns for Syria. Coming from this position of need, the UN always turns up the volume when announcing its figures. Dependent as it is on money from its members to relieve its distress, the UN underpins its appeals with dramatic terms like "all-time high," "new maximum" and "record low." By doing so, it contributes significantly to the imbalance in the migration debate.

But the bigger problem lies in the number itself, 244 million. Why?

"The figure has several serious weaknesses," says Abel, and yet it is spread around the globe by hundreds of media organizations, press agencies, NGOs, politicians and even academics. Numbers like these, or their international equivalents, from which they are derived, serve as the basis for debates, studies and laws. Why? Because there is no more credible source than the UN. This widespread perception leads to phrases like these: "The world has 41 percent more migrants now than in 2000, UN reports" (Toronto Star). "UN: Number of global migrants soars to 244 million" (Newsweek). Or, conversely and especially distorting, on the website of Swiss television: "Fewer and fewer people are living in their native countries."

The number, 244 million, isn't incorrect. It just says very little about all the things you would want to know when you think about migration.

Riaz Haq said…
In #Orlando, Dr. Ibrahim, a Son of a #Muslim Immigrant Rushed to Heal Pain Caused by Another. #OrlandoShooting

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/us/in-orlando-a-son-of-a-muslim-immigrant-rushed-to-heal-pain-caused-by-another.html?_r=1

Dr. Ibrahim, who is 39 and speaks with a drip of Tennessee drawl, said that as he worked on victim after victim early Sunday morning, he was surrounded (as usual) by colleagues with ties to other parts of the world — nurses of Asian and Hispanic descent, technicians from Jamaica, and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.

“We worked side by side, without question,” he said.

In the days that followed, he said, he heard many arguments for “taking the country back” and keeping out Muslims. It was mostly on talk radio, as he drove to work for surgery. And while the hosts focused on Mr. Mateen’s father, Dr. Ibrahim contemplated his own dad, an immigrant from Egypt, who married an American and practiced medicine in Tennessee.

“It’s difficult,” Dr. Ibrahim said, noting that he would not be here if that kind of policy had been in place when his father wanted to leave Cairo. “I just have to believe that those people have not met the right individual. There are a lot of people who never meet Muslims who are kind, gentle and giving.”

Stephen Miller, a policy adviser to Donald J. Trump, said Mr. Trump — who has spent months condemning immigrants from Mexico and the Muslim world — simply wants to “select immigrants who support, defend and uphold our values.”

Mr. Miller described Mr. Trump’s proposal to stop all immigration from Muslim countries until a broad security assessment could be put in place as “about as mainstream and common sense as it gets.”

But Dr. Ibrahim said what he heard was mostly an appeal to ignorance and fear. He said he moved to Orlando from Tennessee in part so his twin boys, who are 11, could grow up around different kinds of people. Like their father, whose looks make him hard to place in terms of ethnicity, they represent a mixture of cultures: Their mother is white, Anglo in the lexicon of Orlando, born and raised in Tennessee.

But as a family with Ibrahim for a last name, they are still sometimes seen as outsiders. Dr. Ibrahim said his wife was once denied a loan because her name was confused with someone on a European terror watch list.


He and his wife also struggled with whether to continue the tradition, common in the Middle East, of passing on his second name, Abdellatif, to their oldest son. In the end, they went for it: Abdellatif now links grandfather, father and son, three generations of Egyptian-Americans.

Dr. Ibrahim is hoping that he won’t regret it. “Hopefully by the time he’s of age,” he said, “people will be even more tolerant.”
Riaz Haq said…
Funding #Islamophobia : $206m went to promoting 'hatred' agaist #American #Muslims, report finds. #Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jun/20/islamophobia-funding-cair-berkeley-report

Council on American-Islamic Relations and University of California Berkeley report names 74 groups they say contributed to Islamophobia in the US

Inciting hate toward American Muslims and Islam has become a multimillion-dollar business, according to a report released on Monday.

Released by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) and University of California Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, the report names 74 groups it says contribute in some way to Islamophobia in the US. Of those groups, it says, the primary purpose of 33 “is to promote prejudice against, or hatred of, Islam and Muslims”.

The core group, which includes the Abstraction Fund, Clarion Project, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Middle East Forum, American Freedom Law Center, Center for Security Policy, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Jihad Watch and Act! for America, had access to almost $206m of funding between 2008 and 2013, the report said.

Corey Saylor, author of the report and director of Cair’s department to monitor and combat Islamophobia, said: “The hate that these groups are funding and inciting is having real consequences like attacks on mosques all over the country and new laws discriminating against Muslims in America.”

Saylor added that the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and Act! for America have the most impact, because they are trying to push their anti-Muslim rhetoric beyond their formerly fringe following.

Two groups on the list, the Center for Security Policy and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, have given awards of recognition to Jeff Sessions, a US senator from Alabama who chairs Trump’s national security advisory committee and is a possible vice-presidential pick.

On Monday, the headline on the David Horowitz Freedom Center website was “Muslim privilege killed 49 people in Orlando”, a reference to the mass shooting on 12 June in an Orlando LGBT nightclub by Omar Mateen, a Muslim American from Port St Lucie, Florida.

Two other Trump foreign policy advisers have ties to groups named in the Cair-UCB report. The Center for Security Policy lists Joseph Schmitz as a senior fellow; Walid Phares reportedly served on the board of Act! for America.

The Guardian contacted Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of Act! for America, and the Center for Security Policy, which is led by Frank Gaffney, who advised Ted Cruz on national security during the Texas senator’s presidential campaign. Neither group responded immediately.

The Trump campaign and Sessions’ Senate office also did not respond to requests for comment.

Act! for America Education runs the Thin Blue Line Project, a password-protected database of information about Muslim communities in the US. According to the group’s website, the project “provides educational and informational content about issues relating to national security and terrorism and how the call to Jihad is accelerating homegrown terrorism”.
In a 2 June article, Stephen Piggott of the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that the Thin Blue Line Project’s key component is a “Radicalization Map Locator … which lists the addresses of every Muslim Student Association (MSA) in the country as well as a number of mosques and Islamic institutions – all listed as suspected national security concerns”.

The Cair-UCB report also tracks anti-Islam bills, which it says have become law in 10 states, and 78 recorded incidents in 2015 in which mosques were targeted. Saylor said this was the highest yearly number of attacks on mosques since Cair started tracking in 2009.
Riaz Haq said…
Global 1%, #Asia Middle Class Gained Most from #Globalization, not Middle Class in #America, #Europe. #Trump #Bexit

https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-the-global-1-and-the-asian-middle-class-have-gained-the-most-from-globalization


It is by now well-known that the period from the mid-1980s to today has been the period of the greatest reshuffle of personal incomes since the Industrial Revolution. It’s also the first time that global inequality has declined in the past two hundred years. The “winners” were the middle and upper classes of the relatively poor Asian countries and the global top 1%. The (relative) “losers” were the people in the lower and middle parts of rich countries’ income distributions, according to detailed household surveys data from more than 100 countries between 1988 and 2008, put together and analyzed by Christoph Lakner and myself, as well as my book Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, which includes updated information to 2011.

The chart above, the Global Incidence Curve, shows the world’s population along the horizontal axis, ranked from the poorest to the richest percentile; real income gains between 1988 and 2008 (adjusted for countries’ price levels) are shown on the vertical axis.

The expansion of incomes around the median of the global income distribution was so overwhelming that it ensured global inequality’s decline — despite the real income growth of the top 1% and rising national inequalities in many countries. Real incomes more than doubled between 1988 and 2011 (though the extension to 2011 is not shown in this chart), a shift that involved large swaths of people (almost a third of the world population, most of them from Asia). And although our data for the past are quite tentative and in some cases not much better than guesses, it is still the first time since 1820 that global inequality is deemed to have gone down, from approximately 69 Gini points to around 64. (On the Gini scale, 100 would be complete inequality while 0 would be complete equality).

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The intuition behind this result is easy to grasp. In most countries, and especially in the big ones like China, India, the United States, and Russia, national inequalities have risen. So if people are more focused on national inequality, their concerns about what is happening at home will dominate the “objective” reduction of inequality across the globe.

This may be politically a more meaningful way to look at global inequality, and it leads to a somber conclusion. Even if globalization were to be associated with an absolute real income improvement for all, or almost all, and reduced global inequality, if it is also associated with rising national inequalities, the unhappiness stemming from the latter may dominate. Globalization may be “felt” to produce a more unequal world, even if it objectively does not. Then the very facts that are globally hopeful and reassuring may have domestic consequences that are the very opposite.
Riaz Haq said…
As 7th largest immigrant population, #Pakistanis not eligible for US diversity visa. #Pakistan #America #Immigration

http://tribune.com.pk/story/1147303/7th-largest-immigrants-pakistanis-no-longer-eligible-us-diversity-visa/

According to the US law, diversity laws are only allowed to counties that have low rates of immigrants, said US consulate in Karachi’s spokesperson Brian Asmus, during a media tour of the Karachi consulate’s visa section on Friday. Pakistan had 104,000 immigrants in the 10 years between 2005 and 2014, he said, explaining why Pakistanis are no longer eligible.

The state department has only stopped diversity visas and there are a lot of other options, such as petitions, student, visit and exchange programme visas, which come under the non-immigrant category. “One can always apply for immigrant visa if they have immediate family in the US,” explained US consulate’s Non-Immigrant Visa chief Mary Pellegrini.

She also explained that it takes around one year for spouse and children, two years for parents and, for siblings, the time can vary up to a decade.

Nevertheless, the Pakistanis who have managed to immigrate are doing pretty well. According to a recent survey, an average Pakistani in the US earns $63,000 every year while an average US citizen earns only $51,000 a year, said Asmus.

Asmus dismissed the misconception that fewer Pakistanis are able to get visa for the US. The percentage of applications is increasing every year and the number of Pakistani citizens getting visas has also increased by 20% between 2014 and 2015, and another 20% between 2015 and 2016, he said.

The US Consulate in Karachi only deals in non-immigrant visas while immigrants visas are dealt at the embassy in Islamabad. Last year, the consulate issued a total of 72,000 visas across the country. So far in 2016, the US consulate in Karachi has issued a total of 14,400 visas.
Riaz Haq said…
Why are #Muslim immigrants in #America assimilating so quickly? Abandoning beliefs? Leaving faith? #Islamophobia

http://www.newsweek.com/why-are-muslim-immigrants-assimilating-so-quickly-511292?rx=us


In my column last week, I demonstrated using surveys mostly from Gallup and Pew Research Center that Muslim-Americans are rapidly abandoning beliefs widely held in their native countries and adopting the more liberal social and political beliefs of other Americans.

But what’s even more remarkable about this fact is that this transition has occurred at the same time that Muslim immigration has ramped up. In other words, immigration is not detracting from those changes and may even be contributing to them.

While the number of Muslim immigrants and their children doubled from 2007 to 2015—from 1.4 million to 2.7 million—the native Muslim population fell by more than a third—from about 917,000 to 594,000. This provides evidence that the immigrants themselves are taking part in the recent changes.

I’ll just give a couple of examples for which I have data for both 2007 and 2014. Figure 2 compares the rate of acceptance of homosexuality among Muslim immigrants and their children with the rate of acceptance among all Muslims, while also tracking the number of Muslim immigrants in the United States.

Pew did not report the breakdown of acceptance of homosexuality by nativity in 2014, but as Figure 2 shows, their views tracked the changes in those for all Muslims in 2007 and 2011—a 12 percent increase for both.

Given this departure from the strict reading of the Koran, we would expect that many Muslims in the United States may have adjusted their views on Islam’s scripture.

Pew found in 2007 that 50 percent of U.S. Muslims favored taking a “literal” interpretation of the holy book, while 33 percent opposed doing so. By 2014, the literalists had dropped 8 points, and the non-literalists rose 10 points, as seen in Figure 2.


Here’s another significant point of equal significance: These changes do not include those who abandoned Islam, and it’s safe to assume that these are the people who are likely to be the most liberal.

Thus, these surveys probably under-represent the level of liberalization among people who were raised Muslim or among immigrants who first arrived in the country as Muslim because they exclude those people who defected from the faith in adulthood or after their arrival in the United States.

This phenomenon is very significant. In 2014, 23 percent of all U.S. residents raised in Muslim households had left their religion, according to Pew. Another estimate placed the share at 32 percent. Two small surveys found that the number of Iranian Americans who identify as Muslim dropped from 42 percent to 31 percent from 2008 to 2012.

Based on Pew’s 2011 survey of Muslims in America, this number may actually be at the high end. Using American Community Survey data, the numbers imply that the actual share is more likely about 22 percent. Estimates of the effect of “Muslim” immigration on the religious or political makeup of the United States would be highly misleading if it ignored this group.

The bottom line is that very large increases in the Muslim population in the United States due to immigration have not stalled assimilation of those immigrants. Rather, they are demonstrating Americans’ incredible capacity to encourage immigrants to adopt their ways.
Riaz Haq said…
Can #Television Be Fair to #Muslims? #Islamophobia #Hollywood #Homeland #Quantico #Terrorism

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/arts/television/can-television-be-fair-to-muslims.html?_r=1

MELENA RYZIK The F.B.I. has said that attacks against Muslims were up 67 percent last year. Do you have any anxiety about your shows being fodder for that?

HOWARD GORDON The short answer is, absolutely, yes.

RYZIK What can you do to handle that?

GORDON On “Homeland,” it’s an ongoing and very important conversation.

For instance, this year, the beginning of it involves the sort of big business of prosecuting entrapment. It actually tests the edges of free speech. How can someone express their discontent with American policy — even a reckless kid who might express his views that may be sympathetic to enemies of America, but still is not, himself, a terrorist, but is being set up to be one by the big business of government?

For me to answer, personally, that question, it’s a difficult one. “24” having been the launching point for me to engage in these conversations, which I have been having for 10 years, and being very conscious about not wanting to be a midwife to these base ideas. We’re all affected, unwittingly, by who we are and how we see the world. It requires creating an environment where people can speak freely about these things. It requires this vigilant empathy.

JOSHUA SAFRAN For me, it was important to not ever put a Muslim terrorist on our show. There hasn’t been one. This year we have the appearance of one — which is a spoiler. But it’s not true.

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ZARQA NAWAZ Do you remember that show “All-American Muslim”?

AASIF MANDVI We covered “All-American Muslim” [a 2011 TLC series] when I was on “The Daily Show,” because that was a reality show of real Muslim families. Basically everyone was like, “This is propaganda trying to promote Muslims as nice, friendly, next-door neighbor people, and we shouldn’t trust these people at all.” The show ultimately got taken off the air because it lost advertising money.

NAWAZ One guy, David Caton, he created an organization — the only employee, himself — the Family Florida Association. He sent a letter to all the advertisers saying, “This show is propaganda.”

SAFRAN One guy took that show down?

MANDVI Specifically, Lowe’s pulled their advertising. And other places as well. We focused on Lowe’s, when we did the story on “The Daily Show,” because Muslims can buy a lot of terrorist material at Lowe’s.

GORDON Fertilizer!

MANDVI When I did my one-man show, many years ago, I wanted to write a story about Muslim characters that were not what Hollywood was putting out there. I got that same reaction, “Oh, this is my family. I recognize [it].”

And then 9/11 happened, and we made this movie based on the show. And then the show became political because it wasn’t about terrorism. All people wanted to talk about after 9/11 was terrorism …
Riaz Haq said…
People are making sure Katie Hopkins' extraordinary Mail Online apology isn't missed. #Islamophobia http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/katie-hopkins-apologises_uk_5857b020e4b0e9baa877e873?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004 … via @HuffPostUK

Katie Hopkins has been forced to apologise for a string of mistruths and defamatory claims about a British Muslim family barred from travelling to the United States.

The columnist wrote in the Mail Online last year about Britain’s “Mickey Mouse” border security, and how the US’ decision to deny the family access proved it was “protecting its own people”.

In one of the pieces, Hopkins had quipped: “You can’t prosecute the truth”.

But now two articles featuring claims about the Mahmood family of Walthamstow, North London, have been taken down.

Mail Online paid the Mahmoods £150,000 in damages, the Guardian reported.

The website issued an apology on Monday for the pieces. The full statement reads:

An article published in Katie Hopkins’ column on 23 December 2015 (’Just because Britain’s border security is a Mickey Mouse operation you can’t blame America for not letting this lot travel to Disneyland – I wouldn’t either’) suggested that Mohammed Tariq Mahmood and his brother, Mohammed Zahid Mahmood, are extremists with links to Al Qaeda; that their purported reason for visiting the USA – namely to visit Disneyland – was a lie; and that US Homeland Security were right to prevent them from boarding their flight. We are happy to make clear that Tariq Mahmood and Zahid Mahmood are not extremists, nor do they have links to Al Qaeda. They were travelling to the USA with their families to see one of their brothers for a holiday in California and they had indeed planned to visit Disneyland as part of their trip.

In addition a further article in Katie’s column on 29 December (’A brave Muslim tried to warn us their week about the extremists taking over his community. What a tragedy it is that our PC politicians would rather not know’) suggested that Hamza Mahmood (Mohammed Tariq Mahmood’s son) was responsible for a Facebook page which allegedly contained extremist material. Our article included a photo of the family home. Hamza Mahmood has pointed out that he is not responsible for the Facebook page, which was linked to him as a result of an error involving his email address. We are happy to make clear that there is no suggestion that either Hamza nor Taeeba or Hafsa Mahmood (Hamza’s mother and sister) have any links to extremism.

We and Katie Hopkins apologise to the Mahmood family for the distress and embarrassment caused and have agreed to pay them substantial damages and their legal costs.
The two articles were published just four weeks after Hopkins began working at Mail Online.

The apology was tweeted by Hopkins at two o’clock on Monday morning, and by 11am became her most re-tweeted message ever - at over 3,500 shares and counting.
Riaz Haq said…
#Hate groups 'rose massively with #Trump's success' says new report. #Islamophobia #antisemitism http://dailym.ai/2kL7OEU via @MailOnline

New map shows the booming number of hate groups that have sprung up since Trump ran for president after his candidacy 'energized the radical right'
The Southern Poverty Law Center says there are now 917 hate groups in the US - up from 892 in 2015
And anti-Muslim groups went from 34 to 101 during the year that Donald Trump campaigned for president
That's not a coincidence says they group: They believe 'Trump's run for office electrified the radical right'
White nationalist and neo-Nazi groups are on the rise, as are black separatist groups, likely in response
Many black supremacy, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT groups are in cities; white nationalists mostly in country

Hate groups in the US have proliferated over the past year as Donald Trump's successful bid for the presidency energized the far right, a new report claims.
Anti-Muslim groups nearly tripled from 34 in 2015 to 101 in 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said, while the total number of hate groups increased from 892 to 917.
'Trump's run for office electrified the radical right, which saw in him a champion of the idea that America is fundamentally a white man's country,' the nonprofit said.
The group counted 867 bias-related incidents in the first ten days after Trump's election, including more than 300 that targeted immigrants or Muslims.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The figures, contained in the site's 2017 Intelligence Report said the number of hate groups in the United States in 2016 was high by historic standards.
The organization classifies 'hate groups' as those who vilify entire communities based on unchangeable characteristics like race or ethnicity.
And researchers for the Alabama-based organization said the number of crimes against Muslims had risen with the number of hate groups.
For example, they said, a Texas mosque was torched after the Trump administration issued an executive order suspending travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries.
Riaz Haq said…
Anti-#Muslim rallies across #US denounced by civil rights groups. #Islamophobia #America #Trump

So-called ‘anti-Sharia’ rallies across almost 30 US cities come as hate crimes on the rise, prompting criticism and counter-protests

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/10/anti-muslim-rallies-across-us-denounced-by-civil-rights-groups

A wave of anti-Muslim rallies planned for almost 30 cities across America on Saturday by far-right activists has drawn sharp criticism from civil rights groups and inspired counter-protests nationwide.

A number of small protests took place and in many places, including New York and Chicago, a few dozen “anti-sharia” demonstrators were outnumbered by counter-protesters.

Hundreds of counter-protesters marched through Seattle on Saturday to confront a few dozen people claiming sharia was incompatible with western freedoms. The counter protesters banged drums, cymbals and cowbells behind a large sign saying “Seattle stands with our Muslim neighbors.” Participants chanted “No hate, no fear, Muslims are welcome here” on their way to City Hall, while a phalanx of bicycle police officers separated them from an anti-sharia rally.

Later, Seattle police used tear gas to disperse rowdy demonstrators and made several arrests. The department said it was still reviewing how many people were arrested and what charges they might face.

Elsewhere, in St Paul in Minnesota, police made seven arrests as fights broke out during demonstrations there.

The rallies have been organized by Act for America, which claims to be protesting about human rights violations but has been deemed an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The demonstrations prompted security fears at mosques across the country and come at a time when hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise.


A coalition of 129 national and local organizations amplified concerns on Friday in a letter urging mayors to denounce the marches, which also coincide with Ramadan, the holy month in which Muslims fast during the daylight hours.

The Saturday rallies in Chicago occurred near a building developed by Donald Trump. Giant letters spelling out “Trump” loomed on the high-rise over the more than 100 protesters.
Riaz Haq said…
#Saudi Money Fuels the #Tech Industry in #SiliconValley. #Twitter #Facebook #Uber #WeWork The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/technology/unsavory-sources-money-fueling-tech.html

We need to talk about the tsunami of questionable money crashing into the tech industry.

We should talk about it because that money is suddenly in the news, inconveniently out in the open in an industry that has preferred to keep its connection to petromonarchs and other strongmen on the down low.

The news started surfacing over the weekend, when Saudi Arabia arrested a passel of princes, including Alwaleed bin Talal, the billionaire tech investor who has large holdings in Apple, Twitter and Lyft. The arrests, part of what the Saudis called a corruption crackdown, opened up a chasm under the tech industry’s justification for taking money from the religious monarchy.


-------


Unsurprisingly, this is not a topic many people want to talk about. SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that runs the $100 billion Vision Fund, which is shelling out eye-popping investments in tech companies, declined to comment for this column. Nearly half of the Vision Fund, about $45 billion, comes from the Saudi Public Investment Fund.

WeWork and Slack, two prominent start-ups that have received recent investments from the Vision Fund, also declined to comment. So did Uber, which garnered a $3.5 billion investment from the Public Investment Fund in 2016, and which is in talks to receive a big investment from the SoftBank fund. The Public Investment Fund also did not return a request for comment.

Twitter, which got a $300 million investment from Prince Alwaleed’s Kingdom Holding Company in 2011 — around the same time that it was talking up its role in the Arab Spring — declined to comment on his arrest. Lyft, which received $105 million from Prince Alwaleed in 2015, also declined to comment.

Privately, several founders, investors and others at tech companies who have taken money from the Saudi government or prominent members of the royal family did offer insight into their thinking. Prince Alwaleed, some pointed out, was not aligned with the Saudi government — his arrest by the government underscores this — and he has advocated for some progressive reforms, including giving women the right to drive, a restriction that the kingdom says will be lifted next year.

The founders and investors also brought up the Saudi government’s supposed push for modernization. The Saudis have outlined a long-term plan, Vision 2030, that calls for a reduction in the state’s dependence on oil and a gradual loosening on economic and social restrictions, including a call for greater numbers of women to enter the work force. The gauzy vision allows tech companies to claim to be part of the solution in Saudi Arabia rather than part the problem: Sure, they are taking money from one of the world’s least transparent and most undemocratic regimes, but it’s the part of the government that wants to do better.

Another mitigating factor, for some, is the sometimes indirect nature of the Saudi investments. When the SoftBank Vision Fund invests tens of millions or billions into a tech company, it’s true that half of that money is coming from Saudi Arabia. But it’s SoftBank that has control over the course of the investment and communicates with founders. The passive nature of the Saudi investment in SoftBank’s fund thus allows founders to sleep better at night.

On the other hand, it also has a tendency to sweep the Saudi money under the rug. When SoftBank invests in a company, the Saudi connection is not always made clear to employees and customers. You get to enjoy the convenience of your WeWork without having to confront its place in the Saudi government’s portfolio.
Riaz Haq said…
How Muslims, Often Misunderstood, Are Thriving in America
They’re a vibrant and increasingly visible part of the tapestry in communities across the nation.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/05/being-muslim-in-america/

There was nothing to do but watch as the copper-domed building in the southern Texas oil town of Victoria burned down.

The mosque where Abe Ajrami’s Beyoncé-loving daughter was feted with other high school graduates, the mosque where his children went to religion classes, the mosque where he and his family went every Friday to pray and mingle over a potluck of seven-layer dip and spiced biryani, was gone.


“I was trying not to break down,” says Ajrami, a Palestinian American who raced to the mosque after getting a phone call in the dead of night. He recounts the experience to me in his living room as his wife, Heidi, an American convert to Islam, sits to his right and his daughters, Hannah and Jenin, sit to his left, while his son, Rami, sleeps upstairs.

This family reminds me of my own. My father, from Lebanon originally, also came to the United States for an education and a better future, as Ajrami did. My mother was a Unitarian Universalist, like Heidi, and she met her future husband in college and converted. My parents have raised five ambiguously tan American Muslim kids.

-------------

Airaj Jilani, a retired oil-and-gas project manager from suburban Houston, performs as Elvis Presley. He has been a fan since he was a boy growing up in Pakistan. “I was the Elvis fan. My brother was the Beatles fan,” he says. In 1978 he visited Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; the following year he moved to Texas.

-----------
The community has spent about three million dollars trying to build this mosque, but the Islamic center is still just a blueprint in Sohail Akhter’s kitchen. The Pakistani American is the project manager. “Fearmongering is the greatest weapon that they’ve used against us because we’re so few,” he explains to me, saying that opponents have accused them of trying to build a terrorist training camp. “Not a lot of people here have ever met a Muslim. They associate all of us with that. They’re afraid.”

-------------------

Nawab grew up culturally confused. She’s the daughter of parents from Pakistan, she was raised in a largely Arab immigrant suburb of Chicago, and she went to a mostly white school but identified with various cultures, including black culture and hip-hop. “I knew I was Muslim,” she says. “I just didn’t know what it meant. And people put you in boxes: Arab, Muslim, immigrant, doesn’t speak English. I didn’t know how I fit in.”

-------------

IMAN is a way to make Islam relevant to American Muslims, Nashashibi says, especially those searching for a purpose and a connection to a faith so often portrayed as a foreign threat on American television. For this work he was recognized last year with a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. “We’re trying to celebrate the legacy of the spirit of a transformational, empowering, inspirational Islam that is not constantly trying to apologize and explain itself,” he says.

It’s the antidote, he says, to the apathy that leads people away from the faith or the vulnerability, disenfranchisement, and anger that lead people to violence, be it on the South Side of Chicago or the battlefields in Syria and Iraq. And America, he says, is the best place to be a Muslim today. “America has always provided, even in its darkest hours, spaces through which people have challenged it to live up to unfulfilled ideals.”
Riaz Haq said…
5 #American #Muslim Candidates Elected to Local Offices in #SanFrancisco Ba y Area in #Elections2018. Sabina Zafar, Javed Ellahie, Aisha Wahab, Maimona Berta, Cheryl Suddeth.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/5-American-Muslim-Candidates-Elected-to-Local-Offices-500051011.html via @nbcbayarea

The election of five American Muslims to local office in the Bay Area on Tuesday is a sign voters are ready for diverse leadership despite troubling increases in hate crimes nationwide, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Before Tuesday, only one elected official among hundreds of representatives on the region's local councils, panels and boards was Muslim, Bay Area representatives of CAIR said today.

"These victories come in the face of CAIR's recent report revealing a 17 percent increase in bias-motivated incidents and a 15 percent increase in hate crimes against American Muslims since Trump took office," said Zahra Billoo, Bay Area executive director of CAIR.

Nationwide, 55 American Muslim candidates won election to offices, 11 of them in California, according to CAIR.

The American Muslim candidates elected Tuesday to Bay Area offices won seats on a variety of local panels.



Sabina Zafar, a technology executive, was elected to the San Ramon City Council.

Business information technology consultant Aisha Wahab won one of two seats open on the Hayward City Council.

Maimona Afzal Berta, a special education teacher, ran successfully for the election to the Franklin-McKinley School Board.

Cheryl Suddeth, a molecular biologist, won election to the West County Wastewater District Board.

Attorney Javed Ellahie was elected to one of three open seats on the Monte Sereno City Council, in Santa Clara County. That election, however, is subject to an automatic recount.
Riaz Haq said…
Stop #domestic extremism, domestic terrorism, #AntiSemitism, and all acts of bigotry or #Islamophobia in #America. Tackle #WhiteSupremacy as #terrorism, experts say. #racism #xenophobia @CNN https://cnn.it/2WHhsM1

it's still a mistake not to call out white supremacy, according to the former head of the Countering Violent Extremism Task Force at DHS, George Selim.

"If the same number of Americans had been killed at the hands of an individual that was inspired or directed by a foreign terrorist organization, you can bet this Congress and any administration, irrespective of political party would be reacting much differently," he said.

Officials acknowledge this pattern and it's one reason that Selim believes something can be done to stop these people who are sometimes categorized as untraceable "lone wolves."

Selim also said that, too often, there seems to be a reluctance to name white men as possibly dangerous. And that itself is dangerous because white supremacists and nationalists are a "real and persistent threat," he said.
"As I look forward in the next five to 10 or more years, we need to acclimate ourselves to the new normal, which is increased incidents of domestic extremism, domestic terrorism, anti-Semitism, and all acts of bigotry or Islamophobia, xenophobia that target ethnic and religious minority groups," he said. "Once we understand that that is very likely the new normal, then we can put in place some of the strong infrastructure related to counterterrorism and community resilience that we've already built up and focus it on these new threats that we know we're going to be facing."
ADL CEO: Put hatred back in the sewer where it belongs
With the administration prioritizing other matters, Selim is hoping legislators will hold them accountable and encourage action beyond denunciations of extremist atrocities.
He insists some of the attacks that cost lives are preventable. He advocates for cooperation between law enforcement, social media companies, community leaders and groups like the ADL. And he believes that the initiative he led at the Department of Homeland Security would have borne fruit if funding had been continued.
"The setback won't be able to be measured here and now," Selim said. "I can't tell you that funding of these programs would have prevented Pittsburgh or Poway, but I can say in good conscience that we sure would have stood a better chance at preventing or intervening in incidents like this had funding for these programs continued."
Sending a powerful message
If Selim is hoping Congress will take steps on the identification of dangerous white supremacists, Manhattan DA Vance is hoping the same people will take action on what can be done with suspects once identified.
Many states do not have terrorism laws on the books or prosecute cases the way he did with the murder of Caughman, who called himself a can and bottle recycler and autograph collector on his Twitter account, where he posted a photo of himself waiting to vote in the 2016 election.

Riaz Haq said…
Answering a twitter poll run by @dachibear50 asking "Should schools in America be forced to teach Arabic numerals?", 90% of the respondents said "No" (though they themselves didn’t realize that we already do). #Islamophobia #xenophobia #Arabic #America https://www.heraldbanner.com/opinion/columns/uncivilized-civics-arabic-numerals-poll-comments-not-good-look-for/article_13e0b9f2-75e5-11e9-a673-4b5476005750.html

Friday, May 3, 2019 is a day that I likely will not forget anytime soon. It’s the day that I saw a poll on twitter and was incredulous about the purported results.

How, I asked myself, could 90% of people responding to this poll not know that we use the “Hindu-Arabic” numeral system, and how could they not know that we already “force” schools to use it? That was, after all, the question posed by the original poll.

It asked: “Should schools in America be forced to teach Arabic numerals as a part of their curriculum?”

I figured that this had to be a fluke. It had to be nothing more than a mix-up. I mean, it had to be … right? This must be due simply to a lack of education as to what Arabic numerals were.

So, I decided to make that poll the subject of an upcoming school paper. That required a thesis statement, so I decided to see how my Facebook contacts and their friends would react, and also decided to see if they would change their votes after learning what “Arabic” numerals were.

So off I went and posted the poll — with the definition of “Arabic numerals” in the comments.

It went along alright at first. I was watching what I thought would happen, happen. Where it took off to next, however, has literally decimated my hope for civil discourse and peer-to-peer education in our country.

The 10 days since I posted my poll have consisted of 10 days of watching the very worst that America has to offer. Some were offended that we would teach Arabic numerals and not “American” ones. Others were offended that people did not want “Arabic” numbers in their school (though they themselves didn’t realize that we already do). Yet others were just upset that the American public education system had failed to teach something as basic as where our numbers come from.

(On a side note, I wonder if they still teach that our alphabet comes ultimately from ancient Proto-Sinatic or Semitic letter system that originates in Egypt… but I digress.)

To say that the streams were filled with vitriol and hatred would be an overwhelming understatement. The poll went viral and has continued on social media platforms far beyond the original two that were used. It remains a hotbed of debate that has far eclipsed the 26,000 people who responded to the Facebook poll. And those comment threads? They are far worse and far uglier than the one that I shut down.

Charges of bigotry, racism, xenophobia, treason, sympathizing against America, and all kinds of other hateful rhetoric have flown freely and without pause. I am watching people who are simply unable to contain their emotions spew some of the most venomous poison on each other, and you know what? I find myself heartbroken, heartsick, and many other things, including being infuriated at myself for not seeing this coming, but the one the thing I am not, is surprised.

You see, this is what America has become. This great melting pot of humanity has become a balkanized state of racial, political, lifestyle, and religious tribes. Most are members of more than one tribe, but they identify strongest with one or another, and they’re ready to fight for it.

That is who we have become: a nation of civil warriors, each fighting for their side. No one’s talking, not really. We’re shouting, or we’re talking at, over, under, and around each other, or we’re talking about each other. But the one thing we’re not doing is talking TO each other.

We have locked ourselves in our own echo chambers and have rejected anyone unlike us – and may the Lord help whoever it is that doesn’t fit in our circle.


Riaz Haq said…
Legal #Immigration Is Plunging in #Trump Years. Number of people who obtained lawful permanent residence, besides refugees who entered the #UnitedStates in previous years, declined to 940,877 in the 2018 fiscal year from 1,063,289 in the 2016 fiscal year https://nyti.ms/2PjtCsx

Four years ago, legal immigration was at its highest level since 2006, when 1,266,129 people obtained lawful permanent residence in the United States.

And immigration experts say new policies will accelerate the trend. A report released on Monday by the foundation projected a 30 percent plunge in legal immigration by 2021 and a 35 percent dip in average annual growth of the U.S. labor force.

Trump administration officials have said that immigration into the country should be based on merit and skills, not the family-based system that for decades has allowed immigrants to bring their spouses and children to live with them.

------------


The rapid declines come as record-low unemployment has even the president’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, confiding to a gathering in Britain that “we are desperate, desperate for more people.”

But the doors have been blocked in multiple ways. Those fleeing violence or persecution have found asylum rules tightened and have been forced to wait in squalid camps in Mexico or sent to countries like Guatemala as their cases are adjudicated. People who have languished in displaced persons camps for years face an almost impossible refugee cap of 18,000 this year, down from the 110,000 that President Barack Obama set in 2016.


Family members hoping to travel legally from Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia were blocked by the president’s travel ban.

Increased vetting and additional in-person interviews have further winnowed foreign travelers. The number of visas issued to foreigners abroad looking to immigrate to the United States has declined by about 25 percent, to 462,422 in the 2019 fiscal year from 617,752 in 2016.

And two more tough policies have now taken effect. The expansion of Mr. Trump’s travel ban to six additional countries, including Africa’s most populous, Nigeria, began on Friday, and the wealth test, which effectively sets a wealth floor for would-be immigrants, started on Monday. Those will reshape immigration in the years to come, according to experts.

The travel and visa bans, soon to cover 13 countries, are almost sure to be reflected in immigration numbers in the near future. Of the average of more than 537,000 people abroad granted permanent residency from 2014 to 2016, including through a diversity lottery system, nearly 28,000, or 5 percent, would be blocked under the administration’s newly expanded travel restrictions, according to an analysis of State Department data.

But the wealth test — or public charge rule — may prove the most consequential change yet. Around two-thirds of the immigrants who obtained permanent legal status from 2012 to 2016 could be blocked from doing so under the new rule, which denies green cards to those who are likely to need public assistance, according to a study by the Migration Policy Institute.

Before Monday, immigrants were disqualified from permanent resident status only if they failed to demonstrate a household income above 125 percent of the federal poverty line, a threshold set by Congress. Now, immigration officials will weigh dozens of factors, like age, health, language skills, credit score and insurance as well as whether an applicant has previously used public benefits, to determine if the applicant is likely to use them in the future.
Riaz Haq said…
Man Making #Racist Comments To #Asian Family On Viral Video Identified As #SanFrancisco #Tech CEO Michael Lofthouse. He’s heard shouting: “Trump’s gonna f— you..You f—— need to leave! You f—— Asian piece of s—-“ #Trump #racism #covid19 CBS San Francisco

https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2020/07/07/racist-comments-asian-family-viral-video-san-francisco-tech-ceo-michael-lofthouse/

A man who seen in a viral video delivering vulgar and racist comments toward an Asian family celebrating a birthday at a restaurant in Carmel Valley has been identified by multiple publications as a San Francisco tech CEO.

The video originally posted on Instagram shows a man cursing and gesturing with his middle finger at the family at the Bernardus Lodge and Spa’s Lucia restaurant.

The woman who posted the video told KION the incident happened as her family was celebrating her aunt’s birthday on the Fourth of July and that man was insulting and harassing her family with racist language, saying, “F— you Asians,” “Go back to whatever f—— Asian country you’re from” and “You don’t belong here.”

The video starts with the woman asking the man sitting one table over to repeat what he had just said to them. The man stares at the camera for a few seconds, then extends his middle finger and says, “This is what I say.”

The man then says, “Trump’s gonna f— you,” as he stood up to leave, followed by “You f—— need to leave! You f—— Asian piece of s—!” A server then immediately yells at him “No, you do not talk to our guests like that. Get out of here,” the waitress could be heard saying in the video.

Multiple publications identified the man in the video as Michael Lofthouse, CEO of San Francisco cloud computing firm Solid8. A message to the company asking for a statement has not been returned.
Riaz Haq said…
#NewYork Jets make history, hiring Robert Saleh to become #NFL's first #Muslim head coach. As #SanFrancisco 49ers' defensive coordinator, Saleh designed one of pro football's most elite units. #pro #football

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jets-make-history-hiring-robert-saleh-become-nfl-s-first-n1254149

Saleh brings considerable credentials to his new job in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Before he took over the 49ers' defense in 2017, San Francisco had ranked dead last in total yards surrendered.

The 49ers were 24th and 13th in total defense in Saleh's first two years in charge, before the crew ranked second and fifth in the league the last two seasons.

This season's accomplishments were particularly impressive in light of the staggering number of injuries that prevented many of Saleh's best players from taking the field.



-------------

The New York Jets hired San Francisco 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh to be their new head coach, making him the first Muslim to run an NFL sideline, the team announced Thursday night.

"We've reached an agreement in principle with Robert Saleh to become our head coach," the Jets said in a statement.

Saleh has spent the past four years in Santa Clara, California, transforming the 49ers' defense from a onetime laughingstock to one of football's most elite units.

He'll take over a team that won just two of 16 games this past season and hasn't made the playoffs since the 2010-11 campaign. The Jets have just one Super Bowl title in franchise history, the famed Joe Namath guarantee of Jan. 12, 1969.

Before Saleh, 41, a native of Dearborn, Michigan, was hired by the Jets, no Muslim had ever been an NFL head coach, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, a Muslim civil rights advocacy group.

"We welcome this development as another sign of the increasing inclusion and recognition of American Muslims in our diverse society," CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said in a statement late Thursday.

Saleh, whose family traces its roots to Lebanon, will be third Arab American NFL head coach, following in the footsteps of Abe Gibran and Rich Kotite, who are both of Lebanese descent, according to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Gibran was head coach of the Chicago Bears for three seasons, 1972 to 1974. Kotite ran the Philadelphia Eagles for four seasons (1991-94) and the Jets for two seasons (1995-96).
Riaz Haq said…
My research similarly shows that creating spaces for empathy can prove invaluable for combating intergroup hostility. In 2015, my research assistants and I interviewed Americans and Pakistanis on their views of each other’s culture. We found that both groups held highly negative beliefs and stereotypes about the other. Pakistanis didn’t just see Americans as loose, but as immoral and arrogant. Americans saw Pakistanis as overly constrained, but also aggressive and violent. As impressions are often formed through the media, which thrives on caricature, such extreme stereotyping is perhaps not surprising. What’s more, we tend to live in our own echo chambers. Even on Twitter and Facebook, we communicate with those we know and those who share our views, rather than engaging with people from other cultures. In our study, we wondered if we could lessen intergroup intergroup hostility by giving each group a more realistic window into each other’s lives. We didn’t have the budget to fly Pakistanis to the United States or vice versa. But what if Americans were able to read the actual daily diaries of Pakistanis, and Pakistanis were able to read the diaries of Americans, over the course of a week? Would this exposure to one another’s day-to-day lives change their attitudes? To find out, my collaborator Joshua Jackson and I had American and Pakistani students write about their everyday experiences for one week. We then gave a new group of participants, including a hundred American and a hundred Pakistani students, a set of these diary entries to read over the course of a week. The results of this low-cost intervention were striking: As compared with participants who read diary entries from members of their own culture, participants who read diary entries written by members of the other culture viewed the two cultures as being much more similar. What’s more, Pakistani participants who read Americans’ diaries viewed Americans as more moral and as having less of a sense of superiority over other cultures. And, by the end of this intervention, our American participants who read diaries written by Pakistanis viewed Pakistanis as less violent and more fun-loving. “I don’t know many Pakistanis personally, but the diary entries helped me learn about the everyday life of someone in Pakistan,” one American participant wrote at the study’s end. “I think that they tend to be a bit more religious than the people in America, but have similar life patterns and personalities to us.” Likewise, a Pakistani participant remarked, “Americans may be different than us in moral, ethical, or religious values, but the lives of students in America are very similar to the life of a student here . . . They are law-abiding citizens, which is one of the reasons the system in America is working smoothly.” As these quotes show, interventions that improve our understanding of people from other cultures hold tremendous promise for defusing stereotypes, heading off conflict, and resolving intercultural disputes. Every day, citizens are finding meaningful ways to interact with people far outside their own social circles. In 2017, the Washington Post reported that, in a Dairy Queen in Dallas, Texas, two American-born men decided to have a sit-down over burgers and fries to untangle their mutual suspicion. On one end, there was David Wright, a white man who had founded a militia called the Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR) with the mission of rooting out Islamic terrorists in Texas. At the other end was Ali Ghouri, a member of a local mosque where Wright and his coalition had protested twice with weapons and signs reading “Stop the Islamization of America.” Against the advice of other members of his mosque, Ghouri confronted the protesters, saying, “I have a weapon. You have a weapon. I’m not scared of you.” Five months later, Wright and Ghouri met at the Dairy Queen. Each man brought a friend—and a gun.

Gelfand, Michele. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World (p. 198-199). Scribner. Kindle Edition. 
Riaz Haq said…
#Census2021: #California’s population declined in 2020 first time in 100 years. Golden state is still the largest #US state with 39.5 million people. #SiliconValley population continued grow with Santa Clara County 7.44% & Alameda County 11.07% growth. https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties/states/ca

Not surprisingly, California's Los Angeles County(/us-counties/ca/los-angeles-county-population) is the largest county in the state, as well as the nation, with a huge population of 10,150,558 that continues to grow – the most recent census shows that its population has increased by 3.32% since the last census. A number of other Californian counties also boast large populations, although they look small in comparison to Los Angeles County. San Diego County has a population of 3,337,685 and a growth rate of 7.8%, while neighboring Orange County has 3,190,400 residents and a growth rate of 6%.

The smallest county in California is Alpine County, with its population of just 1,120. This total represents a decrease of 4.7% since the last census count performed in 2010. Sierra County and Modoc County follow, with populations of 2,999 and 8,859, respectively, and negative growth rates of 7.4% and 8.5%. Many other counties have fewer than fifty thousand residents, such as Trinity County (12,839), Del Norte County (27,450), and Siskiyou County (43,511) – each of these counties also show negative growth rates. However, one smaller county, San Benito County (59,335) has increased its population by an impressive 6.85% since the last census.

Alameda County, with its sizeable population of 1,653,236, has shown the largest population growth, with a substantial increase of 10.1% – this can perhaps be attributed to its proximity to San Francisco. Indeed, San Francisco County also has a substantial population growth of 8.73% and 876,103 residents. Lassen County has the highest negative growth, with its 31,000 residents representing a significant decrease of 10.7%.
Riaz Haq said…
The following article from the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) says there are 14,352 Pakistan-i-American doctors of in America.


https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2767883

Prevalence of International Medical Graduates From Muslim-Majority Nations in the US Physician Workforce From 2009 to 2019

John R. Boulet, PhD; Robbert J. Duvivier, MD, PhD; William W. Pinsky, MD


Of 1 065 606 physicians in the American Medical Association Physician Masterfile, 263 029 (24.7%) were IMGs, of whom 48 354 were citizens of Muslim-majority countries at time of entry to medical school, representing 18.4% of all IMGs. Overall, 1 in 22 physicians in the US was an IMG from a Muslim-majority nation, representing 4.5% of the total US physician workforce. More than half of IMGs from Muslim-majority nations (24 491 [50.6%]) come from 3 countries: Pakistan (14 352 [29.7%]), Iran (5288 [10.9%]), and Egypt (4851 [10.0%]). The most prevalent specialties include internal medicine (10 934 [23.6%]), family medicine (3430 [7.5%]), pediatrics (2767 [5.9%]), and psychiatry (2251 [4.8%]), with 18 229 (38.1%) practicing in primary care specialties. The number of applicants for Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates certification from Muslim-majority countries increased from 2009 (3227 applicants) to 2015 (4244 applicants), then decreased by 2.1% in 2016 to 4254 applicants, 4.3% in 2017 to 4073 applicants, and 11.5% in 2018 to 3604 applicants. Much of this decrease could be attributed to fewer citizens from Pakistan (1042 applicants in 2015 to 919 applicants in 2018), Egypt (493 applicants in 2015 to 309 applicants in 2018), Iran (281 applicants in 2015 to 182 applicants in 2018), and Saudi Arabia (337 applicants in 2015 to 163 applicants in 2018) applying for certification.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan-born Khizr Khan among 17 Americans to receive highest US civil award

https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/970872-pakistan-born-khizr-khan-among-17-americans-to-receive-highest-us-civil-award


Khizr Khan is a Gold Star father and founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center

Pakistani-American Khizr Khan, who got worldwide fame when he challenged former US president Donald Trump’s knowledge of the Constitution, has been nominated to receive the country's highest civil award — The Presidential Medal of Freedom.

President Joe Biden on Friday announced the recipients of the prestigious award including Khizr Khan among 17 noted Americans. Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs (posthumously) and former Senator John McCain (posthumously) will also receive the award.

The Presidential Medal of Freedom, established under former President John F Kennedy, is the highest civilian honour, presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the US, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavours, the White House said in a statement.

"President Biden has long said that America can be defined by one word: possibilities,” it added

"These seventeen Americans demonstrate the power of possibilities and embody the soul of the nation – hard work, perseverance, and faith," the White House said further.

"They have overcome significant obstacles to achieve impressive accomplishments in the arts and sciences, dedicated their lives to advocating for the most vulnerable among us, and acted with bravery to drive change in their communities — and across the world — while blazing trails for generations to come.

The awards will be presented at the White House Thursday, July 7.

Who is Khizr Khan?
Khizr Khan is a Gold Star father and founder of the Constitution Literacy and National Unity Center.

He is a prominent advocate for the rule of law and religious freedom and served on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom under President Biden.

He came to fame when in 2016 he openly challenged the then US president for his knowledge of the US Constitution. His son, US Army Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Khizr Khan originally hail from Lahore, where Khizr studied law at the Punjab University.

He then went to the US along with his young family to continue further studies at Harvard Law School, before permanently settling down in the country.
Riaz Haq said…
'Stranger at the Gate' short film shows how kindness can change a would-be terrorist's ways
https://www.nprillinois.org/2023-01-09/stranger-at-the-gate-short-film-shows-how-kindness-can-change-a-would-be-terrorists-ways

Former Marine Richard “Mac” McKinney was determined to bomb the local Islamic center in Muncie, Indiana. But the kindness he was shown there not only made him drop his plans but eventually become a member of the community.

The story is told in the short film “Stranger at the Gate” which has just made the shortlist for an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary Short Film.

We revisit Robin Young’s September 2022 conversation with McKinney and Bibi Bahrami, co-founder of the Islamic Center of Muncie.



---------

A Veteran’s Islamophobia Transformed, in “Stranger at the Gate”
In Joshua Seftel’s documentary, a community recollects how a would-be terrorist made—and then abandoned—a violent plan.\


https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-documentary/a-veterans-islamophobia-transformed-in-stranger-at-the-gate



Joshua Seftel, the director of “Stranger at the Gate,” was going to be a physician. As a young man, he planned to travel the world in the ranks of Doctors Without Borders. His father was a doctor, and, as a boy, Seftel watched him save people’s lives. During a gap year between college and applying to medical school, a professor approached him about a story in Romania. With a borrowed video camera and some fund-raising, Seftel made the film “Lost and Found,” an unflinching look at the country’s state-run orphanages. “Wow,” he thought, “filmmaking, when you do it right, can be really powerful.”

In his new documentary, Seftel brings the camera home and follows a personal drama that embodies a societal collision. The film opens on a teen-ager addressing the camera. “Most of the time when I tell people this story, they tell me that they don’t believe me,” she says. The speaker, Emily McKinney, is the stepdaughter of the man at the center of the documentary, Richard (Mac) McKinney. Emily is referring to Mac’s plan to set off an I.E.D. at a mosque, the Islamic Center of Muncie, Indiana.

Mac, a white combat veteran, describes his twilight tour in the military during the early and violent years of the global war on terror, and his abrupt return to small-town Indiana, in 2006. Reëntering civilian life, he became livid, and obsessed with the local Muslim community. During the periods he describes as “between being drunk and sober,” he brainstormed how he could attack Muslims—an action he thought of as continuing to protect his family and serve his country. His answer was to make a bomb. He describes making a plan for how he could “get the most bang for my buck” by targeting his local mosque, where he hoped to injure or kill at least two hundred worshippers. When he set out on a reconnaissance mission and visited the mosque—“to get the proof” of their threat—his story took a surprising turn.

McKinney met the Bahrami family, co-founders of the center and themselves refugees of the Soviet Union’s ill-fated war in Afghanistan; and Jomo Williams, a Black local convert. The relationships were not easy ones—“These people were killers,” McKinney remembers thinking—but the members of the mosque saw that McKinney was troubled, and welcomed him.
Riaz Haq said…
2022 Inventor of the Year: (Pakistani-American UET Lahore Alum) Tahir Ghani Keeps Moore’s Law Alive
Often called ‘Mr. Transistor,’ Tahir Ghani has filed more than 1,000 patents and introduced some of Intel’s most revolutionary changes in transistors over his 28-year career.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/inventor-of-year-tahir-ghani-keeps-moore-law-alive.html#gs.ssezgc


Today’s computer chips feature billions of transistors on a square of silicon about the size of your thumbnail.

By 2030, Intel aims to increase that number to about a trillion.

Tahir Ghani, Intel senior fellow and director of process pathfinding in Intel’s Technology Development Group, is behind those plans.

In his 28-year career at Intel, Tahir has filed more than 1,000 patents and led teams responsible for some of the most revolutionary changes in transistors. Innovations from his teams include strained silicon, High-K metal gate, FinFet transistors and, most recently, RibbonFET transistors.

For his accomplishments, Tahir is honored as Intel’s 2022 Inventor of the Year.

“For his entire nearly 30-year career, Tahir has role-modeled this relentless commitment to technology innovation in pursuit of Moore’s Law,” says Sanjay Natarajan, Intel senior vice president and co-GM of Logic Technology Development. “His contribution to semiconductor technology is enormous, and I am proud to call him one of the industry’s greatest inventors.”

While many experts in industry and academia have predicted the demise of Moore’s Law, Tahir says Intel has new ideas that keep it alive.

“It won’t die on my watch,” says Tahir, who works at Intel’s Gordon Moore Park campus in Hillsboro, Oregon. “Moore’s Law only stops when innovation stops.”

Watch “In My Own Words” as Tahir talks about his job and what it means to keep Moore’s Law alive.
Riaz Haq said…
#US Congressman Jamaal Bowman, #Democrat, #NewYork, introduces resolution in House to designate March 23 as ‘Pakistan Day’. He initiated the “landmark resolution”. It is the first such resolution introduced in the US Congress. #PakistanDay2023 #Pakistan
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/us-congressman-introduces-resolution-in-house-to-designate-march-23-as-pakistan-day/articleshow/98982639.cms


The resolution emphasised the importance of recognising and paying tribute to those who foster ethnic pride and enhance the profile of cultural diversity, which strengthens the fabric of the US communities.

Bowman in fact stated that it was an honour for him to introduce the resolution and stressed the importance of standing with the people of Pakistan during their time of crisis.

Bowman expressed his solidarity with Pakistan, which has been hit by a natural disaster and conveyed his message of peace and love to the people of Pakistan.

The resolution also highlighted that Pakistan Day provides an excellent opportunity for all US residents to learn more about Pakistan’s rich heritage and foster an appreciation for its ancient culture among future generations.

Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Masood Khan, thanked Bowman for his initiative, which would bring the two countries and their people closer to each other.
Riaz Haq said…
72,000 non immigrant visas issued in year 2022 to Pakistanis for USA.

In 2019 the number was 59,000

2020 and 2021 Covid time was 34 and 20k

So 2020 2021 2022 average is still around 40k which is lower than 2019 avg

I can sympathize with ppl who see lots of ppl leaving and feeling every one is leaving as number of ppl leaving is 3 times more than 2021 and twice as much as 2020 .

However fact is ppl are going as they have always done. In fact we haven't returned to pre Covid levels of Emigration and tourism outside Pakistan

Even in 1997 close to 50,000 ppl were issued non immigrant visa by US from Pakistan!

https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1701139777494651226?s=20


-------------

Who’s Getting U.S. Immigrant Visas?
Last year, more than 285,000 U.S. immigrant visas were issued. Here’s a look how that is distributed across every country worldwide:

Search:
Rank Country Immigrant Visas Issued (2021)
#1 🇲🇽 Mexico 40,597
#2 🇨🇳 China 18,501
#3 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic 17,941
#4 🇵🇭 Philippines 15,862
#5 🇦🇫 Afghanistan 10,784
#6 🇻🇳 Vietnam 10,458
#7 🇮🇳 India 9,275
#8 🇸🇻 El Salvador 7,813
#9 🇵🇰 Pakistan 7,213
#10 🇧🇩 Bangladesh 5,503
Total 285,069

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-receiving-most-us-immigration-visas/

-----------------

H1 B visa from Pak to US

What is the H-1B Visa Category? The H-1B is a temporary (nonimmigrant) visa category that allows employers to petition for highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations” that require at least a bachelor's degree or the equivalent.

In year 2022 , 1100 from Pakistan

166,000 from India !

If the exodus is 1100 ppl then we have nothing to fear

If 1100 is exodus than what is 166k

Why the one with 166k is rising India and one with 1100 failing Pakistan

https://x.com/bilalgilani/status/1701143387145945294?s=20
Riaz Haq said…
op Source Countries of Immigrant STEM Workers in US in 2019

1. India (720,000) 2. China (273,000) 3. Mexico (119,000), 4. Vietnam (100,000), 5. Philippines (87,000), 6. South Korea (84,000), 7. Canada (56,000), 8. Taiwan (53,000), 9. Russia (45,000), 10. Pakistan (35,000).

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/foreign-born-stem-workers-united-states

Since 2000, the share of foreign-born workers in the STEM workforce has increased by more than 40 percent.

The share of foreign-born workers in STEM occupations has grown significantly in recent years. As shown in Table 2, the number of foreign-born STEM workers increased from 1.2 million (16.4 percent of the STEM workforce) in 2000 to 2.5 million (23.1 percent of the STEM workforce) in 2019.

Because immigrant STEM workers tend to possess skills that complement those of their U.S.-born co-workers, the presence of immigrants in the workplace increases the productivity (and therefore the wages) of all workers. Moreover, innovation by immigrant workers increases the revenue of the firms in which they work, which enables employers to hire more workers. The overall share of workers who are foreign-born and hold advanced degrees from either a U.S. or a foreign university is also associated with higher levels of employment among U.S.-born workers. A 10 percent increase in the share of foreign-born workers with advanced degrees working in STEM occupations boosted the U.S.-born employment rate by 0.03 percent. This means that every additional 100 foreign-born workers with an advanced degree working in a STEM occupation creates roughly 86 jobs for U.S. workers.
Riaz Haq said…
Pakistan is the top source country for Muslim immigrants to US



https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/07/26/demographic-portrait-of-muslim-americans/


No single country accounts for more than 15% of adult Muslim immigrants to the United States (15% are from Pakistan).8 The countries with the next-highest totals are Iran (11% of Muslim immigrants), India (7%), Afghanistan (6%), Bangladesh (6%), Iraq (5%), Kuwait (3%), Syria (3%) and Egypt (3%).

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