Posts tagged : "Immigration"

Kourosh Ziabari - Stimson Center: Emigration from Iran is on the rise again as more and more Iranians conclude that their country has been turned into scorched earth by the Islamic Republic and seek shelter, stability, and opportunity elsewhere.   While not as dramatic as the exodus from some other nearby countries such as Afghanistan or Syria, the human flight is a simmering societal cataclysm with long-term negative implications for Iran’s prosperity and national security. Over the past four decades, waves of emigration have deprived Iran of its most talented youth, who instead have become engines of economic growth in Europe and North America. Nepotism, failure to reward merit, shrinking civil liberties, and a lack of...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: Iran’s talented, educated youth have consistently cultivated the nation’s public image as one characterized by vibrancy and motivation to push the boundaries. Whether mathematicians, computer scientists, anthropologists or artists, Iranians have carved out a universal reputation as hard-working and creative, even though the lion’s share of this brilliance is bearing fruit overseas, not at home. Over time, the country’s name has become a shorthand for its deep-seated brain drain, sapping the Islamic Republic’s strength to address challenges and deliver for its people. The authorities routinely complain about this human capital flight coming at the expense of the nation’s progress, and...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Five years have passed since the death of Maryam Mirzakhani, an Iranian mathematics genius whose long list of international accolades and substantial role in elevating academia have made her a scientific celebrity, ensuring her popularity transcends the borders of Iran. On July 14, 2017, at the age of 40, the young Mirzakhani died of breast cancer after four years of grappling with illness. She is the first and only woman so far to have received a Fields Medal from the International Mathematical Union since the award’s inception in 1936. Unofficially known as the Nobel Prize in mathematics, Fields goes to scholars and researchers aged 40 or younger who make outstanding contributions to...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: Many residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, cross over the Irene Hixon Whitney Bridge every day or move past it. It offers a unique vantage point to the well-liked Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, epitomised by the iconic $500,000 Spoonbridge and Cherry sculptural design. Most of the locals recognise Whitney, a Twin Cities philanthropist and civic leader who was married to the 1980 Independent-Republican gubernatorial candidate Wheelock Whitney and passed away in 1986. But to many Minnesota denizens and visitors of the Garden who happen to walk over the bridge spanning an interstate highway, or at least catch a glimpse of it from afar, the story behind the structure is almost undisclosed, unless one is...

Kourosh Ziabari - Asia Times: As Iran and the Taliban take cautious first steps towards formalizing relations, a new worrying wave of anti-Afghan sentiment is sweeping across Iran amid new heated calls for the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Afghan refugees. On April 5, an assailant stabbed two Iranian Shia clerics to death on the premises of the revered shrine of the 8th Shia Imam Reza in the pilgrimage city of Mashhad. The attacker, apparently motivated by anti-Shiite motives, was later identified as an Uzbek national who had crossed illegally into Iran last year. However, after the footage of the assault captured by pilgrims went viral on social media, many Iranians mistook the aggressor for an Afghan citizen, sparking...

Kourosh Ziabari - The New Arab: In today's irreversibly globalised world, international travelling and mobility are not merely deemed a privilege, but a fundamental entitlement the informed and probing citizens of the 21st century assertively expect the governments to provide. To a large extent, the power of the passports people hold illustrates the standing of their countries in the community of nations, the shades of respectful treatment they receive while away from home, and in many cases, the boundaries of their freedoms and prerogatives. Last October, the London-headquartered global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners published its quarterly repertoire of the most desirable passports in terms of their...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Without reservations, Canada is one of the most immigrant-friendly nations in the world. According to the 2016 census, 7.5 million people, representing 21.9 percent of the Canadian population, were immigrants. International migration accounts for more than 80 percent of population growth in the North American country as per the 2019 data. An exceptional mosaic of multicultural amalgamation, the federal government entrenched the value of cultural diversity in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1985, passed a Multiculturalism Act in 1988 and founded the Department of Multiculturalism and Citizenship in 1991. The government recognizes the ethnic and aboriginal minorities’ right to preserve their...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Although France has recouped some composure after the maelstrom ignited by the murder of Samuel Paty, a popular middle school teacher who had shown cartoons of Prophet Muhammad in his class on freedom of thought, the republic is still finding itself in the middle of an uncomfortable debate about the compatibility of secular values and Islam. The comments of President Emmanuel Macron who defended the reprinting of the controversial cartoons by the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and his tongue-lashing of Islamic “separatism” and “radical Islam” sent shockwaves across the Muslim world and infuriated leaders and the general public in Islamic countries where huge crowds turned up for street protests and a...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: Islam is now the world’s second largest religion after Christianity and the fastest-growing faith tradition globally. Spiraling fear of, and antipathy toward Muslims, which some scholars argue is a historical phenomenon with a pedigree stretching back to the 18th and 19th centuries, has been intensified and elevated to new heights in the recent decades, particularly with developments that have brought the Western civilization and the Muslim world into closer contact, including the rising tide of immigration from Muslim countries to Europe and North America in the late 20th century, and the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing project of War on Terror. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center found people in...

Kourosh Ziabari - ODVV: On March 15, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia, the United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres voiced his concern over the spiraling surge of anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry worldwide, calling on governments and stakeholders to play a more consequential role in containing this byzantine form of racism that has impaired harmony and stability in multicultural settings. As far-right discourses gain traction and ultra-nationalist politics pick up steam internationally, fissures between the Muslim communities and Western societies tend to become deeper and more resistant to healing. Throughout the European Union, aversion to Muslims is cropping up in a panoply of ways and shapes....

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: Iranians are buying real estate in Turkey in hope of acquiring citizenship and leaving behind the bitter realities of life in Iran’s failing state and economy. Foreign nationals who purchase Turkish houses, apartments, offices, shops or land worth at least US$250,000 can obtain Turkish citizenship, according to the Turkish government’s citizenship by property investment scheme. The previous threshold was $1 million but Ankara slashed the minimum purchase in 2018 amid an economic crisis and eyeing increased investment by well-to-do Persian Gulf citizens as well as would-be Iranian immigrants. Immigration from Iran to Turkey has steady risen in recent years, with the first wave starting in 2009...

Asia Times - Kourosh Ziabari: New US President Joe Biden has started his tenure with a flurry of executive orders aimed at annulling various of his predecessor’s policies and decisions. But his move to repeal an entry block imposed on several Muslim nations signals a potential more conciliatory foreign policy in the Middle East. In January 2017, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 13769, officially titled Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States, which blocked the entry of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen nationals to the US. It also suspended indefinitely the admission of Syrian refugees and slashed the total number of refugees taken by the US to 50,000 per year. Since all...