Final entry

I can't believe it has been a year since I started this project. It has been an astounding journey as I blogged about the huge variety of immigrants (both documented and undocumented) that have come to this country seeking a better life, and who have in turn given back so much to this country and the rest of the world. It saddens me to look at the current discourse in this country, for we truly are, more than any other country, a nation of immigrants, without whose contributions the United States would be considerably diminished.

Finally I'd like to quote Albert Einstein, the first person I blogged about one year ago today:

"America is today the hope of all honorable men who respect the rights of their fellow men and who believe in the principle of freedom and justice."

Majid and Masomeh Yourdkhani

Country of origin: Iran

In December, 2005 ... the Yourdkhanis learned that the Canadian government had denied their application for political asylum, and Majid, Masomeh, and Kevin were deported to Iran. Upon their return, the Yourdkhanis say, Masomeh was imprisoned for a month, and Majid for six, and during that time he was beaten and tortured. After Majid was released, the family paid a smuggler twenty thousand dollars to procure false documents and arrange a series of flights that would return them to Canada. Then, on the last leg of the journey, the family ran into someone else’s bad luck. On February 4, 2007, during a flight from Georgetown, Guyana, to Toronto, a passenger had a heart attack and died, and the plane was forced to make an unscheduled stop in Puerto Rico. American immigration officials there ascertained that the Yourdkhanis’ travel documents were fake. The Yourdkhanis begged to be allowed to continue on to Canada, but they were told that if they wanted asylum they would have to apply for it in the United States. They did so, and, five days later, became part of one of the more peculiar, and contested, recent experiments in American immigration policy. They were locked inside a former medium-security prison in a desolate patch of rural Texas: the T. Don Hutto Residential Center.

To read the rest of the article, visit this page at The New Yorker.

Mohammed Adam El-Sheikh

Country of origin: Sudan

Sheikh Mohamad Adam El-Sheikh is a Sudanese/American executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America. He graduated from the faculty of Shari’ah and Law, Omdurman Islamic University, Sudan, in 1969. In 1973 he was appointed by the Department of Justice to serve as a judge for the Shari’ah Courts. While in the Sudan he was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1978, he was granted a scholarship to come to the United States in order to continue his higher education. He received his Masters of Comparative Jurisprudence (MCJ) from Howard University in 1980, his LLM from the National Law Center at George Washington University in 1981, and his Ph.D. in Comparative Jurisprudence from Temple University in 1986. His 1986 Ph.D. dissertation at Temple University was on "The applicability of Islamic penal law (qisas and diyah) in the Sudan."

To read the rest of the Wikipedia article, go here.

John Henderson

Country of origin: Australia

John B. Henderson, Esq. is an attorney, business executive, sailor and member of the Miami Lighthouse Board. He was an American naval officer and Secretary of Defense operative during the Truman presidency. A native of Australia, John Henderson came to the U.S. with his parents as a child and settled in Brooklyn. He attended a military prep school and, later, Brown University. He was commissioned as a naval officer just before the end of the World War II.

To read the rest of the Wikipedia article about this blind activist, go here.

Pat Oliphant

Country of origin: Australia

Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant (b. 24 July 1935 in Adelaide, Australia) is the most widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world, described by the New York Times as "the most influential cartoonist now working". His trademark is a small penguin character named Punk, who is often seen making a sarcastic comment about the subject of the panel.

To read the rest of Pat Oliphant's Wikipedia page, go here.

Malek Jandali

Country of origin: Germany (Syria)

Malek Jandali (Arabic: مالك جندلي‎) (b. 1972), is a Syrian composer and pianist considered to be among the most versatile and creative musicians in the Arab world. He is the first Syrian and only Arab musician to arrange music based on the oldest music notation in the world, which was discovered in the Bronze Age city of Ugarit, Syria.

To read the rest of his Wikipedia article, go here.

Benjamin W. Lee

Country of origin: Korea

Benjamin Whisoh Lee (Korean language: 이휘소, Lee Whi-soh) (January 1, 1935 - June 16, 1977) or Ben Lee, was a Korean-American theoretical physicist. His work in theoretical particle physics exerted great influence on the development of the standard model in the late 20th century especially on the renormalization of elecro-weak model and the gauge theory.

To read more about Benjamin W. Lee, read the rest of his article here.