The real US immigration problem

New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, in a speech delivered at the Immigration and American Competitiveness Conference sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Partnership for a New American Economy, seems to be the first politician (that I know of) who makes sense out of serious immigration problems in the US. No, it's not about the repeated ad nauseam "11 million undocumented immigrants" and how to grant them "the path to citizenship" (as ill-informed and lazy journalists keep repeating) it is about four major issues, as outlined by Bloomberg.
ONE "Every year, we admit more than one million new permanent residents. But 85 percent of the visas we hand out are for those seeking family re-unification or refuge from harm, while only 15 percent of visas are given for economic reasons."
TWO " Foreign students who are earning advanced degrees in technical fields from our universities should be eligible to work here permanently."
THREE "We [the US] should stop turning away so many entrepreneurs who want to come here and start businesses. "
FOUR "Business leaders and mayors agree that we should expand and streamline our existing tools for attracting talent to our country."
Read the whole story here.

The healing power of Words

In this day of remembrance for New York and the world, memories from ten years ago—when I was already an adopted New Yorker—come rushing through my mind, but I try and keep only the most vital. For instance, back in the summer of 2001 when I visited a wonderful and moving photo exhibit in the Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central station, called M.I.L.K. (Moments, Intimacy, Love, Kinship) I came across a line of the American writer Thornton Wilder that profoundly touched me, as the whole exhibit did:
"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."
Powerful words to keep us going, that came to the rescue in the darkest hour, as it is always the case with poetry.

"IL CIBO: necessità primordiale e piacere infinito"

I just discovered Eataly, in New York City, today at sunset time, and I had the most incredible experience in this shrine of gastronomy, savour, design, lust for life and everything Italy encompasses. I know I will come back many more times, but this first time I only had a luscious cremespresso as a epilogue to my poetic encounter not only with the whole venue but with the book that holds the story of Oscar Farinetti, the founder of this Italian gourmet emporium. His biography, Il mercante di utopie (roughly translated as "The merchant of utopias") tells in a most poetic, romantic and with journalistic precision, his extraordinary story and how against all odds, from the ground up, even from a place of doubt, Eataly became the great success is now in all over Italy, Japan and New York (opened in autumn of 2009). You have no idea how much I cherish the Italian language and the Italian culture and, of course, il cibo (Italian for "food, meal", and everything of family, and intimacy and coziness it entails) which is "a primal necessity and an infinite pleasure" (a statement taken from one of the pages of the book, which gives the title to this post. [Incidentally, I noticed they use W7 in their restaurants].