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Tag: Immigration

Pew: Foreign Students Migrate to Bay Area
Demographics

Pew: Foreign Students Migrate to Bay Area

By Sharon Simonson Not wildfires, mudslides, or monster commutes; not overcrowded and expensive housing, or gender-challenged workplaces. Nothing—so far—can keep them away: foreign students seeking U.S. college degrees and work experience have flocked to the Bay Area in recent years—more than to any other place in the country except New York City. According to new research from the Pew Research Center based on more than a decade of student-visa data, the Silicon Valley and San Francisco metros rank among the top ten destinations for foreign students earning American university degrees and staying to work.  Including the more than 77,000 foreign students who migrated to the region for employment after earning degrees in other U.S. cities, the Bay Area attracted more than 120,000 foreig...
San José Pulitzer Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen: We Are What We Write
Culture, Demographics

San José Pulitzer Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen: We Are What We Write

By Sharon Simonson When seven-year-old Viet Thanh Nguyen arrived in San José with his parents and older brother in 1978 as a Vietnam War refugee, little did he know that his life’s next decade would form the basis of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel nearly forty years later. It was in the tiny downtown San José house at 759 S. 10th Street in the shadow of a freeway overpass that a robber would hold him and his parents at gunpoint when he was sixteen-years-old. It was in his parents’ New Saigon Mini Market on downtown San José’s East Santa Clara Street where his parents were shot one Christmas Eve. Thankfully, neither was injured seriously. “That ten-year period was marked by witnessing the intense sacrifice that my parents gave working as hard as they did in that store and experiencing...
Judge: Former Councilmember Madison Nguyen Guilty of ‘Political Miscalculation,’ Not Misconduct
Demographics

Judge: Former Councilmember Madison Nguyen Guilty of ‘Political Miscalculation,’ Not Misconduct

Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Chiarello says San Jose City has had consistent open-meeting act problems when council people issue joint memorandum in anticipation of a vote; some violations are inadvertent, but under the law, it doesn't matter. By Sharon Simonson SAN JOSE—The Vietnamese American Community of Northern California has failed to persuade a state judge that former San Jose City Councilwoman Madison Nguyen and her council colleagues knowingly broke state open-meeting law in the days before a contentious 2007 vote to name a Vietnamese business district. But she and five other council people did unintentionally breach the Brown Act, Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Chiarello concluded in a tentative ruling. Moreover, while city attorneys argue the...
San Jose Wants Immigrants to Feel At Home
Demographics

San Jose Wants Immigrants to Feel At Home

By Sharon Simonson An immigration museum in the vein of Ellis Island and “immigrant community centers” are among the approaches the city of San Jose is exploring as part of its immigrant outreach initiative and new Office of Immigrant Affairs. Many San Jose immigrants are afraid of the city’s police, don’t find their work environments welcoming and have mixed emotions about their children’s schools, according to focus group participants convened to advise on the new office’s mission and direction. San Jose City Hall hopes to position itself as a “change agent” for the San Jose community and a hub of communications and influence for immigrants’ benefit. In the balance is San Jose’s responsiveness to its fastest growing populations and its relationship with the highly skilled...
American Dream Department, Silicon Valley Style
Demographics

American Dream Department, Silicon Valley Style

By Sharon Simonson SAN JOSE—Hours after organizers planned to wind down Citizenship Day 2016 on Saturday at San Jose City College, dozens of would-be citizens still stood in a 60-foot queue that began at the glass doors of the school’s Main Gym and passed through a central campus plaza. Those waiting anticipated the free advice and application assistance of a volunteer team of immigration experts and attorneys, who sat inside the gym, with pens and pencils and big, multilingual brains, at dozens of long folding tables aligned end-to-end in rows across the gym floor. Earlier in the day, Rocio Zamora, 27, waited in the same line with her 7- and 5-year-old daughters. Dressed in pink, with her face carefully made up, she speaks in Spanish. Her husband and children are already U....
Foreign-born People Stoke Innovation Metros Across the U.S.
Demographics

Foreign-born People Stoke Innovation Metros Across the U.S.

By Sharon Simonson International migrants are fueling population growth coast to coast in U.S. counties with technology- and innovation-centered economies. From the boroughs of New York City to Boston, Los Angeles and San Jose, existing residents are leaving tech-oriented metros, and international migrants are replacing them. Without the immigrants and returning U.S. residents in the last five years, many of the metros would have seen their population growth slow dramatically. Only tech centers Austin and Seattle are drawing steady streams of new residents from neighboring counties and other states and from overseas. The two metros have population growth at more than twice the rate of the nation at large, according to the 2015 population estimates released by the U.S. Census B...
Global Immigration to the Bay Area at 5-Year High
Demographics

Global Immigration to the Bay Area at 5-Year High

By Sharon Simonson International migrants are pouring into the Bay Area at the highest rate in five years, driving population growth and cultural change across the region. More than 238,000 foreign-born people and some Americans returning from abroad moved into Santa Clara, San Francisco, San Mateo, Contra Costa and Alameda counties in the last five years — more than 92,000 came to Santa Clara County alone, according to new U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released today. All five counties have seen their highest rates of international migration since 2010 in the last two years. People coming from overseas or outside the United States accounted for two-thirds of the population growth in both San Francisco and Santa Clara counties from mid-2010 to mid-2015. They represen...
Indian PM Modi: Air India to Connect San Francisco, Delhi
Uncategorized

Indian PM Modi: Air India to Connect San Francisco, Delhi

By Sharon Simonson In his last seconds on stage at the SAP Center in San Jose on Sept. 27, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a terse announcement: beginning Dec. 2, India national airline Air India would begin flying directly between New Delhi and San Francisco International Airport. It was another breakthrough moment in the India-San Francisco Bay Area relationship. Other U.S. metropolitan areas with large Asian-Indian populations including New York and Chicago already have non-stop Air India flights, said Sanjay Mehra, chief executive of Fremont's Low Fare Travels. Though the Bay Area flight had been the subject of travel-industry discussion for a time, it was not available to book until after the prime minister spoke in San Jose, he said. "It is a clear example of ho...