Michele Wucker's Blog, page 10

Foreign Policy: The Dominican Republic, Haiti and Historical Legacy

The Dominican Republic, as it did nearly 80 years ago when offering Jewish refugees visas after the dictator Rafael Trujillo ordered an ethnic cleansing at the Haitian border, is trying to polish its international reputation after carrying out human rights violations condemned around the world. This time, it still has a chance to do the right thing by changing its policies on deportation and denationalization. My thoughts in Foreign Policy on October 8, 2015, about the country’s attempt to gloss over 11 counts of violations of the commitments it made under the American Convention on Human Rights, on which it has reneged and on what it could do to make things right (and make its public relations consultants’ job easier).

Huffington Post: It’s Not Too Late to Save the Rhino

World Rhino Day is a reminder each September of the way we often don’t address crucial problems until it is too late, as is the case for the four remaining Northern white rhinos, a sub species facing extinction. But that doesn’t have to be the fate of the rest of the rhinos still walking the earth, as I argue in the Huffington Post.

CFR.org on Dominican Republic Expulsions

Sam Koebrich from cfr.org recently interviewed me about the expulsions to Haiti by the Dominican Republic of Dominicans of Haitian descent and recent migrants. “Deportations in the Dominican Republic,” August 13, 2015. Several people have noted that my approach to the issues avoid hyperbole and focus on constructive suggestions.

Acento republished the interview in Spanish in the Dominican Republic, prompting a series of tweets and posts to my public Facebook page from Dominicans who refuse to accept any criticism. At least one was outraged by the supposed international plot for “fusion” of the two countries sharing the island of Hispaniola -you know, the same plot that exists only in the mind of Dominican ultra-nationalists. But I don’t mind. They at least spelled my name right.

Cecil the Lion and Competitive Outrage

The killing of Cecil the Lion this summer sparked a frenzy of outrage, first over the killing itself and then degenerating into fury over how-over-the-top some of the reactions were and, above all, over the fact that the lion was the subject and not whatever the complainer’s cause-of-choice happened to be. There’s a better way to respond. Read my thoughts in the New York Observer

NPR on Dominican Republic Expulsions

In the latest chapter in a long and complicated history of tensions with neighboring Haiti, the Dominican Republic is poised to deport recent Haitian migrants and expel Dominicans of Haitian descent who have not been able to prove that they were born there. This week, the deadline to apply for “regularization” passed, with many people saying they applied but have not been given proof, and many others having been rejected or having been unable to get past bureaucratic chaos.

National Public Radio’s Audie Cornish interviewed me June 17th, 2015, on All Things Considered about the history of tensions between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, the subject of my first book, WHY THE COCKS FIGHT: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola. You can listen to the interview and read the transcript HERE.

For additional information about the history of the two countries and current efforts by Dominicans and Haitians to overcome the past, please visit www.borderoflights.org.

I highly recommend Edwidge Danticat’s The Farming of Bones, a novel about the 1937 massacre, and Julia Alvarez’s A Wedding in Haiti, a contemporary and nuanced account of relationships among Dominicans and Haitians.

 

 

Recent Immigration work

One of the best things about joining The Chicago Council on Global Affairs has been the chance to return to immigration public policy debates. It was an honor to speak about immigration and business Monday, March 9th,  in honor of International Women’s Day at the Union League Club of Chicago with a fantastic panel including Mary Meg McCarthy of the Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center, Crate & Barrel founder Carole Segal of the Illinois Business Immigration Coalition, Maria Socorro Pesqueira of Mujeres Latinas en Accion, and Moderator Alison Cuddy of the Chicago Humanities Festival. For more information about the event click HERE.

Here also are links to a few recent media appearances: “Obama’s Immigration Plan Gives Ohio Businesses a Taste of Reform,” in the Cleveland Plain Dealer November 25, 2014; Executive Action Is Here -Time for a New “Start” on Legislative Reform on the Chicago Council’s Running Numbers blog, November 21, 2014; an interview “Immigration Reform” on WTTW’s Chicago Tonight November 20, 2014, and a radio interview on “Could Executive Action Clear the Way for Comprehensive Immigration Reform?” on WDCB-FM November 14, 2014

Joining The Chicago Council on Global Affairs

I’m delighted to be The Chicago Council on Global Affairs this month, where as vice president of studies I’ll spearhead The Chicago Council’s efforts to generate new ideas and influence policy debates in the United States and abroad. The Chicago Council is an important global voice on addressing critical policy challenges, so I could not be more excited to be joining its talented team to develop impactful new ideas and approaches to some of today’s most important issues. On a personal level, I’m so happy to come home to the Midwest and the city where my great-grandparents met a century ago as newly arrived immigrants.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, founded in 1922, is an independent, non-partisan organization committed to educating the public — and influencing the public discourse — on global issues of the day. The Council provides a forum in Chicago for world leaders, policymakers and other experts to speak to its members and the public on these issues. Long known for its public opinion surveys of American views on foreign policy, The Chicago Council also brings together stakeholders to examine issues and offer policy insight into areas such as global agriculture, the global economy, global energy, global cities, global security and global immigration. Learn more at thechicagocouncil.org and follow @ChicagoCouncil for updates.

Read the press release about my appointment

Davos 2014: Takeaways for the Year to Come

I was honored to attend the 2014 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which wraps up a season of predictions for the year ahead and helps set the coming agenda for world business, civil society and political leaders.

The lack of a pressing economic crisis this year allowed delegates to focus on looming but threats that are crucial to address now before they become worse -many of them highly probable, high impact Gray Rhinos, using the term I coined in a talk at Davos a year ago. I laid out some of these issues in a scene-setter Predictions from Davos on the World Policy blog: inequality, climate change, youth unemployment, fiscal crises, extreme weather, and China’s economy.

And once the week was over, what did it all mean? In Taxonomy of the Gray Rhino, also on the World Policy blog I draw a picture of the types of highly probable threats facing leaders: inconvenient truths, meta Gray Rhinos, conundrums, emerging threats, and those for which there appear to be no good answer. Each requires a different kind of effort to get out of the way to avoid being trampled.

I’m looking forward to seeing how leaders deal with each of them as 2014 advances.