Early Migrants were Native Americans - New Findings

The Wall Street Journal reports ..A unique genetic marker exhumed from her 12,000-year-old skeleton offers evidence that the first hunter-gatherers who crossed the Bering Sea from northeast Asia on a now-submerged territory called Beringia belonged to the same population group as many Native Americans today, the scientists said.

http://on.wsj.com/1gysmNs

Second Language helps Rational Thinking?

The Wall Street Journal reports httabout a recent study that thinking about a problem in a foreign language might help a person analyze the problem more rationally. It appears by thinking of the problem in a second language we isolate the emotion from the decision and so you get a more rational picture of the situation. Hmm...let me try it out in my basic knowledge of another language - hum sochta es blog tik hai or nai - kya karega. I am just seeing blank empty spaces in my mind with the words standing out....maybe there is some truth to this...try it yourself...
http://on.wsj.com/1f8DEBA
" 'Piensa' Twice: On the Foreign Language Effect in Decision Making," Albert Costa, Alice Foucart, Inbal Arnon, Melina Aparici and Jose Apesteguia, Cognition (February)

My Testimony to the MN legislature

Today I invited legislators to view our ALANA communities as assets. I presented the economic portfolio of the ALANA communities and encouraged them to leverage our massive public spending to grow the ALANA economic portfolio - reflected in such data as - $12 billion in consumer power; firms that as a group would be the 15th largest company in terms of revenue (over $5 billion) and 9th largest in terms of employment (over 40,000 with an annual payroll of over $1 billion). Minnesota is doing a lot of good things but to be doing great things we need to view our ALANA communities not as deficits but as assets. The testimony can be found on my site
http://www.ethniccapital.com/uploads/1/2/2/9/12297431/testimony_to_government_operations_committee_minnesota_house.pdf

Online Marketplaces and Racial Discrimination

 New Harvard research show online marketplaces like Airbnb inadvertently fuel racial discrimination." Analyzing a data set that focuses on New York City (the company's biggest market), the researchers found that black hosts charged approximately 12 percent less for rentals than nonblack hosts—even when the properties were equivalent in terms of location and quality." The research raises some interesting questions on linking your Facebook page to online sites, importance of profile pictures and the placement of these pictures, policies on online marketplaces that might inadvertently promote racial discrimination. 

"But the "pricing" section of the website advises that new hosts set rates with market demand in mind. For example, Airbnb tells new hosts they "may want to charge lower than average rates to attract travelers comparing your place with existing reviews. Once you have a review or two, adjust your rates as needed."

The researchers interpret black hosts' lower prices as evidence of a similar, but permanent, disadvantage. In particular, they maintain that their findings show how black hosts have a harder than average time attracting travelers, and therefore must keep their prices lower than average in order to compete successfully."

http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7435.html

New Report Provides Details of North Minneapolis Housing Conditions

A detailed neighborhood analysis of housing conditions in North Minneapolis done by the Minneapolis Fed provides a good picture on the opportunities and challenges there. Overall the report found: "the housing market in North Minneapolis varies from neighborhood to neighborhood and even from block to block. In general, the housing market in the northwest area of North Minneapolis is more established while the southeast area’s is more vulnerable; however, many of the
neighborhoods register a diverse “micro” housing market, with blocks falling on the
entire HMI spectrum". During 2006 to 2012 houses in North Minneapolis dropped on average by more than a third. View the report at http://www.minneapolisfed.org/pubs/cdpapers/hmi_2013.pdf

Baseball offers an intriguing strategy to overcome racist behaviors

Baseball offers an intriguing strategy to overcome racist behaviors. A Harvard study found that when umpires and pitchers were of a different race the umpire was more likely to call a pitch a ball -which favors the batter. Pitchers seem to compensate for this discrimination by throwing the ball in areas where there was less of a subjective reading - even though it lessened their effectiveness!

Another intriguing observation of the study was when cameras were present to record the events these discriminatory behaviors vanished. Ah! The lessons we can learn from baseball!
The study can be found at  http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/7392.html

Nearly 2 million deported in recent years

The Economist  reports that almost 2 million people have been deported in recent years, 322,900 last year alone. The article describes the cruel and heartless way people are deported and the huge human cost of this policy. This in essence has been our immigration policy over the past few years - deportations.

It is time fix our broken and dysfunctional immigration system.

For a new framework to look at immigration see my app "Immigrant Capital" on iTunes and Google Play or a recent report on Minnesota http://bit.ly/HEZJy1.

http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21595891-united-states-expulsion-policy-toward-migrants-carries-big-human-cost-bordering-cruelty

New Health Equity report needs policy attention

The new MDH report on health equity spares no punches and lays out a policy agenda which I hope becomes part of the 2014 election cycle. I do hope the Governor and legislature takes action too. This information is not new - members of the community have been asking for equal access and culturally competent health care for a long time. Thanks to Larry Walker and the Bridges network for bringing this report to our attention. http://www.health.state.mn.us/divs/chs/healthequity/ahe_leg_report_020114.pdf

Why has St. Paul not fully recovered from the Great Recession while Minneapolis has?

Intriguing question posed by the latest DEED report on progress in Minnesota Cities? One answer could be all that romance in the air being the top romantic city in the US? Seriously - it is a good question because I see it in the growth patterns of minority businesses too. I am looking for more insights from DEED and local experts.

The DEED report is at http://mn.gov/deed/images/top25cities.pdf

Immigrant Earning Power over $1 trillion in USA

 Equal to the GDP of 17th largest country in the world. See free itunes app - Immigrant Capital.bit.ly/1hCALeC  #iamimmigration, #immigration

New free Itunes App - Immigrant Capital

Looking for a comprehensive framework to analyze the immigration debate today - which all too often focuses on one dimensional arguments? Want data on the economic contributions of immigrants  by state at your fingertips? Check out my new APP called "Immigrant Capital" available on itunes for the iphone and the ipad. http://bit.ly/1du2jym

An android version will be available soon.

Immigrant capital - immigrants as consumers, workers, entrepreneurs, taxpayers, social capital, cultural capital, global trade networks.