Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Pakistani Diaspora Thriving in America

Nearly half a million people of Pakistani origin call America home. Pakistani-Americans' education and income levels are significantly higher than those of the general population of the United States. Among them are doctors, engineers, lawyers, accountants, journalists, politicians, business executives, professional sports team managers and owners, artists, actors, entrepreneurs, salespeople, policemen, soldiers, convenience store clerks and taxi, bus and truck drivers. United States is the 5th most popular destination for Pakistani-born international migrants and the 6th largest source of remittances to Pakistan. In addition to participating in local philanthropy and community activities, several Pakistani-American organizations help raise funds for schools, hospitals and other human welfare projects in Pakistan.

Pakistani-American Population:

Over 450,000 Pakistani immigrants and their children live in the United States as of 2013, according to a report compiled by Migration Policy Institute. Of these, 273,000 were born in Pakistan and the remaining 180,000 are US-born. Pakistani-American population has more than doubled in the last decade due to increased immigration, according to US Census data.

Origins of Foreign-Born Americans. Source: Pew Research


Pakistani-Americans (pop: 450,000) are the seventh largest community among Asian-Americans, behind Chinese (3.8 million),  Filipinos (3.4 million), Indians (3.2 million), Vietnamese (1.74 million),  Koreans (1.7 million) and Japanese (1.3 million), according to Asian-American Center For Advancing Justice . They are still a minuscule fraction of the overall US population.

Source: Migration Policy Institute 

Education and Income Levels:

56% of Pakistani-Americans have at least a bachelor's degree, much higher than 33% of Americans with college degrees. Among Pakistani-American college grads, 33% have a bachelor's degree while 23% have master's or Ph.Ds.

Median annual income of Pakistani-American households is $60,000, higher than the $50,000 median household income of all Americans. 33% of Pakistani-American households earn at least $90,000 while 18% earn more than $140,000.

Pakistani Doctors in America:

Pakistan is the third biggest source of foreign doctors who make up a third of all practicing physicians in the United States, according to OECD. Vast majority of Muslim doctors in America are of Pakistani origin.  Among them is Dr.Mark Humayun who was awarded top US medal for technology by President Barack Obama in 2016.

About 30% of the 800,000 doctors, or about 240,000 doctors, currently practicing in America are of foreign origin, according to Catholic Health Association of the United States. Predictions vary, but according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, by 2025 the U.S. will be short about 160,000 physicians. This gap will most likely be filled by more foreign doctors.

Foreign Doctors in US, UK. Source: OECD


As of 2013, there are over 12,000 Pakistani doctors, or about 5% of all foreign physicians and surgeons, in practice in the United States.  Pakistan is the third largest source of foreign-trained doctors. India tops with 22%, or 52,800 doctors. It is followed by the Philippines with 6%, or 14,400 foreign-trained doctors. India and Pakistan also rank as the top two sources of foreign doctors in the United Kingdom.

Pakistanis in Silicon Valley:

is home to 12,000 to 15,000 Pakistani Americans. Thousands of them are working at Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Oracle, Twitter and hundreds of other high-tech companies from small start-ups to large Fortune 500 corporations. Pakistani-Americans are contributing to what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe as "The Second Machine Age" in a recent book with the same title.

A Representative Sample of Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley
Pakistani-Americans are the largest foreign-born Muslim group in San Francisco Bay Area that includes Silicon Valley, according to a 2013 study. The study was commissioned by the One Nation Bay Area Project, a civic engagement program supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.

 Overall, US-born Muslims make up the largest percentage at 34% of all Muslims in the Bay Area, followed by 14% born in Pakistan, 11% in Afghanistan, 10% in India, 3% in Egypt and 2% each in Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Yemen.

Pakistani-American entrepreneurs, advisers, mentors, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants and lawyers make up a growing ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Dozens of Pakistani-American founded start-ups have been funded by top venture capital firms. Many such companies have either been acquired in M&A deals or gone public by offering shares for sale at major stock exchanges. Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN) has become a de facto platform for networking among Pakistani-American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. It holds an annual event called OPEN Forum which attracts over 500 attendees.

Entertainment and Sports:

Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American actor-comedian, recently made news with the successful release of his feature film The Big Sick on hundreds of screens across the United States.  It is a cross-culture romantic comedy based on actual events that breaks new ground by casting a brown-skinned Pakistani-American in a lead role in a movie produced and widely screened in the United States. Acquired by Amazon Studios for $12 million after a bidding war at Sundance film festival, the film has already grossed over $36 million so far.

Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American engineer who made his multi-billion dollar fortune in auto industry, became only non-white owner of an NFL franchise team when he bought Jacksonville Jaguars for $760 million in 2011.

Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers franchise general manager is a Pakistani-American named Farhan Zaidi, an MIT and Berkeley-educated economist.

Kamala Khan is a new Ms. Marvel comic book character created by Pakistani-American Sana Amanat for Marvel Entertainment. Kamala is both female and Muslim. It is part of the American comic giant's efforts to reflect a growing diversity among its readers.

Academy Award winning Hollywood hits Frozen, Life of Pi and The Golden Compass have one thing in common:  Each used extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI) created by Pakistani-American Mir Zafar Ali who won Oscar statuettes for "Best Visual Effects" in each of them.

Pakistani-American Organizations:

Rockefeller Foundation-Aspen Institute Diaspora (RAD) program identified 79 Pakistani-American organizations. Of these, 5 organizations had revenue exceeding $1m while two had over $200,000 in their most recent fiscal year. The top organizations are The Citizens Foundation (TCF), the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent in North America (APNA) and the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN). Other large organizations are American Pakistan Foundation, Imran Khan Cancer Foundation and Human Development Foundation (HDF). These organization help raise funds for education, health care and other development and human welfare activities in Pakistan.

Trump's America:

Some Pakistani-Americans, like members of other ethnic and religious minorities, are alarmed by the increasing bigotry in America since the election of President Donald Trump. This is particularly true of places like New York's Little Pakistan were Pakistanis were targeted after 911 terrorist attacks. At the height of the sweep, over 20,000 people in Brooklyn’s South Asian communities left the United States, a COPO survey found, according to Gotham Gazette, a New York City publication. Many sought political asylum in Canada and Australia, and some returned to Pakistan and other countries. A number of them never returned. Many had their legitimate US immigration applications pending at the time. Others had their cases in immigration courts and they were waiting for disposition by judges.

Summary:

With few exceptions, most Pakistani-Americans, making up a tiny fraction of the US population, are thriving. They have significantly higher incomes and education levels than the general US population.  Pakistani-Americans are engaged in diverse occupations ranging from doctors, engineers and lawyers to large and small business owners and drivers. In addition to participating in local philanthropic and community activities, several Pakistani-American organizations help raise funds for schools, hospitals and other human welfare activities in Pakistan.

Related Links:

Haq's Musings

New York's Little Pakistan

Pakistan is the 3rd Largest Source of Foreign Doctors in America

Pakistani-American Stars in "Big Sick" Movie

Pakistani-American Population Growth 2nd Fastest Among Asian-Americans

Silicon Valley Pakistani-Americans

A Dozen British Pakistanis in UK Pariament

Trump and Modi

OPEN Silicon Valley Forum 2017: Pakistani Entrepreneurs Conference

Pakistani-American's Tech Unicorn Files For IPO at $1.6 Billion Valuation

Pakistani-American Cofounders Sell Startup to Cisco for $610 million

Pakistani Brothers Spawned $20 Billion Security Software Industry

Pakistani-American Ashar Aziz's Fireeye Goes Public

Pakistani-American Pioneered 3D Technology in Orthodontics

Pakistani-Americans Enabling 2nd Machine Revolution

Pakistani-American Shahid Khan Richest South Asian in America

Two Pakistani-American Silicon Valley Techs Among Top 5 VC Deals

Pakistani-American's Game-Changing Vision 




31 comments:

Younis said...

Sorry for being a devil's advocate. Our household are bigger 3.6 people versus average US 2.5 (using data from your blog)

Per capita = 60K divided by 3.6 = $16667
US average = 50K divided by 2.5 = $20000

We are poorer than the average US resident.

Riaz Haq said...

Younis: "We are poorer than the average US resident."

First, it's not average....it's median....the two are very different. Average per capita for Pakistani-Americans is probably much higher because of higher percentage of high-income Pakistani-American households.

Second, household income is a better indicator of wealth or poverty than individual per capita income. Why? Because the biggest expense is housing and families with children do not pay significantly more for it than those without children.

Third, the percentage of high-income Pakistani-American households is significantly higher than the those of of the general US population. It's mainly because Pakistani-American working adults have higher levels of education than the rest of the population.

Rafay said...

can you compare pakistani american with other asian communities you mentioned i.e. Chinese (3.8 million), Filipinos (3.4 million), Indians (3.2 million), Vietnamese (1.74 million), Koreans (1.7 million) and Japanese (1.3 million).

Riaz Haq said...

Rafay: "can you compare pakistani american with other asian communities you mentioned"

Here are the RAD profiles from Migration Policy Institute I was able to find:


Vietnam: Median household income $52,000 Education 22% Bachelor's degrees 7% master's or PhD's


Bangladesh: Median household income $54,000 Education 28% Bachelor's degrees 25% master's or PhD's


Pakistan: Median household income $60,000 Education 33% Bachelor's degrees 23% master's or PhD's


Philippines: Median household income $74,000 Education 43% Bachelor's degrees 9% master's or PhD's


India: Median household income $89,000 Education 35% Bachelor's degrees 44% master's or PhD's


http://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/select-diaspora-populations-united-states


A Pew study has shown that Hindus and Muslims are well educated in US but least educated worldwide

American Hindus are the most highly educated with 96% of them having college degrees, according to Pew Research. 75% of Jews and 54% of American Muslims have college degrees versus the US national average of 39% for all Americans. American Christians trail all other groups with just 36% of them having college degrees. 96% of Hindus and 80% of Muslims in the U.S. are either immigrants or the children of immigrants.

However, both Hindus and Muslims are at the bottom in terms of educational attainment measured across the globe. 41% of Hindus and 36% of Muslims have had no formal schooling. Hindus have the widest gender gap in education among all religions in the world with Hindu women trailing Hindu men by 2.7 years.

http://www.riazhaq.com/2016/12/hindus-and-muslims-well-educated-in-us.html

Ashraf said...

What is the reason why Indian Americans are so much higher than everyone else?

Riaz Haq said...

Ashraf: "What is the reason why Indian Americans are so much higher than everyone else?"

Combination of age and education levels.

Indian-Americans are older, better educated and more likely to be in professional occupations.

69% of Indians vs 63% of Pakistanis age 16 or older are in the work force.

69% of 2nd gen Indians vs 77% of 2nd gen Pakistanis are under 18 years of age

44% of Indians vs 23% of Pakistanis age 25 or older have master's or Ph.D. degrees.

50% of Indians vs 33% of Pakistanis age 16 or older are in professional occupations.

But it's not necessarily a good thing for India. It would be better if India could use more of their talents at home rather than lose them to the United States.

Rks said...

" But it's not necessarily a good thing for India. It would be better if India could use more of their talents at home rather than lose them to the United States."

So Pakistan does not require the "Doctors" who are working in USA? Are they having enough of them? Why is it different for India?

Riaz Haq said...

19640909rk "So Pakistan does not require the "Doctors" who are working in USA? Are they having enough of them? Why is it different for India?"


Pakistan does need many more doctors to care for its people as does India. It's a question of degrees.

India can afford to lose its doctors even less than Pakistan.

Pakistan currently has 8.1 physicians per 10,000 population while India has 7.3. Both have far lower availability than the US at 25.5

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2226.html


Riaz Haq said...

There are 519,000 Pakistani-Americans as of 2015, according to Pew Research.

#Pakistani-Americans median household income is $66,000, higher than $53,600 for all #Americans but lower than $73,060 for #Asian Americans http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/

The U.S. Asian population grew 72% between 2000 and 2015 (from 11.9 million to 20.4 million), the fastest growth rate of any major racial or ethnic group. By comparison, the population of the second-fastest growing group, Hispanics, increased 60% during the same period.

Population growth varied across the 19 Asian origin groups in this analysis. Roughly half of the 19 groups more than doubled in size between 2000 and 2015, with Bhutanese-, Nepalese– and Burmese-origin populations showing the fastest growth over the period. Meanwhile, Laotians and Japanese had among the slowest growth rates among U.S. Asians in the past 15 years.

No single country-of-origin group dominates the U.S. Asian population, but the largest groups are of Chinese, Indian and Filipino origin. As of 2015, 24% of Asian Americans (4.9 million) were of Chinese origin, the largest single origin group. The next two largest origin groups are Indian-origin Asians, who accounted for 20% of the national Asian population (4.0 million), and Filipinos (19%, or 3.9 million). Those with roots in Vietnam, Korea and Japan easily clear the 1 million mark as well. The remaining 13 groups in this analysis account for just 12% of all U.S. Asians.

Riaz Haq said...

2.43 million Pakistanis working in Europe

https://tribune.com.pk/story/1391730/overseas-workforce-2-43-million-pakistanis-working-europe/

Out of the total Pakistan’s overseas workforce, 27 per cent have jobs in European countries, revealed statistics shared by Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development with the lawmakers in the Senate.

After Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom caters to the largest overseas Pakistanis followed by Italy, France, Germany and Spain.

In response to question of senator Rozi Khan Kakar, the ministry stated that presently around 9.08 million workforce is living/working abroad, out of which, 2.43 million got job opportunities in around 25 countries of Europe.
UK at the moment has provided jobs to 1.7 million Pakistanis. Saudi Arabia continues to be the favourite destination of Pakistani workforce with 2.6 million workers. United Arab Emirates is at the fourth place in the list with 1.6 million and United States fifth with 900,350.

In Europe, Italy is providing jobs to 119,762 Pakistanis, France 104,000, Germany 90,556, Spain 82,000, Greece 70,002, Norway 38,000 and Netherlands 35,000.

Turkey is providing jobs to only 557 Pakistani workers while China has accommodated 14,355 Pakistani workers. Chile is providing jobs to 760 Pakistanis and Cuba has given job opportunities to 600 Pakistanis. Afghanistan provided jobs to 71,000 Pakistanis and India 10,000. Iran has provided jobs to 7,065 Pakistanis.

Currently, 120,216 Pakistanis have been provided jobs in Malaysia and 65,000 in Thailand.

Libya provided 12,008 Pakistanis jobs, Iraq accommodated 4,709 and Yemen 3,024. Russia gave jobs to 3,560 Pakistanis, stated the statistics.

The reply also contains that 19 Community Welfare Attaches are posted in Pakistan’s missions abroad in the countries having a sizeable concentration of Pakistanis to provide them certain facilities.

These facilities include, issuance of passports, provision of assistance in implementation of Foreign Service Agreement which is made between employee and employer and some others.

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani community in Estonia ‘highly qualified and skilled’

The total number Pakistanis in the country is 200 people and vast majority of them are highest degree holders

https://www.geo.tv/latest/165490-pakistani-community-in-estonia-highly-qualified-and-skilled

Majority of the Pakistanis residing in Estonia constitute highly qualified and skilled people including engineers and software experts, said Chairman Pakistan-Estonia Association (PEA) Dr Yar Mohammad Mughal.

In a meeting with Enn Eesmaa, the first Vice-President of the Estonian Parliament at the parliament House in Tallinn, Mughal said that the total number Pakistanis in the country is 200 people and vast majority of them are highest degree holders.

30 % of the community is highly skilled engineers and software engineers who obtained jobs after completion of their education in Estonia, a country of 1.3 million in the Baltic area. 20% are either self-employed or have odd jobs. The rest are mostly students of PhD, Masters and Bachelors degree programs.

Dr Yar Mohammad also briefed the Vice President of the parliament about aims and objectives of his organisation. The PEA is a platform to strengthen relationships between both countries, to increase trade and cooperation in different sectors such as e-Governance and IT. The organisation also works to promote international mobility to exchange of faculty members, researchers and students

Dr Yar also told the leading Estonian lawmaker about the cultural activities of Pakistani community in different cities of Estonia. Steps and objectives of Pakistan Association Estonia were highly appreciated by Mr. Enn Eesmaa. He emphasized on further efforts for enhancement of ties between Pakistan and Estonia.

Dr Yar Mohammad, who is assistant professor at University of Tartu, Estonia has started his efforts for exchange of students and scholars between the two countries and so far has achieved an agreement on exchange faculty members between NUST University of Pakistan and an Estonian university. During the meeting, the two sides agreed that educational diplomacy can be used as an effective tool in Pak-EU ties, especially Pakistan’s relations with Estonia.

Higher educational institutions of both sides play a significant role to promote bilateral relations, he added. Dr Yar sad that collaborative study and research projects, joint degree, consulting contracts and others activities can be increased between Pakistani and Estonia.

Riaz Haq said...


Mohammad Ashraf Faridi and Muhammad Faridi


https://storycorps.org/listen/mohammad-ashraf-faridi-and-muhammad-faridi-180316/

Mohammad Ashraf Faridi immigrated from Pakistan to the United States in the 1980s. He settled in New York City, and his family joined him almost a decade later. By then, Mohammad was earning a living driving a cab.

At StoryCorps, his oldest son, Muhammad, talked about growing up as the son of a taxi driver.

Muhammad Faridi (MF) & Mohammad Ashraf Faridi (MAF)

Muhammad Faridi (MF): You used to go to work and then come back home around 2am. So in the morning you used to send me to go clean your car. I would vacuum, take out the mats, smack them against the pole to get the dust out. And then I was maybe 14, 15, and I was doing that and a kid from the neighborhood just began making fun of me. ’Hey! Cab boy! Taxi boy!’ That’s one of those experiences that made me embarrassed.

Mohammad Ashraf Faridi (MAF): At that time my financial position was no good.

MF: After your 18th birthday you can get your taxi license.

MAF: So you said, ’I want to help you.’

MF: We drove together for a couple of days.

MAF: Right.

MF: You showed me the streets, bridges, everything. And I started college, and went to law school, and I was still working part-time, driving. And then I began working for a federal district court judge. The judge at that time was in his late 80s. So I used to help him carry his briefcase down. And one day, the judge called for a car service, and you came to pick him up.

MAF: Yeah.

MF: I put the briefcase in the car. We waved at each other. And you drove the judge home. The next day the judge and me, we were having lunch. I said, ’The driver who picked you up yesterday was my father.’ The judge was very upset at me that I didn’t introduce him to you. I, at that point, never really liked talking about my family. We don’t come from Park Avenue and I was embarrassed that you drove a taxicab. But not anymore. As I grew older, I’m proud. You know, I think you’ve done a great job.

MAF: The bottom line is this: I got everything in my life — my friends, my family. I am happy.

MF: And in my life if I can emulate that by a fraction I would think that I’ve lived a good life.

-------------

Mohammad Faridi is now a partner at NY Law Firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.


A Lawyer’s Struggle to Overcome Barriers and Live by Ideals in the Practice of Law

https://www.americanbar.org/groups/young_lawyers/publications/tyl/topics/becoming-a-partner/a-lawyers-struggle-to-overcome-barriers-and-live-by-ideals-in-the-practice-of-law.html

Mr. Faridi has been recognized by several professional associations and organizations. He was named to Benchmark Litigation’s 2017 “Under 40 Hotlist” of practitioners who “have been deemed most promising emerging talent in their respective litigation communities in the US and Canadian litigation community by peers and clients.” He was the recipient of the New York State Bar Association’s 2014 Outstanding Young Lawyer Award, highlighting his recognition by the Young Lawyers Section of the association for having rendered outstanding service to both the community and legal profession. Based upon Mr. Faridi’s work on death-penalty matters and his leadership in chairing the New York City Bar Association’s Capital Punishment Committee, the Firm was awarded the 2017 Norman Redlich Pro Bono Award. Mr. Faridi has also received The Legal Aid Society’s Pro Bono Publico Award for multiple years, MFY Legal Services, Inc.’s Partner in Justice Award, and the Brooklyn Bar Association Volunteer Lawyers Project’s TD Bank Champion of Justice Award. Mr. Faridi was also recognized as the 2017 Law Day Honoree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice “for his outstanding commitment to the legal community.”

Riaz Haq said...

How Muslims, Often Misunderstood, Are Thriving in America
They’re a vibrant and increasingly visible part of the tapestry in communities across the nation.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/05/being-muslim-in-america/

There was nothing to do but watch as the copper-domed building in the southern Texas oil town of Victoria burned down.

The mosque where Abe Ajrami’s Beyoncé-loving daughter was feted with other high school graduates, the mosque where his children went to religion classes, the mosque where he and his family went every Friday to pray and mingle over a potluck of seven-layer dip and spiced biryani, was gone.


“I was trying not to break down,” says Ajrami, a Palestinian American who raced to the mosque after getting a phone call in the dead of night. He recounts the experience to me in his living room as his wife, Heidi, an American convert to Islam, sits to his right and his daughters, Hannah and Jenin, sit to his left, while his son, Rami, sleeps upstairs.

This family reminds me of my own. My father, from Lebanon originally, also came to the United States for an education and a better future, as Ajrami did. My mother was a Unitarian Universalist, like Heidi, and she met her future husband in college and converted. My parents have raised five ambiguously tan American Muslim kids.

-------------

Airaj Jilani, a retired oil-and-gas project manager from suburban Houston, performs as Elvis Presley. He has been a fan since he was a boy growing up in Pakistan. “I was the Elvis fan. My brother was the Beatles fan,” he says. In 1978 he visited Presley’s Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; the following year he moved to Texas.

-----------
The community has spent about three million dollars trying to build this mosque, but the Islamic center is still just a blueprint in Sohail Akhter’s kitchen. The Pakistani American is the project manager. “Fearmongering is the greatest weapon that they’ve used against us because we’re so few,” he explains to me, saying that opponents have accused them of trying to build a terrorist training camp. “Not a lot of people here have ever met a Muslim. They associate all of us with that. They’re afraid.”

-------------------

Nawab grew up culturally confused. She’s the daughter of parents from Pakistan, she was raised in a largely Arab immigrant suburb of Chicago, and she went to a mostly white school but identified with various cultures, including black culture and hip-hop. “I knew I was Muslim,” she says. “I just didn’t know what it meant. And people put you in boxes: Arab, Muslim, immigrant, doesn’t speak English. I didn’t know how I fit in.”

-------------

IMAN is a way to make Islam relevant to American Muslims, Nashashibi says, especially those searching for a purpose and a connection to a faith so often portrayed as a foreign threat on American television. For this work he was recognized last year with a prestigious MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. “We’re trying to celebrate the legacy of the spirit of a transformational, empowering, inspirational Islam that is not constantly trying to apologize and explain itself,” he says.

It’s the antidote, he says, to the apathy that leads people away from the faith or the vulnerability, disenfranchisement, and anger that lead people to violence, be it on the South Side of Chicago or the battlefields in Syria and Iraq. And America, he says, is the best place to be a Muslim today. “America has always provided, even in its darkest hours, spaces through which people have challenged it to live up to unfulfilled ideals.”

Riaz Haq said...

Upscale Pakistani-American restaurant near the White House in WashingtonDC feeds the poor and homeless every single day . Served 16,000 free meals in 2018| WJLA

Sakina Halal Grill looks like your typical high-end restaurant located just blocks from the White House. During the lunchtime rush hour, many customers flock to the grill for the all you can eat buffet of authentic Pakistani Indian food.

However, it's anything but just another restaurant.

Beyond the delicious flavors you find, the warm Chai Latte or fresh lemon water, you would never know that homeless people are walking in and out to experience the same thing paying customers are.

https://youtu.be/GIHVwDlJUQ8

Riaz Haq said...

#London-born #Pakistani-#American Lina Khan’s essay on the “Amazon Antitrust Paradox” and subsequent legal research made it more possible for people in the halls of power to once again begin investigating monopolies. #Amazon #antitrust https://bit.ly/31YKbOV

For the most part, Americans have watched the advent of the massive corporation over the past half century with some degree of indifference. When companies merged with each other, they saved money on overheads, and so could provide consumers with lower prices on everyday goods. Regulators didn’t worry too much about the rise of big companies, in part since consumers weren’t complaining. But at the age of 27, while a student at Yale Law School, Lina Khan very publicly pushed back against this line of thinking. In “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox,” a widely-read article published in 2017 in the Yale Law Journal, Khan argued that though the rise of big companies like Amazon may mean lower prices, they should not necessarily be immune from antitrust scrutiny. There is a “broader set of ills and hazards that a lack of competition breeds,” she wrote. Giant corporations can manipulate the markets they dominate, she wrote, forcing smaller companies out of business and worsening the economy for workers, citizens, and sometimes even consumers.
Khan had in roughly 24,000 words resurfaced an argument against monopolies that journalists such as Ida Tarbell had popularized more than a century ago. It’s an argument that politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are now echoing. But it was Khan’s paper and subsequent legal research that gave people in the halls of power another tool for investigating monopolies. Thinking only about whether monopolies lead to lower prices was not the right approach, she argued. “If prices are low for us as consumers but our wages are stagnant and there’s no opportunity to create our own business, that’s not self-evidently a good thing,” she says.

After her paper was published, Khan worked as a legal fellow in the office of Rohit Chopra of the Federal Trade Commission as the agency increased its scrutiny of tech firms; the FTC has recently launched probes of Facebook and Amazon. Khan, now 30, has published opeds in the New York Times calling for more scrutiny of big tech companies, and is currently on leave from her position as an academic fellow at Columbia Law School to work as counsel for the House Antitrust Subcommittee as it takes on tech companies.

Khan, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from the U.K. when she was 11, had originally wanted to be a journalist. It was the best way to hold powerful people accountable, she thought, during journalism stints in both high school and college, including a fellowship in India. But after graduating from Williams College, she started working with the New America Foundation under the journalist Barry Lynn, and began researching how the rise of massive companies was having a big impact on Americans’ everyday life. For instance, consumers face a lack of choice in chocolate bars since two companies control the majority of the world’s cocoa processing; farmers can only buy seeds from a few giant conglomerates, which limits their bargaining power; once people start buying a specific product like Darth Vader cufflinks on Amazon, the tech company can take over the market from the small seller. The more she researched, the more she found that though consumers might have an illusion of choice, a few companies dominate large sections of the economy and set their own rules. “I think there is a very coherent story to be told about how market power is harming us as a whole in all these bizarre ways that are not readily apparent,” she says. Khan ultimately decided to go to law school so she could more effectively take on antitrust, a mission she has pursued since she became a law student. “We’re at a moment where the revival of antitrust could be extremely important in the coming decades,” she said.

Riaz Haq said...

#Pakistani-#American Journalist Amna Nawaz Among #Democratic Presidential #Debate Moderators Named By PBS NewsHour & POLITICO. Other names include Judy Woodruff, Tim Alberta, Amna Nawaz and Yamiche Alcindor https://politi.co/34t2flr via @politico


Amna Nawaz joined PBS NewsHour in April 2018 and serves as senior national correspondent and primary substitute anchor.

Prior to joining the NewsHour, Nawaz was an anchor and correspondent at ABC News, anchoring breaking news coverage and leading the network’s digital coverage of the 2016 presidential election. Before that, she served as a foreign correspondent at NBC News, reporting from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, and the broader region. She is also the founder and former managing editor of NBC’s Asian America platform, built to elevate the voices of America’s fastest-growing population.

At the NewsHour, Nawaz has reported politics, foreign affairs, education, climate change, culture and sports. Her immigration reporting has taken her to multiple border communities in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Mexico. She’s investigated the impact of the Trump Administration’s immigration policies, including following the journey of a single toddler as she left her home in Mexico, was separated from her family at the U.S. border, and later reunited with her family several weeks later. She also regularly covers issues around detention, refugees and asylum, and migrant children in U.S. government custody.

Nawaz has interviewed international newsmakers -- including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, and Brazilian leader Eduardo Bolsonaro; lawmakers and Trump administration officials – including then-ICE Director Mark Morgan’s first interview after President Trump announced mass raids across the U.S., Acting Secretary of DHS Kevin McAleenan, and former DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in her first interview since leaving the Trump administration; and influential voices including Reba McEntire, Gloria Estefan, and Dev Patel.

Domestically, her reporting has taken her to Appalachia to cover healthcare and the economy, the Pacific Northwest to cover gentrification and discrimination in housing, and communities across the country to take the political pulse of the nation. Internationally, she’s traveled to Brazil to report on climate change from within the Amazon, and the Venezuelan refugee crisis.

In 2019, her reporting as part of a NewsHour series on the global plastic problem was the recipient of a Peabody Award.

While at ABC News, Nawaz reported the documentary, “Roberts County: A Year in the Most Pro-Trump Town,” following four families’ lives over President Trump’s first year in office, and hosted the podcast series, “Uncomfortable,” featuring in-depth, one-on-one conversations with thought leaders on the issues dividing America.

Earlier, at NBC News, her work appeared on NBC Nightly News, The Today Show, Dateline NBC, MSNBC, andMSNBC.com. She was NBC’s Islamabad Bureau Chief and Correspondent for several years, and was the first foreign journalist allowed inside North Waziristan, the then-global hub of Al Qaida and the Taliban. She covered the Taliban attack on Malala Yousafzai, the U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound, and broke news in a series of exclusive reports on the impact of U.S. drone strikes. Nawaz reported for the network’s investigative unit, covering the U.S. housing crisis and the BP oil spill, and also covered the election and inauguration of Barack Obama, the earthquake in Haiti, and Hurricane Katrina.

--

Nawaz has also been honored with an Emmy Award for the NBC News Special “Inside the Obama White House,” a Society for Features Journalism Award, and was a recipient of the International Reporting Project fellowship in 2009. She earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Pennsylvania, where she captained the varsity field hockey team, and later earned her master's degree from the London School of Economics.

Riaz Haq said...

Dr. Gul Zaidi featured in CBS 60 Minutes tonight is a graduate of Shifa Medical College #Islamabad #Pakistan. She is a critical care specialist in pulmonary diseases. She says "continue the lockdown" to manage the load on health care system. #coronavirus https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-city-coronavirus-epicenter-united-states-peak-60-minutes-2020-03-29/

Scott Pelley: To those who question whether businesses should be closed, whether entire cities or states should be locked down, you say what?

Dr. Gul Zaidi: You have to keep it locked down. The influx already is so much that if this continues, there's no resources in the world that'll be enough to deal with this and contain this. And we have to keep it locked down. Anything else would be irresponsible.

---------------

Scott Pelley: Tell me about the battle you're fighting.

Dr. Gul Zaidi: It's hard. We're ICU doctors, we're used to pressure. We're used to seeing a lot of things that normal people don't see. But this is really beyond anything I've seen in my career.

Dr. Gul Zaidi has been a critical care specialist nine years at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens.

Dr. Gul Zaidi: There's no time to sit, let alone eat or do simple things like take bathroom breaks. We just keep going. And it's essentially one room to the next.

Scott Pelley: When was the last time you slept?

Dr. Gul Zaidi: I don't know. I don't remember when was the last time. Probably before this exploded like this.

--------------------

Dr. Gul Zaidi: It's just the sheer magnitude of patients that are coming in, the influx not just into the hospital, but into our ICUs is beyond anything that we've seen before. We're doing our best, but it feels like wartime.

-----------------------
Dr. Gul Zaidi: We're all scared. I'm scared. But I have to lock those fears away in a box, because once I set foot into the hospital, it's all about the patient. So, we try to be cautious. We try to use the protective equipment. But it's not perfect. We all know that. But this is what I do. It's my job. So, I do what I have to do to help these people.

Riaz Haq said...

Four years ago, Maliha Javed, an immigrant from Pakistan, was not paying attention to politics. A community college student in suburban Atlanta, she was busy paying for books and studying for classes. She did not vote that year.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/us/georgia-asian-american-voters.html

But the past four years changed her. The Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban affected some of her friends. The child separation policy reminded her of living apart from her parents for three years during her own move to the United States. Then, this summer, the discovery that she was pregnant made it final: On Election Day, she marched into the Amazing Grace Lutheran Church near her house and voted for the first time in her life. She chose Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“I want it to be a better country for him to grow up in,” said Ms. Javed, who is 24 and is having a boy.

Ms. Javed is part of a small but powerful new force in Georgia politics: Asian-American voters. She lives in Gwinnett County, Georgia’s second-most populous county and the one with the largest Asian-American population. Mr. Biden, who narrowly defeated President Trump in Georgia, won Gwinnett County by 18 percentage points, a substantial increase over Hillary Clinton’s performance four years ago and only the second time the county went blue since the 1970s.

----------------
https://www.abc12.com/2020/11/07/muslim-vote-helps-secure-michigan-for-bidenharris-ticket/

- Roughly 146,000 votes give now President-elect Joe Biden the edge over President Donald Trump in the Great Lakes State. That margin was even tighter in 2016 when Trump carried Michigan with 10,700 more votes than Hillary Clinton.

By and large, the tight margins of victory in certain states for either candidate highlight how critical every vote is, and perhaps more importantly, the hard work of expanding the electorate. Muslim civic engagement nonprofit Emgage Michigan did just that for the Biden/Harris ticket in 2020, according to the organization’s executive director.

“I want everyone to know that Muslims played a huge role for Biden to win Michigan and the nation itself," said Nada Al-Hanooti, Executive Director of Emgage Michigan.

Al-Hanooti says their efforts resulted in 80,000 absentee and early votes from Muslims. The exact number of Muslim votes cast in Michigan isn’t something that is officially known yet.

She says the president’s ban on visitors from predominantly Muslim countries played a major factor for Muslim families, among other serious social issues. Biden pledged to end the ban on day one if elected.

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani-Americans in Biden Administration as of 1/25/21:

Ali Zaidi, Deputy Climate Change Advisor in the White House

Salman Ahmad, Director of Policy Planning in US State Department

Saima Mohsin. US Attorney in Detroit, MI in Department of Justice (DOJ)

Riaz Haq said...

My research similarly shows that creating spaces for empathy can prove invaluable for combating intergroup hostility. In 2015, my research assistants and I interviewed Americans and Pakistanis on their views of each other’s culture. We found that both groups held highly negative beliefs and stereotypes about the other. Pakistanis didn’t just see Americans as loose, but as immoral and arrogant. Americans saw Pakistanis as overly constrained, but also aggressive and violent. As impressions are often formed through the media, which thrives on caricature, such extreme stereotyping is perhaps not surprising. What’s more, we tend to live in our own echo chambers. Even on Twitter and Facebook, we communicate with those we know and those who share our views, rather than engaging with people from other cultures. In our study, we wondered if we could lessen intergroup intergroup hostility by giving each group a more realistic window into each other’s lives. We didn’t have the budget to fly Pakistanis to the United States or vice versa. But what if Americans were able to read the actual daily diaries of Pakistanis, and Pakistanis were able to read the diaries of Americans, over the course of a week? Would this exposure to one another’s day-to-day lives change their attitudes? To find out, my collaborator Joshua Jackson and I had American and Pakistani students write about their everyday experiences for one week. We then gave a new group of participants, including a hundred American and a hundred Pakistani students, a set of these diary entries to read over the course of a week. The results of this low-cost intervention were striking: As compared with participants who read diary entries from members of their own culture, participants who read diary entries written by members of the other culture viewed the two cultures as being much more similar. What’s more, Pakistani participants who read Americans’ diaries viewed Americans as more moral and as having less of a sense of superiority over other cultures. And, by the end of this intervention, our American participants who read diaries written by Pakistanis viewed Pakistanis as less violent and more fun-loving. “I don’t know many Pakistanis personally, but the diary entries helped me learn about the everyday life of someone in Pakistan,” one American participant wrote at the study’s end. “I think that they tend to be a bit more religious than the people in America, but have similar life patterns and personalities to us.” Likewise, a Pakistani participant remarked, “Americans may be different than us in moral, ethical, or religious values, but the lives of students in America are very similar to the life of a student here . . . They are law-abiding citizens, which is one of the reasons the system in America is working smoothly.” As these quotes show, interventions that improve our understanding of people from other cultures hold tremendous promise for defusing stereotypes, heading off conflict, and resolving intercultural disputes. Every day, citizens are finding meaningful ways to interact with people far outside their own social circles. In 2017, the Washington Post reported that, in a Dairy Queen in Dallas, Texas, two American-born men decided to have a sit-down over burgers and fries to untangle their mutual suspicion. On one end, there was David Wright, a white man who had founded a militia called the Bureau of American Islamic Relations (BAIR) with the mission of rooting out Islamic terrorists in Texas. At the other end was Ali Ghouri, a member of a local mosque where Wright and his coalition had protested twice with weapons and signs reading “Stop the Islamization of America.” Against the advice of other members of his mosque, Ghouri confronted the protesters, saying, “I have a weapon. You have a weapon. I’m not scared of you.” Five months later, Wright and Ghouri met at the Dairy Queen. Each man brought a friend—and a gun.

Gelfand, Michele. Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World (p. 198-199). Scribner. Kindle Edition. 

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani-American Divorce Rate is the Third Lowest, according to Institute of Family Studies

https://ifstudies.org/blog/immigrant-families-are-more-stable

Not all immigrant families are equal when it comes to family structure. Among the 30 largest groups of working-age immigrants in the U.S., Indian Americans rank at the top in family stability.1 Almost all (first-generation) Indian immigrants with children are stably married (94%), according to an IFS analysis of the 2019 American community survey. About 4% are remarried, and the share of unmarried Indian immigrants with children is only 2%.


Meanwhile, immigrants from the Middle East (e.g., Iran) and those from South America, such as Brazil and Venezuela, also enjoy a relatively higher level of family stability. So, too, do immigrants from Nigeria: 71% of Nigerian immigrants with children are married and in their first marriage.

On the other hand, the share of intact families is relatively lower among immigrants from Mexico (68%), the largest immigrant group. Immigrants from the Caribbean countries, such as Jamaica, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, also tend to have lower family stability—just about half of these immigrants with children are stably married (see Appendix Table 2 for more info)

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Indian Americans lead in marriage stability, Pakistan immigrants at 3rd. List of top 20 groups
The Institute of Family Studies said in a report that not all immigrant families are equal when it comes to the family structure as Indian Americans rank at the top in family stability.


https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/indian-americans-lead-in-marriage-stability-pakistan-immigrants-at-3rd-report-101616339825270.html

Immigrant families tend to be more stable than native-born Americans, and Indian American families lead the communities in terms of marriage stability, according to a report published in early March by a US-based think tank. After analysing the census data, the Institute of Family Studies (IFS), which advocates for strengthening marriage and family life, said that 72% of immigrants with children are still in their first marriage, while the share among native-born Americans is just 60%.
Family stability is also higher among immigrants from other parts of Asia, such as Bangladesh, Pakistan, Taiwan, Korea, China, and Japan. More than 80% of immigrant families from these countries comprise two stably married adults with their children.

Riaz Haq said...

#Pakistani-#American Sabir Sami named new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of #Kentucky Fried Chicken. (#KFC). #YUM #restaurants https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210922005549/en/Sabir-Sami-Promoted-to-KFC-Division-CEO-Effective-January-1-2022

Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) today announced the promotion of Sabir Sami, 54, to KFC Division Chief Executive Officer, reporting to Yum! Brands Chief Executive Officer David Gibbs, effective January 1, 2022. Sami, who currently serves as KFC Division Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director of KFC Asia, will succeed Tony Lowings, who is stepping down as CEO at the end of 2021 in advance of his retirement in early 2022. In addition, Dyke Shipp, 55, who currently serves as KFC Division Chief Development Officer and Chief People Officer, is being promoted to KFC Division President, reporting to Sami, effective January 1, 2022. (Photo: Business Wire)

Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE: YUM) today announced the promotion of Sabir Sami, 54, to KFC Division Chief Executive Officer, reporting to Yum! Brands Chief Executive Officer David Gibbs, effective January 1, 2022. Sami, a 12-year veteran of the Company, who currently serves as KFC Division Chief Operating Officer and Managing Director of KFC Asia, will succeed Tony Lowings, who is stepping down as CEO at the end of 2021 in advance of his retirement in early 2022. In this role, Sami will assume global responsibility for driving the brand strategy and performance of KFC.

“Sabir is an exceptional leader with deep expertise and knowledge of our business and has a strong, proven track record of growing KFC’s physical and brand presence in markets around the world,” said Gibbs. “As a highly-respected strategic brand builder, operations expert and heart-led leader, Sabir is a natural choice to continue successfully executing KFC’s long-term global growth strategies in close partnership with our franchisees and further elevate KFC as a relevant, easy and distinctive (R.E.D.) brand.”

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KFC is the global leader in the chicken category and Yum!’s largest brand with more than 25,000 restaurants in over 145 countries and territories and more than $26 billion in system sales as of year-end 2020. KFC’s unit economics fueled by strong franchise partners leads to, on average, a new KFC restaurant opening every six hours across the world. In addition to new unit development, the KFC Division added nearly $4 billion in system sales from digital channels last year to grow the KFC digital business to about $10 billion in system sales in 2020.

Riaz Haq said...

Rabia Chaudry on her memoir 'Fatty Fatty Boom Boom'

https://www.npr.org/2022/11/06/1134608160/rabia-chaudry-on-her-memoir-fatty-fatty-boom-boom

Rabia Chaudry loved food — especially fast food — and struggled with her weight growing up as a Pakistani-American. She talks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about her memoir, "Fatty Fatty Boom Boom."

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

One of the ways we honor and cherish our families is through food. And that couldn't be more true for lawyer, podcaster and author Rabia Chaudry. Growing up in a Pakistani household, she's familiar with the sights and smells of spicy biryani and sticky treats like jalebis. But as Chaudry chronicles in her new memoir, "Fatty Fatty Boom Boom," sometimes, that love for culture and family can become fraught. Rabia Chaudry, who is best known for her work on the Adnan Syed case and host of the "Undisclosed" podcast, joins us now. Welcome.

RABIA CHAUDRY: Hi, Ayesha. How are you?

RASCOE: I'm fine. Thank you so much for joining us. So before we just dive into your story of family and food and everything in between, I want to acknowledge the end of a different chapter in your life, the freedom of Adnan Syed. Syed was imprisoned in 1999 for the murder of his girlfriend at the time. Through your help, his conviction has been overturned, and now he's free. How does it feel to be on the other side of that fight?

CHAUDRY: Oh, I mean, sometimes, I forget. Sometimes, I still - my eyes will fly open, at night and I'm like, wait. What's next? What appeal do we file next? And when you've been carrying that around, like, your entire adult life, it feels quite amazing to be able to finally put it down and check it off your list.

RASCOE: So tell me why with your memoir you wanted to tell the story of your life through the food that you grew up eating?

CHAUDRY: You know, anybody can write a memoir of their life in so many different ways, right? It can be about my career. It can be about advocacy work. It can be about so many things. And I decided that those were a lot of stories I told all the time. But there was a theme in my life that I never spoke about publicly but was - has been with me since childhood. And that is issues around body image and weight. And so "Fatty Fatty Boom Boom" was born, which was one of my childhood nicknames. But, you know, at the same time, I can't divorce it from, you know, this issue about body image and weight from - like, my love for food and especially Pakistani cuisine and my family stories around it that bring me so much joy.

RASCOE: So, I mean, the book really walks us through how you developed your relationship with food from a very young age. You know, talk to me about the food you were eating and how you felt about it.

CHAUDRY: Yeah. You know, so when I immigrated to the United States, I was 6 months old. And I was the firstborn. My parents were discovering this country in a lot of ways. And one of the ways was through its food. And in my parents' imagination, nothing could be stocked in an American grocery store that wouldn't actually be healthy and wholesome and better than the foods we had back home in Pakistan. So we just dove right in into all of the processed foods. And I grew up eating just so much Bologna and, like, you know, crackers and processed snacks a lot of us grew up with.

RASCOE: I mean, you talked about how, like, even as a baby, kind of to fatten you up...

CHAUDRY: Oh, yeah.

RASCOE: It was some miscommunication, but you were drinking, like, half and half. And then also...

CHAUDRY: Oh, yeah.

Riaz Haq said...

Karachi-born Asma Naeem to be the head of the Baltimore Museum of Art

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/arts/design/baltimore-museum-director-asma-naeem.html

Baltimore Museum of Art Taps Its Chief Curator as Its Next Director

The Baltimore Museum of Art announced Tuesday that Asma Naeem, its chief curator since 2018 and interim co-director, will become director effective Feb. 1.

Born in Karachi, Pakistan, and raised in Baltimore, Naeem practiced law for almost 15 years before switching careers and finishing her Ph.D. in American art. She becomes the first person of color to lead the museum, founded in 1914, and will oversee its collection of more than 97,000 objects and an annual operating budget of $23 million.

Naeem, 53, has been interim co-director of the museum since Christopher Bedford, the former director, left last June for the top post at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Naeem had a central role in shaping and implementing the Baltimore Museum’s strategic plan, adopted in 2018, that placed social equity alongside artistic excellence as a core principle guiding the museum’s mission. Since then, the B.M.A., as it is known locally, has been at the forefront of efforts to acquire and exhibit work by underrepresented artists and to diversify its staff, board and audiences — issues being addressed by museums nationwide to varying degrees.

“We were most impressed with how Asma has been part of the work and with her vision for the institution, in terms of how to build on this work and take us to that next level,” said James D. Thornton, chairman of the museum’s board, which promoted Naeem after a 10-month national search.

Riaz Haq said...

Shahzia Sikander, 53, the paradigm-busting Pakistani American artist behind the work, said the sculpture was part of an urgent and necessary cultural reckoning underway as New York, along with cities across the world, reconsiders traditional representations of power in public spaces and recasts civic structures to better reflect 21st-century social

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/arts/design/discrimination-sculpture-madison-park-sikander-women.html


Move Over Moses and Zoroaster: Manhattan Has a New Female Lawgiver

The Lahore-born Sikander, whose work has been displayed at the Whitney Biennial and who made her name reimagining the art of Indo-Persian miniature painting from a feminist, post-colonial perspective, was at pains to emphasize that Muhammad’s removal and her installation were completely unrelated. “My figure is not replacing anyone or canceling anyone,” she said.

Much as Justice Ginsburg wore her lace collar to recast a historically male uniform and proudly reclaim it for her gender, Sikander said her stylized sculpture was aimed at feminizing a building that was commissioned in 1896. Writing in The New Yorker in 1928, the architect and author George S. Chappell called the rooftop ring of male figures atop the building a “ridiculous adornment of mortuary statuary.”

The aesthetic merits of the courthouse’s sumptuous Beaux-Arts-style architecture aside, the building’s symbolism has outsize importance in New York’s civic and legal identity and beyond: The court hears appeals from all the trial courts in Manhattan and the Bronx, as well as some of the most important appeals in the country.

Riaz Haq said...

37 year old practicing #Muslim #British #Pakistani Humza Yousaf wins race to replace Nicola Sturgeon as #Scotland's next leader. Humza was born in #Glasgow. His father was born in Mian Channu #Pakistan and his mother was born in #Kenya | Reuters


https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/scotlands-next-leader-be-announced-with-independence-movement-crisis-2023-03-26/

LONDON, March 27 (Reuters) - Scottish nationalists picked Humza Yousaf to be the country's next leader on Monday after a bitterly fought contest that exposed deep divisions in his party over policy and a stalled independence campaign.

The 37-year-old practicing Muslim will succeed Nicola Sturgeon as leader of the governing Scottish National Party (SNP) and, subject to a vote in the Scottish parliament, take over as head of the semi-autonomous government.

Yousaf's victory was confirmed at Edinburgh's Murrayfield rugby ground on Monday afternoon after a six-week campaign where the three candidates spent much of the contest criticising each other's record in a series of personal attacks.

The SNP's unity, which had been one of its strengths, broke down over arguments about how to achieve a second independence referendum and the best way to introduce social reforms such as transgender rights.

Yousaf takes over a party with an overriding objective to end Scotland's three-centuries-long union with England.

But while about four in 10 Scots still support independence, according to a poll this month, the departure of Sturgeon - a charismatic and commanding leader - may slow some of the momentum behind a break up of the United Kingdom.

There is no agreed strategy for how to force a new referendum - one of the reasons Sturgeon resigned.

The often bad-tempered leadership contest has relieved some pressure on British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who is dealing with divisions in his own party, waves of industrial action and high levels of inflation.

FRONTRUNNER
Yousaf won 24,336 of the votes of the SNP's members in the first round, while his main rival Kate Forbes 32, Scotland's finance minister, came second with 20,559 votes. Ash Regan, who quit the government because of her opposition to proposed changes to gender recognition, was third with 5,599 votes.

Riaz Haq said...

As of 2016, there were 12,454 Pakistani doctors and 45,830 Indian doctors out of 215,630 total in the United States.


https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?QueryId=68336

India 45,830

Pakistan 12,454

Grenada 10,789

Philipines 10,217

Dominica 9,974

Mexico 9,923

Canada 7,765

Dominican Republic 6,269

China 5,772

UAE 4,635

Egypt 4,379

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Total Foreign Doctors in UK 66,211

India 18,953

Pakistan 8,026

Nigeria 4,880

Egypt 4,471

Foreign Doctors in Canada 25,400:

South Africa 2,604

India 2,127

Ireland 1,942

UK 1,923


US 1,263


Pakistan 1,087

Riaz Haq said...

A Facebook Internship That Led to a 650-Guest Wedding Celebration

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/28/style/zabreen-khan-hamza-choudery-wedding.html

In New York, Hamza Choudery and Zabreen Khan quickly bonded over a shared culture and cricket. This month they were married in Lahore.

Hamza Shabbir Choudery was trying to play it cool. He had casually asked his colleague Zabreen Akhtar Khan to grab a bite to eat after work one Friday in the fall of 2017.

Ms. Khan and Mr. Choudery, both 27, met in New York the year before as summer interns at Facebook, now known as Meta. After finishing college, each moved to Manhattan to join the company full time in the global sales department. They then became friends.

They worked on the same floor, and Mr. Choudery regularly made excuses to pass by Ms. Khan’s desk. Her office mates noticed. “When I wasn’t around, they would egg Hamza on, and when he wasn’t around, they would tell me, ‘Oh my God, he really likes you, has anything happened yet?’,” Ms. Khan said.

Their casual, after-work dinner lasted for several hours, with the two going out for dessert afterward, then chatting on the fire escape of Mr. Choudery’s East Village apartment. “That’s the anniversary that we celebrate, because that is when things got serious for us,” Mr. Choudery said.

Over the next few months their relationship slowly evolved. “I embarrassingly said, ‘I wonder what your parents will think of me,’” Mr. Choudery said, laughing. “I had a lot of faith in the relationship from the get-go.”


Ms. Khan, who is now a partner at the venture capital firm Phenomenal Ventures, was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. She has a bachelor’s degree in science, technology and society from Stanford and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Mr. Choudery, a founder of Autoblocks, an artificial intelligence start-up company, was born in Bangial, a village in Pakistan about three hours outside Lahore. His family moved to the United States when he was 3, and he grew up on a farm in Pocomoke City, Md. He has a bachelor’s degree in finance and information systems from University of Maryland and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

“There was a very easy bond between us because there were a lot of shared values and shared experiences,” Ms. Khan said. “We’re both a little bit Pakistani, a little bit American.”

Both also like cricket. “He knows all the players’ names, we can reference the same Pakistan cricket matches that happened 15 years ago,” Ms. Khan said. Mr. Choudery even joined the same cricket league as Ms. Khan’s older brother in New York, endearing him more to her family.

Riaz Haq said...

Robert F. Kennedy’s Granddaughter Sarah and Her Husband Celebrate His Pakistani Heritage with Wedding Mehndi

https://people.com/jfk-granddaughter-sarah-kennedy-and-husband-host-traditional-wedding-mehndi-7734882

When planning their wedding weekend, it was important for the couple to combine Kennedy’s Catholic family traditions with Sulahry’s Muslim and Pakistani family traditions.

“We look forward to celebrating with close family and friends and sharing our relationships and cultures," Sarah said. "Our wedding is unique because we combine Sarah’s Irish catholic roots with Jam’s Muslim Pakistani roots to celebrate our love joyfully. We look forward to having so many of our friends and family experiencing our take on the traditional Mehndi event on Friday night."

That fusion of cultures even seeped into the ceremony’s color palette, with the bride and groom choosing pinks and oranges “inspired by the beautiful surroundings of the Cape Cod coast, Sulahry’s Pakistani culture, [our] love for the water, and the natural gardens and landscape of the Kennedy Compound.”

A true melding of tradition, the wedding was a “joyous celebration of love and unity.”
--------------

The Mehndi took place at JFK and Jackie's summer White House, where guests embraced traditional Pakistani culture

Congratulations are in order for Sarah Kennedy, granddaughter of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy, and her husband, Jam Sulahry!

Ahead of their Aug. 19 wedding, the couple paid homage to Sulahry’s Pakistani heritage with a traditional Mehndi on Friday evening.

Held in Hyannis Port, Mass., at what was known as "the summer White House" of former President John F. Kennedy (Robert's brother) and First Lady Jackie, the ceremony featured “choreographed Bollywood-style dances, henna tattoos, Pakistani desserts, and traditional Pakistani and Indian music.”


“Guests are encouraged to wear vibrant colors and patterns in traditional Pakistani clothing to embrace the experience fully,” Sarah told PEOPLE exclusively.

On Saturday, the pair said "I do" on the historic Kennedy Compound with the ceremony and cocktail hour held at the RFK House, named after Sarah's grandfather.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

The reception was then hosted at the JFK House, named after the bride's great uncle, John F. Kennedy. The wedding was planned and designed by Kate Murtaugh Events & Design, with florals overseen by Beach Plum Floral Design.

“We chose to host our wedding weekend events at the Kennedy Compound and surrounding family homes because of how special it is to us as a backdrop to our lives,” Sarah, the daughter of Chris Kennedy, told PEOPLE. “It is where we have celebrated the great times and come together in heartbreaking times. It truly feels like coming home.”

While their large celebration just happened this weekend, the pair was actually legally wed on June 17, 2022, in a small Pakistani ceremony called a Nikah. That date is the 72nd anniversary of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy’s wedding date.

Riaz Haq said...

72,000 non immigrant visas issued in year 2022 to Pakistanis for USA.

In 2019 the number was 59,000

2020 and 2021 Covid time was 34 and 20k

So 2020 2021 2022 average is still around 40k which is lower than 2019 avg

I can sympathize with ppl who see lots of ppl leaving and feeling every one is leaving as number of ppl leaving is 3 times more than 2021 and twice as much as 2020 .

However fact is ppl are going as they have always done. In fact we haven't returned to pre Covid levels of Emigration and tourism outside Pakistan

Even in 1997 close to 50,000 ppl were issued non immigrant visa by US from Pakistan!

https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1701139777494651226?s=20


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Who’s Getting U.S. Immigrant Visas?
Last year, more than 285,000 U.S. immigrant visas were issued. Here’s a look how that is distributed across every country worldwide:

Search:
Rank Country Immigrant Visas Issued (2021)
#1 🇲🇽 Mexico 40,597
#2 🇨🇳 China 18,501
#3 🇩🇴 Dominican Republic 17,941
#4 🇵🇭 Philippines 15,862
#5 🇦🇫 Afghanistan 10,784
#6 🇻🇳 Vietnam 10,458
#7 🇮🇳 India 9,275
#8 🇸🇻 El Salvador 7,813
#9 🇵🇰 Pakistan 7,213
#10 🇧🇩 Bangladesh 5,503
Total 285,069

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-receiving-most-us-immigration-visas/

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H1 B visa from Pak to US

What is the H-1B Visa Category? The H-1B is a temporary (nonimmigrant) visa category that allows employers to petition for highly educated foreign professionals to work in “specialty occupations” that require at least a bachelor's degree or the equivalent.

In year 2022 , 1100 from Pakistan

166,000 from India !

If the exodus is 1100 ppl then we have nothing to fear

If 1100 is exodus than what is 166k

Why the one with 166k is rising India and one with 1100 failing Pakistan

https://x.com/bilalgilani/status/1701143387145945294?s=20

Riaz Haq said...

Latest US Census Data Released in 2023

https://data.census.gov/table/ACSSPP1Y2022.S0201?q=S0201:+Selected+Population+Profile+in+the+United+States&t=-02:-04:070:Ancestry:Income+and+Poverty

Pakistani-Americans Median Household Earning: $106,281, Mean Earnings: $149,178

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White Americans: Median household Income $78,636 Mean Earnings $112,415

African Americans : $52,238 $76,888

American Indian Alaska Native $61,778 $85,838

Asian Indian $152,341 $197,732

Bangladeshi $80,288 $116,500

Chinese $101,738 $160,049

Taiwanese $122,952 $180,906

Filipino $109,090 $122,635

Pakistanis $106,286 $149,178

Nepal $92,262 $120,146

Asians $104,646 $149,363