Viewpoints Americas

Cristina Rodriguez, a law professor at New York University, analyzes state-level immigration legislation and cautions that lawmakers may reconsider reforms once costs of heightened enforcement set in. The challenge of integrating immigrants requires cooperation from all levels of the U.S. government. 

Like the United States, for at least the past decade, half of the graduating attorneys from law schools in Argentina and Peru have been women. However, female attorneys in these countries and across the hemisphere face challenges for career advancement.

Mauricio Ardila of George Washington University looks at the evolution of Facebook and how users organically mobilized millions of people to march against the FARC in Colombia.

Eliana Cardoso, a professor at Fundação Getúlio Vargas and former World Bank economist, explores the balance between Brazil's sustained economic growth and China's hunger for commodities. She says that worldwide economic turmoil may affect trade quotas and put Brazil's economic prospects at risk.

Since President Alvaro Uribe took office in Colombia five years ago, the country has made progress in boosting security. AS/COA President and CEO Susan Segal writes that the time has come for U.S. Congress to approve a bilateral trade agreement as the "single most effective tool to help bring economic and political security to Colombia."

Schering-Plough's Pierre Verstraete encourages Latin American legislators to implement strong intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals to boost funding for more drug research and development projects in the region.

The number of immigrants—mostly from Latin America—jumped in southern U.S. states over the past decade and a half. As studies on acculturation rates indicate, southerners' practice of demonizing immigrants because they "refuse to assimilate" can contribute to delays in assimilation, explains Elaine C. Lacy of the University of South Carolina at Aiken.