All America is hallowed ground for freedom

Bridget Kustin

Published in the Washington Post on 30 August 2010.

This piece explores the state of tolerance in the United States in the context of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’.

Remittance: Behind shiny statistics

Naeem Mohaiemen and Jyoti Rahman

Published in the Daily Star on 27 December 2009.

Analysts celebrate remittance growth curves in seminars, but we need to unpack these shiny numbers. The Ministry of Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment publishes the total number of migrant workers by year, but has no timely statistics on returns which, by evidence of our airports, is large. So we have no calculation of how many are coming back due to deportation or job loss.

The increasing relevance of expatriate lobbying

Mashuqur Rahman and Asif Yousuf

Published in the Daily Star (August 16, 2007)

The right to petition your own government is a fundamental principle in a democratic society. Recently, however, there have been a number of high profile cases of expatriate Bangladeshis petitioning foreign governments to influence government policy within Bangladesh.

The campaign against the detention of MK Alamgir, the campaign against the deportation from the United States of AKM Mohiuddin Ahmed and a letter from a US Congressman to the ACC in support of a business tycoon are three examples of expatriate lobbying efforts that have appeared on the media’s radar.