COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Immigration Center To Start At a California University

A P Kamath in San Diego

For a university situated in a city close to the Mexican border, studying immigration from that country was natural. The University of California in San Diego has a Center for US-Mexican Studies but recently the school decided to have a global perspective.

It announced last week the formation of a interdisciplinary and campus-wide research center to study global immigration patterns, and how they have affected America.

Unlike other major American universities, the program at UCSD will not have a US-centered perspective, school officials said last week.

Like New York State on the East Coast, California has been a magnet for immigrants. They came not only from central and south America but also from China and Japan -- and India.

There are thousands of Sikh families across California -- around such cities as San Francisco and San Diego -- whose families have had American roots for nearly a hundred years. Many of the earlier immigrants among the Sikhs married American and Mexican women when laws were changed forbidding them and similarly placed aliens from owning the lands. The Mexican-Sikh phenomenon is one of the areas the new center could focus on.

Several Sikh businessmen in the area have been exploring the possibility of endowing a chair to study the impact of Sikh immigration in California. Many of the earlier Sikhs in California came down from the northern states such as Washington and Oregon -- and British Columbia in Canada -- where they faced open racial hostility.

Called the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies, and the first of its kind on the West Coast, it will study not only the historical immigration patterns but also the current situation. The multimillion dollar CCIS programs will be fully integrated into the graduate and non-graduate programs in the next twelve months. Possibility of introducing courses in immigrant literature are being weighed now.

Wayne Cornelius, an expert on immigration patterns and also a political scientist, first suggested the idea for the center over a year and half ago to his colleagues in such departments as history, economics, political science, literature and anthropology. The Center will not just be a research center for faulty students, he said. Students will take part in a number of fieldwork projects.

Students and professors at UCSD will also work in conjunction with schools in Mexico, and on the East Coast, including Princeton University.

Next story: Asha Blake To Co-Host A Major New Show

Tell us what you think of this report