FROM ALBANIA TO UKRAINE

U.S. sailors join ranks of Yanks (The Associated Press, August 9th, 2003)

More than 200 sailors, including many who served the Navy in the war in Iraq, were sworn in yesterday as U.S. citizens.

The sailors applied for citizenship under an executive order President Bush issued last year. Under the order, immigrants serving in the military since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks are eligible for naturalization immediately.

"When I look at you, I see myself," said Eduardo Aguirre, director of the federal Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services, who recalled that he came to America at age 15, a Cuban refugee in search of a better life.

Aguirre administered an oath of allegiance to 222 sailors in a ceremony aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, docked in Norfolk.The new citizens hail from 51 countries, Albania to Ukraine.

The boats never go the other way.

EXCEPT FOR:
California Fleeing: The Golden State's recall vote won't be held until Oct. 7. But the state's citizens already began voting quite a while ago - with their feet. (INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY, August 11, 2003)

For Californians, the recent report from the Census Bureau was a shocker. From 1990 to 2000, the Census found, the number of Californians leaving the state was greater than the number of those arriving from other states - a first.

Even during the high-tech boom, people left. From 1995 to 2000, 1.4 million Americans moved to California. But 2.2 million left.

"Unprecedented" is how Hans Johnson, a demographer with the Public Policy Institute of California, described the trend to the Los Angeles Times. Sadly, we agree. And it's not a good thing.

California's image has long been built around it being a place of refuge for the creative, the restless, the underappreciated, the hard-working - a place where people, whatever their pasts, could remake themselves and create a better life.

During the 20th century, Americans from other states poured into California. And the once tiny, underpopulated farm state grew into a giant of 35 million people, with the fifth largest economy on Earth.

Now many of those who helped build the miracle are leaving.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 9, 2003 7:37 AM