The January 9 referendum in which the people of southern Sudan will vote on whether to make their region an independent nation will be a “historic occasion,” most importantly for the people of Sudan, but for all Africans as well. If the election is transparent, fair and successful, it will reflect the will of the people no matter which path they choose, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson told reporters.

Briefing the press at the State Department January 5, Carson said the occasion will be historic because “for the first time in their lives” the people of southern Sudan will “make a decision on whether they will secede from Sudan and become an independent state or become a part of a united Sudan.”

Carson termed the referendum vote “the beginning of the end of a culmination of five-and-a-half-years of a Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was negotiated and signed in Naivasha, Kenya, in January 2005. Although the effort was led by Intergovernmental Authority on Development states under the leadership of Kenya,” Carson told reporters, “the United States, Great Britain and Norway were participants and partners in the effort leading to where we are today.”

“We believe that this event beginning on January 9 will in fact go off successfully, that the organization and the diplomatic efforts that have been put into this will lead to a successful referendum. We think that it will reflect the will of the people and that it will occur on time, peacefully and in a well organized manner,” Carson said.

Carson said both the United States and the international community were “extraordinarily pleased” by the January 4 visit to the southern Sudan city of Juba by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who stated publicly that the North is prepared to accept the outcome of the referendum and will seek to have a peaceful and beneficial relationship with the people of the South regardless of how they vote.

“We hope the North and the [ruling] National Congress Party will live up to those very promising statements that have been made by the leadership of the North, and that we are about to see the end of what has been a really enormously successful diplomatic effort to end what has been 20 years of violence and conflict between the North and the South.”

Carson told reporters the United States government has worked “extraordinarily hard and tirelessly to get us where we are today” and “invested a great deal of diplomacy to ensure that the outcome of this referendum is peaceful and successful. We have engaged both North and South Sudanese leaders. We have engaged the European community and the international community and have worked hard at the Security Council to make this happen.”

Certainly over the past nine months, he said, the United States has “substantially augmented” its presence and diplomatic activities in southern Sudan and quadrupled the staff of American diplomats in Juba and across the South to help the referendum succeed.

Carson said it is the desire of the United States to see the referendum move forward. If the people of southern Sudan vote for independence, he said, “we will also as a country help that new nation to succeed, to get on its feet and to move forward successfully, economically and politically. But it is an historic decision for the people of south Sudan. It is their decision to make.”

Carson was joined at the briefing by Tim Shortley, the senior representative for Sudan at the U.S. State Department, who serves as the deputy to U.S. Special Envoy for Sudan Scott Gration, and by Larry Garber, the deputy assistant administrator for Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Shortley told reporters the current environment in Sudan is “very conducive to a positive outcome of the referendum.” He credited the creation of that environment, in part, to President al-Bashir’s January 4 visit to southern Sudan and the discussions he had with Sudan First Vice President Salva Kiir and others on the outcome of the peoples’ vote. Shortley reiterated Carson’s point that it has been an “extraordinary effort” to get to the point where both parties have agreed to hold the referendum and respect the outcome of the vote.

Following the weeklong referendum vote, which concludes January 15, Shortley said Carson will lead a U.S. delegation to the African Union summit where the outcome of the referendum will be discussed.

The U.S. team on the ground during the referendum vote, Shortley said, will include Special Envoy Gration; U.S. Senator John Kerry; Ambassador Dane Smith, the newly appointed senior adviser on Darfur; and Ambassador Princeton Lyman, who is the lead negotiator for North-South issues, “so we are very well positioned to monitor the vote and to see a successful outcome.”

Larry Garber of USAID told reporters that the smooth logistical preparations for the referendum stand as a significant achievement for both the Sudanese and for U.S. development and diplomatic efforts. Garber stressed that the referendum process is a Sudanese process and is managed by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) based in Khartoum, which has received substantial assistance from the United States and the international donor community.

Garber said the registration process began in mid-November 2010, with more than 3.7 million Sudanese registering in south Sudan, about 150,000 eligible voters registered in north Sudan and about 60,000 eligible Sudanese registered to vote from overseas. “The country is huge; the logistics are difficult,” he said.

The balloting will begin January 9 and run through January 15, at which time ballots will be counted at the various regional sites. The SSRC has issued a timeline, Garber said, indicating the official results will be reported in mid-February but speculating that unofficial results might be available “quite a bit sooner.”

The vote will be “yes” or “no,” will be a seven-day process, and must clear a threshold that 60 percent of registered voters cast their vote for the referendum to be deemed valid, he said.

A group of state legislators in at least 15 states wants to deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.

Their strategy is to pass state legislation that they know will be challenged in federal court, in the hopes that eventually the U.S. Supreme Court – which is considered to be the most conservative court in decades – will be the final arbiter on the issue.

But legal scholars believe the chances that the issue will be taken up by the Supreme Court are slim.

James C. Ho, former Solicitor General of Texas and expert constitutional attorney, predicts that the case will never make it to the high court. “I think the lower courts will strike it down and the U.S. Supreme Court will refuse to hear the case because it has already decided it,” said Ho, who is now a partner with the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Dallas.

The Constitutional Question

At the heart of the debate on birthright citizenship is a dispute over the interpretation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The amendment, ratified in 1868, was intended to ensure that children of freed slaves were granted U.S. citizenship.

The question is whether the amendment’s authors intended to include the children of undocumented immigrants. The debate focuses on the interpretation of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

Opponents of birthright citizenship argue that undocumented immigrants are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Ho disagrees, saying the U.S. Supreme Court settled that matter in 1898. A Supreme Court decision that year, in the case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, confirmed that a child born in the United States to alien parents, is entitled to birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment.

A more recent Supreme Court decision in 1982, Plyler v. Doe, clearly states that undocumented immigrants are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, according to Ho’s analysis.

Other legal scholars, like Peter H. Schuck, a professor of law at Yale, say there is no Supreme Court precedent that deals explicitly with the children of undocumented immigrants.

The 1898 decision, Schuck says, “didn’t have in mind undocumented alien children because there were no categorical restrictions on immigration at that time.”

Schuck believes that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the 14th Amendment excludes undocumented immigrants because they are in U.S. territory without the consent of the U.S. government.

Schuck, however, doesn’t believe the case will reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

The states’ approach to changing birthright citizenship is considered costly and impractical by constitutional and immigration attorneys.

“I don’t think any state law that either granted or denied federal, national citizenship would be constitutional. No state law could do that,” according to Schuck’s analysis.

Schuck doesn’t support completely repealing birthright citizenship, but believes the country should find a compromise so the future children of undocumented immigrants can gain citizenship after proving ties to the country.

Failing a decision by the Supreme Court, there are two schools of thought on how birthright citizenship could be changed: Schuck believes believe Congress could simply pass a bill to change the law; Ho thinks only an amendment to the Constitution can change the law.

“In my opinion Congress can not pass this kind of law,” said Ho. “If Congress passed it, it would be unconstitutional.”

If a state passed a law like this, he added, it would be unconstitutional for an additional reason: “It would be unconstitutional because it violates the 14th Amendment, and for a second reason: states have no business determining who is a U.S. citizen and who is not. We can’t have 15 different laws determining who is a U.S. citizen and who is not.”

The Fight Continues

Congress could hold hearings on the birthright citizenship issue as early as next year. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, the incoming chairman of the subcommittee that oversees immigration, is expected to introduce a bill that would deny birthright citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants.

Another movement at the state level has picked up momentum.

Kansas lawyer Kris Kobach, who helped Republican Sen. Russell Pearce craft the immigration law SB 1070 in Arizona, is now working with Pearce to draft a bill that all the states could propose.

Kobach didn’t return calls for an interview.

But there’s precedent in Arizona for a state bill to change the way the state issues birth certificates to the children born to an undocumented immigrant parent. A 2008 bill sponsored by Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, and supported by then-representative Pearce, would have included a clause in the child’s birth certificate stating that the child was born to undocumented parents and wasn’t eligible for benefits that require U.S. citizenship. The legislation was intended to go to the voters and didn’t get a hearing.

Opponents of birthright citizenship argue that it has served as a way for undocumented immigrants to have “anchor babies” that allow them to eventually become citizens and take advantage of social and healthcare benefits.

But proponents argue that, constitutional questions aside, repealing birthright citizenship is simply bad policy and would only increase the number of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“Those children can’t petition for their parents to become U.S. citizens until they are 21 years old and it most cases, the parents would be barred from getting a visa to the United States for 10 years,” said Michelle Waslin, senior policy analyst at the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Policy Center in Washington, D.C. “So that’s a 31-year plan. It doesn’t seem like it’s a very good plan to legalize your status here in the U.S. It doesn’t protect them from deportation.”

Waslin argues that such a change in the law will affect all citizens, creating a complicated bureaucracy.

“My birth certificate will no longer be proof of my U.S. citizenship, so how would anybody prove their citizenship?” she asked.

While it may take years for a case on birthright citizenship to reach the Supreme Court, the higher appellate court has undertaken a review of state immigration policies such as Arizona’s employer sanctions law. Some expect the current challenge on Arizona’s SB 1070 to reach the high court.

“Only one state in the country has enacted SB 1070 and that’s Arizona,” said Vik Malhotra, advocacy and policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“We really think that once the dust settles, the focus is going to be on states trying to get their financial houses in order, and there won’t be a lot of room for these types of laws, that really cost the states money.”

With the referendum on independence for Southern Sudan just weeks away, the United Nations refugee agency reported today that thousands of southerners living in the north are heading back by road, rail, barge and plane in both organized and spontaneous returns.

Nearly 55,000 southern Sudanese have returned in the past few weeks to the southern states, mainly to Unity State, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which added that Upper Nile, Northern Bahr el Ghazal, Jonglei and Warrap states have also received large numbers of returnees.

“In the sprawling camps for displaced people around [the Sudanese capital] Khartoum, thousands of southerners are packing their belongings and waiting to leave,” UNHCR spokesperson Adrian Edwards told reporters in Geneva.

The vote that is due to take place on 9 January is in accordance with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the Sudanese Government and the southern rebel group, the SPLA, ending two decades of war between the north and the south.

Since the signing of the Agreement, two million displaced people have returned to their communities in southern Sudan and the so-called ‘Three Areas’ of Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan. Another 330,000 refugees returned from exile, the majority of them with the help of UNHCR.

Mr. Edwards noted that the recent arrivals are straining a “fragile” humanitarian environment in Southern Sudan, which is already dealing with more than 215,000 internally displaced people uprooted by ethnic clashes, rebel attacks or other forms of insecurity since January.

It’s easy to not be racist at work but somehow Victoria’s Secret flunked this task in a fashion show broadcast in November on CBS (and rebroadcast Dec. 8 on The CW). The show — in which half a dozen black models were stuffed into a segment titled “Wild Thing,” in which they wore tribal body paint and African wraps.

Everyone is familiar with fashion’s race problem. For years, the business declined to use non-white models in its ads and runway shows. If it did so, those models were often used to promote animal prints and African-themed garb. The rise of black supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Tyra Banks in the 1980s was supposed to have put an end to the unbearable whiteness of fashion. The days in which black models were only allowed to wear chunky wooden jewelry, turbans and leopard skin should have been relegated to the 1970s.

If only that were the case. The Victoria’s Secret faux pas isn’t isolated. In the last three years:

Full Story @ BNET.

Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has been named one of the “100 Top Global Thinkers of 2010” by Washington, DC-based Foreign Policy (FP) magazine. President Sirleaf is the only African head of state on the coveted list of who’s who in international politics and governance. In an introductory letter, Susan Glasser, the magazine’s editor-in-chief, says the list “fully reflects the new world.”

“With the world’s most developed economies still in crisis, it’s no surprise that many thinkers on our list are political leaders, big-time technocrats, and intellectual combatants struggling to make sense of what’s happening,” says Glasser.

FP magazine says President Sirleaf belongs to the global “smart crowd” because, among other things, she has moved Liberia “away from a troubled past” to a prosperous future in just four years.

The premier international magazine developed rigorous selection criteria and assessed hundreds of personalities worldwide to come up with 100 of the finest brains and “unique portraits of 2010’s” world leaders who are truly making a difference. The list includes billionaire philanthropists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates both at number one, with U.S. President Barack Obama at three, France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde at 22, while President Sirleaf is at 85, among many other global luminaries.

In selecting Africa’s first female president, the magazine recognized Johnson-Sirleaf for uplifting the lives of ordinary Liberians and rescuing the country from the abyss since taking office in 2006, which has won her a boatload of accolades around the world.

“The years since have seen impressive success: Liberia boasts one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, former warlord-president Charles Taylor has been captured and put on trial for war crimes,” writes FP. “Sirleaf has appointed women to lead a quarter of her ministries, and the country is beginning to rebuild its battered institutions and infrastructure.“

Nevertheless, FP acknowledged that President Sirleaf’s, also known as the “Iron Lady”, toughest fight is against “endemic corruption,” which has dogged her administration and seen “some of her closest allies being forced to step down amid ongoing investigations.”

“Today we have a much empowered society in which accountability is demanded by the people,” the magazine quoted her as saying.

Despite these challenges, FP says President Sirleaf, who is running for a second six-year term, still enjoys tremendous respect and “the world’s trust” for her competent stewardship over Liberia and its resources.