OPPORTUNITY CAFE

Throughout the world people hope to win the “Green Card Lottery.”  Officially known as the “Diversity Visa Lottery Program,” the lottery offers a chance for a new life in the United States.
The lottery randomly selects 50,000 potential immigrants who come from countries that have low rates of immigration to the United States, and offers them a chance to apply for a Green Card which will allow them permanent residence in the USA, along with their spouse and unmarried children under the age of 21 .  The visas are not available …

We all want opportunity.  In years past, opportunity was hard to come by.  Today, with the internet, opportunity is there for us.  To some degree, it may even assail us, with the seemingly endless promises of overnight wealth to be attained.
In his great work MacBeth, Shakespeare wrote: “Evil lures with trifles of truth.”  And so it does.   When someone buries a wee bit of truth within a proposition that may seem preposterous, but is yet something we would hope for, the tendency is to fixate on the bit of truth …

How much money can you make on the Internet? Who can access internet opportunity? What are the benefits? How important is a solid command of English to internet success?

We seek prosperity, better lives for ourselves and for our children.  We access opportunity and measure success by the degree of escalation we have achieved from the point at which we started.   Yet in pursuit of  success,  too many find an endless seeking that is never satisfied.
Is it a disease of America or a disease of Man- this desire for more?  Or is the quest for “more” chiseled into the nature of our existence,  embedded in our DNA- the road map of life?  Ironically, true success and the quenching …

It is a new world.  Countries and people are interconnected in ways our parents could not have imagined.  We are interdependent. And out of the web of technology that has connected us has come new possibilities for each and every individual on the planet.  We each have the power to be super-humans- super self-actualized- achieving a worldwide impact by our own actions that never before could have been possible. With the internet, we each are free to touch millions of other individuals.  We can express our views, and be heard. …

News reports today stated that a law effected in Texas in 2008, eliminating the right of seasonal workers to obtain drivers’ licenses, has been overturned by a judge.   Hallelujah for the democratic process, which most often results in justice.
News reports today also presented an update to the recent serving of justice in the case of an immigrant college student from Florida, originally from Egypt, who was accused of engaging in terrorism, after what may or may not have been pipe bombs were found in the trunk of a car …

In third world countries, it is the natural response of international humanitarian workers to want to increase the pay of impoverished local workers as much as possible. Compassion kicks into action when confronted by the harsh realities of families of ten subsisting on the equivalent of two U.S. dollars a day.  The individual in a position able to provide a pay raise feels compelled to do so.  Aid workers have learned the hard way, though, of the unintended consequences of such actions.
When groups of local persons working for international …

Two parents make the hard decision to leave their own country for a land of opportunity for their children. The warmth and security of their tribe and customs behind them, the look ahead to the potential for prosperity in a place of strange and fast activity.  As the years pass, they make their way:  educating their children in a language that is not their own, endeavoring to instill the values of their home culture and religion in a place where their children encounter daily influences contrary to their native expectations.  …

So many things in life are insidious. They creep up, unnoticed.  In the beginning: normalcy.  A range of “acceptable” that is generally agreed by the majority of a society or culture.   Then, as the boundaries of normalcy are pushed, ever so slowly, the centering point for what is “normal” shifts, with motion barely perceptible, till one day the recollection of “what used to be” creates a sense of aghast over the extremity of the change.  Like shifts in acceptable hemlines over time (one day the knees must not show and …

It is the in-between places that get us.  American, Persian, Chinese, French, Bolivian- its all the same:  The true fight we face from the moment we are born is the fight to reach the finish line with our values and integrity intact.
It is the in-between places that get us.  When one chapter of our life closes but the next chapter has not yet opened.  When the home or job or family we knew is no longer the same.  When the security of sameness that we cling to for inner strength …