The San Jose Mercury News notes that the fastest growing group of illegal immigrants comes not from a Spanish-speaking country but rather from India. A recent report [pdf] from the Department of Homeland Security shows that their numbers jumped 125% since 2000, up to 270,000 (though the Merc cites Pew Hispanic Center's Jeffrey S. Passel putting the number closer to 400,000). By comparison the numbers from Mexico, the country from which most illegal immigrants originate, rose 37% to 6.6 million.

The Indian number may be small and out of the public eye (at least until, say, a particularly heart-wrenching deportation story, or until tech workers start standing around office parks hawking consulting services), but these growth trends are likely to continue as long as there's no immigration reform. Without easier H1-B visa and green card access, more Indians will let their visas lapse and become illegal immigrants. And bigger border walls will keep more Mexicans home.

Go ahead and write angry letters about how much you can't stand Jonah Goldberg or his book Liberal Fascism. From the New York Times bestseller list to the always hotly contested Opinion L.A. Top 10, America has spoken. Goldberg's tale of his Daily Show appearance is number one with a bullet, and the columnist makes it into the list a second time with his column on new nanny state outrages. Columnist Rosa Brooks places with her Billary takedown, and the editorial board finishes with an ominous view of the Tata Nano. Brian Doherty scores one for libertarianism and Jonah Lehrer apparently draws in both the artistic and the scientific factions of the brain debate. Michael Shermer does an encore after last week's impressive performance. Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman mark an important abortion anniversary, and all the rest is about some election that is rumored to be happening...

1. What The Daily Show cut out, by Jonah Goldberg
2. A Clinton twofer's high price, by Rosa Brooks
3. Super delegates may sink the Democrats, by Joshua Spivak
4. 'The better angels' side with Obama, by Joseph Ellis
5. Why people believe weird things about money, by Michael Shermer
6. Abortion's battle of messages, by Frances Kissling and Kate Michelman
7. Tiny Tata Nano, big threat, by the editorial board
8. Taking liberties, by Jonah Goldberg
9. Misreading the mind, Jonah Lehrer   
10. Real libertarianism, by Brian Doherty 

No one seems to be protesting the U.S. Navy’s decision to spend $600,000 to remodel a configuration of barracks outside San Diego  that looks — from the air and on Google Earth — like a swastika. Maybe that’s because the story hasn’t reached Tajikistan, which dusted off the ancient symbol last year as part of the Year of Aryan Civilization.

Aryan, as in Indo-European (the proto-language spoken in Europe and Western Asia from which English is distantly derived), not Aryan as in Hitler’s imaginary Master Race. Hitler, believing that the original Aryans were blond, blue-eyed types, was responsible for the negative connotations that still bedevil the term “Aryan.”  (That didn't stop the Shah of Iran from describing himself as "Light of the Aryans.")

It may be possible to rehabilitate “Aryan” (at least in linguistics). But rebranding the swastika is a Mission: Impossible, except maybe in Dushanbe.  Never mind that the symbol's origins are innocuous. You don’t have to be a  semiotician to see how the symbol has merged with what it symbolized at a particular point in history. It's impossible to look at a swastika and not be repelled.

Yet pre-Hitler the swastika was not simply a cultural symbol; it was the trademark of a popular brand of beer. In the early 1970s, some college friends and I toured the Carlsberg brewery in Copenhagen. At the gateway to the brewery stood two carved elephants with saddle blankets bearing swastikas. Our elderly guide complained about how the Nazis “took this beautiful symbol and ruined it.” Hardly the worst of their sins.

Our guide’s spirit lives on in quixotic efforts by some Hindus to strip the swastika of its relatively recent Nazi associations. But, as Radio Free Europe noted in what may be understatement of the millenium: “It is hard to rid the swastika of its negative associations.”

Like birthdays for those of a certain age, Pakistan’s 60th anniversary has provided an opportunity for gloomy reflection. In the midst of political strife, religious violence and calls for Gen. Pervez Musharraf to relinquish his dual role as president and head of the army, this birthday has caused some Pakistanis to wonder: Where did it all go wrong?

Not least of those was Musharraf himself, who in a recent speech blamed the past lack of leadership for Pakistan’s economic and political problems.

Interesting words from a leader in one of the most embattled periods of his tenure.

Musharraf's statement, no matter how ironic, does raise a good point. The exception to the rule remains Pakistan's first leader, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.

A revered figure in Pakistani history, Jinnah was not a radical or even a practicing Muslim. He never saw the new nation as an Islamic state, let alone a hotbed for radicalism. Just take a look at his presidential address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on Aug. 11, 1947.

Jinnah dreamed of a secular state for all faiths, not just Muslims:

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

He envisioned India and Pakistan as allies:

If you will work in co-operation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed.

He imagined a pluralistic, yet integrated society:

We should begin to work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and the Muslim community — because even as regards Muslims you have Pathans, Punjabis, Shias, Sunnis and so on, and among the Hindus you have Brahmins, Vashnavas, Khatris, also Bengalis, Madrasis and so on — will vanish.

Pakistan's founder was a powerful and charismatic leader. But Jinnah's dreams, linked as they were to him, couldn’t survive his passing just one year later.

And it shows. This year’s anniversary has been marked by the rise of radicalism, in the form of the bloody struggle for the Red Mosque. That’s not to mention Pakistan’s incessantly antagonistic relationship with India and the increased isolation of populations such as those in Waziristan — populations that provide fodder for extremism and violence near the border with Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, Jinnah’s death, rather than Pakistan’s birth, better explains the nation’s history and its troubles.

Something that hasn't been mentioned in the pie fight over Barack Obama's infamous (D-Punjab) memo: The mainly agricultural Punjab region does not appear to be a major factor in the concerns over outsourcing to which Obama and Clinton have both, at various times, payed demagogic lip service. If we're talking economics it's all about Karnataka, or maybe Andhra Pradesh. Can we just state the obvious? Neither Clinton nor Obama has a clue about Punjab, and the reason Clinton made her original getting-elected-in-Punjab wisecrack and Obama used it to smear her is that they're both thinking of Daddy Warbucks' lethal manservant.

That's just the tip of what the two candidates don't know. Kerry Howley puts some perspective on the matter by noting that Obama should be apologizing not only for putting down Indian Americans but for pandering to anti-trade buffoons:

It would be a mistake to confuse the posturing of presidential politics with actual policy. Obama’s views on trade remain buried in the equivocating palaver he advances as policy positions. Clinton voted against CAFTA and expressed opposition to the U.S.-South Korea free trade agreement. She has attacked the Bush administration for saying that outsourcing makes the economy stronger. If Clinton's rhetoric is less hateful, her policies may not be much different.

Still, the willingness of campaigns to stoke fear of peaceful exchange with outsiders is disconcerting. During the 2004 Democratic National Convention—Obama’s coming out party—the Illinois state senator spoke out against “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers.” It’s nice, I guess, that Obama wants to bring people together. Now perhaps his research team can find a social glue superior to a shared xenophobia.

Related: Rock to the mellow tones of Panjabi Hit Squad.

A few years back, I spent several months talking to mid-level tech workers about what was then a new trend: their jobs getting outsourced to India. Most of the people I interviewed were middle-aged white guys with big suburban houses, gas-guzzling SUVs, and families to feed. Most had never finished their college degrees. Out of work for months on end, they spent a lot of time driving their kids to school, surfing the web, watching TV, seeking like-minded unions and politicians, and hanging out in Starbucks complaining to journo-types like me. Usually, they insisted on paying for my four dollar latte. They were nice, and rather sad. I felt bad for them.

I have no idea how many of them ever found jobs.  But a recent feature in West Magazine about offshore tutors for high school kids offers a glimmer of hope—for the next generation, at least.

So much of the outsourcing story in America has been about work and wages lost. But low-cost tutoring from Indian companies like Growing Stars and TutorVista offers middle-class and struggling families in the United States access to one-on-one instruction—at a relatively inexpensive $20 an hour—that used to be available only to the rich. This kind of outsourcing could help my interview subjects’ kids excel in school, earn diplomas, and stay more competitive in the workforce.

As Don Knezek, chief executive of the Washington D.C.- and Eugene, Ore.-based International Society for Technology in Education told West writer Scott Kraft,

For years, tutoring was an elitist activity for the elite. Now, the offshore operations are making it available to the middle class. It really fills a need in the nation right now.

Wonder if any of the guys I interviewed have hired Indian tutors for their kids?

If you missed or TiVo'd and haven't yet watched last night's "American Idol" (or if you tried to ignore it only to be forced to read about it on a blog where you thought it was safe), Sanjaya Malakar finally got the boot. Did his weeks-old haircut sap him of his strength? Did his grace under fire finally pale in comparison to true talent? Don't you just wish I would shut up about him already so he can resume his suburban teenagehood in a shroud of privacy, or at least on a stage no greater than that of a regional dinner theater? Allow me one final blog post.

For all his "pitchy" singing and ritualistic hair care, Sanjaya does have a legitimate claim to fame. He's the first Indian American who not only broke into pop culture, but who also managed to escape ethnic categorization. There haven't been too many Indians in the public eye at all; those who do fall under its gaze are often the "first Indian (fill in the blank)" or outright if lovable stereotypes.

Two suitcase bombs on the Friendship Express train killed over 60 people and injured dozens late Sunday night in Dewana, India. India and Pakistan responded in typical fashion. High-level officials expressed outrage that terrorists would try to disrupt the peace process and promised to keep it on track. Lower-level officials and the usually anonymous "security officers" and "intelligence analysts" pointed fingers across the border and deflected blame.

Still, it's better than canceling negotiations, cutting ties, and putting troops on the border, which were some of the old methods the countries chose to respond to terrorist attacks. A particularly alarming attack on the Indian Parliament in December 2001 spurred all of these reactions, including a two-year cancellation of the decades-old Friendship Express. (It fared better than another train between the two countres, the Thar Express, which was shut down for forty years following a war.) The train service connects major Indian and Pakistani cities and is one of a few (often symbolic) confidence building measures that the countries have maintained.

The train bombing will test -- and hopefully cement -- several of the new CBMs the countries are trying to put into place, including a joint counter-terrorism task force. It's important considering that one of the best links that the countries could create is also one of the most problematic in the eyes of the U.S: a gas pipeline going from Iran through Pakistan and into India. The pipeline has been in talks for years but the countries hope they can sign an initial agreement in June.