Story Archives of 'Immigration'

It’s hard to imagine finishing a meal of beef with broccoli or crab rangoon without a fortune cookie. It’s like the period at the end of a delicious sentence.

But would you believe, the fortune cookie actually orginated in Japan? They were folded by hand in San Francisco factories and later exported to China, along with the Fold-Pak take-out container, to Chinese customers who’d seen such oddities on American TV shows like Seinfeld.

That’s one of the twisted mysteries of Chinese-American food exchange that’s cracked open by New York Times metro reporter Jennifer 8. Lee. Her new book, "The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food" began in 2005, when an improbable number of people won Powerball after playing the lucky number from Chinese fortune cookie fortunes.

Lee, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrant parents, traced the path of those cookies and uncovered a fascinating history of food and family, and she joined Virginia on Word of Mouth to talk about it.

(Photo by Jessica Wilson)

President Bush’s sweeping immigration reform measure is being hit from all sides – conservatives, liberals, businesses, activists...even some illegal immigrants themselves. We’ll talk about this bill...and why it’s been so hard to reach consensus.

Guests

• Matthew Lee, Managing Attorney at Tocci, Goss & Lee, specializing in immigration and employment law. Lee was formerly an Assistant District Counsel for the United States Department of Justice, Immigration and Naturalization Service and a military attorney in the United States Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps.
• Eva Castillo, New Hampshire Immigrant Rights Task Force and Organizer for the New Hampshire Immigration Project.
• Andrew Samwick

, Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College and Director of the The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center at Dartmouth College.

Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo spoke in Somersworth on the first stop of his four-day visit to New Hampshire. He spoke to a meeting of Strafford County Republicans and took questions from the audience.

In 2004, about 40 students from Africa showed up at the doors of the school.

Most were Somali Bantu - and had just arrived in the United States after spending years living in refugee camps in Kenya.

Unlike other immigrants or refugees whose main challenge might be that they don’t speak English, the Somali students didn’t know how to read or write in any language.

This fall, they face a critical test of how much they've learned since they arrived. As we hear from Amy Quinton, for the first time, these African students must attend mainstream academic classes.

The roots of the American Revolution lie in part around the waterfront areas of Boston where the efforts of many maritime workers helped spark the first moments of independence. Russell Bourne, the author of Cradle of Violence asserts that without the maritime mobs' violent demonstrations against authority, politicians of the day would not have been gotten behind the American War of Independence.

And we talk about American independence with inventor and businessman Sam Asano who's giving the keynote address at the Naturalization ceremony at Strawberry Banke on July 4th in Portsmouth. More than 200 people will be naturalized; Asano went through the naturalization process himself in 1967 and credits the freedoms of the United States with his success.