South Asian Diaspora News

JAN 01 - Canada which is becoming a very hot destination for students from the sub-continent, specially India, has recently allowed off-campus work permits for international students, says a newspaper report.

Under a series of new federal-provincial agreements, various provinces now allow foreign students to find work outside campus.

Earlier, such students were restricted to working only on campus. Even better is a rule which allows them work in their field of study outside Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver, for up to two years after graduation.

The off campus work agreements, it is felt, will enable international students to acquire work experience in the labor market, strengthen their ties with local communities and improve their experience in Canada.

In order to be eligible for this program, students must be registered full-time. It is also open to those enrolled in pre-university college.

Recently, Canada announced it was planning to introduce a new "in-Canada" application that will allow temporary workers and students to apply for landed-immigrant status once they have worked here for a certain number of months, in much the same way that live-in caregivers can apply for permanent residency after two years working as nannies.

The Australian government, too, has recently overhauled skilled visa sub-classes to the advantage of the desis/deshis. With a growing demand for skilled migrants within the country and with competition from other countries in attracting them, the Australian government has made big changes to its contemporary and permanent visa categories. Earlier, there were many sub-classes to fill the demand and supply gap in certain target industries over the years.

Now, to increase the inflow of skilled migrants and to make the program more attractive to the Australian employers and overseas applicants, the government has come up with many changes in the sub-classes. The new law has made it easier for qualified applicants to obtain provisional visas which could lead to eligibility for permanent residence in Australia.

Pakistani-Norwegians want PIA price cut

A PIA Booking office JAN 01 - A Norway based Pakistani website has issued a statement to inform Pakistani-Norwegians about what it claims as the injustice done by PIA with regards to its pricing policy for roundtrips to Pakistan.

The "declaration" posted on www.desi.no says that the Pakistani carrier has been without competition for a long period of time offering direct roundtrip flights to Pakistan.

" We Norwegian-Pakistanis have long had to put up with extremely high ticket prices, in addition to misguided or wrong booking information from the representatives of PIA ", the news report adds.

"With ticket prices reaching NOK 9300 for a return trip to Lahore, one should ask whether the company intentionally exploits and capitalizes on (Pakistani) people's patriotism for choosing their home country�s PIA, instead of other options. When such options existed, such as the Swedish Swefly, the prices of PIA was reduced to NOK 6800. In other words PIA has the possibility to reduce the prices to a more reasonable level. It is therefore assumed that it is earning huge profits by offering over-priced tickets to Norwegian-Pakistanis traveling to Pakistan. One should ask why similar travel to Pakistan from Copenhagen is priced at NOK 7500, and from London at NOK 7600 (�650), when both distance and airport-taxes are somewhat equal."

According to the website, if the same roundtrip ticket is bought from Pakistan it can be purchased for half the price.

The information has been posted online to inform Pakistani expats and Pakistani-Norwegians about the alleged over-pricing of airline tickets by PIA, says the declaration.

"In addition, we also wish to inform our users about the alternative travel routes with airlines as the Turkish Airline and the Gulf Airline, where a family traveling together can save up to several thousand Norwegian Kroners. Our research indicates that a family of four can save up to NOK 5-8000. In addition they offer good service and are punctual, and no unnecessary rebooking is required on return from Pakistan."

The only way we Norwegian-Pakistanis can avoid such injustice is to make our choice with a greater degree of consumer consciousness, says the online statement.

Wanted: desi marrow donors

JAN 02 - The designer scarves Pia Dutta once wrapped around her head to hide the chemotherapy-induced baldness are pillows on the couch now.

The first-floor bathroom and other parts of the home she shares with her husband, Tim, are being renovated, signaling a return to a more normal life.

But a year removed from a lifesaving stem-cell blood transplant, the Duttas still confront sorrow. They are moving on, but they are taking their struggle with them.

"I feel stronger, more able to talk about it," said Pia, whose acute myelogenous leukemia is in remission. "There are still issues. There shouldn't be such a race for time just because a person [who needs a transplant] has a diverse background."

The Duttas now want to help other Asian-Americans do the same by running an official donor recruitment group, and they are trying to gain recognition from the federally funded National Marrow Donor Program, the clearinghouse for tissue matches, they said.

"People believe in us, and we want to share what we learned," Tim Dutta said. "We want to make sure there is a diverse pool of donors to give minorities an equal opportunity to life."

The battle began in 2002, when Pia Awal was diagnosed with cancer for the first time.

After failing to find a marrow match, she underwent four nine-week rounds of chemotherapy. By the following year, she was in remission, strong enough to visit Paris, and engaged to Tim. But by the end of the year, the cancer was back.

Chemotherapy was no longer an option. Pia needed a stem-cell blood transplant, which is often referred to as a bone marrow transplant.

Their previous experience taught them that finding a DNA match would be difficult.

The NMDP database contains the names of more than 5.5 million people who have registered as potential donors, officials said.

However, only 360,000, or about 6.5 percent, are Asian. Caucasians make up about half of the registry, and 1.5 million people are not identified by race.

As an Indian-American, Pia's best chance at finding a potential donor with a DNA match would be from fellow South Asians, but they make up only a fraction of the Asians in the database.

"The greater chance to find a match is within the same ethnic community," said Julio Garcia, recruitment coordinator for the HLA Registry, a division of Community Blood Services of Paramus.

HLA stands for human leukocyte antigens, and humans have many of them. But transplant doctors usually look at six - three inherited from the father and three from their mother.

The actual process is much more complicated, but for a bone marrow transplant, the donor and recipient must match on at least five of these six antigens and also have a compatible blood type. The odds of two individuals matching range from 1 in 20,000 to 1 in 50,000. The genetic component is what makes people from the same racial group more likely to match.

Recruitment in minority communities lags because of several cultural factors, including language and, most importantly, a lack of awareness, Garcia said.

"It's a fear of the unknown," Garcia said. "Some people think of a donation and think they are giving up a body part."

Tim Dutta, a former investment banker, addressed the need with an all-out blitz.

He created an organization and named it Matchpia, setting up donor drives around the country at South Asian gathering points, such as temples. He also produced ads for television, radio and print media, enlisted community leaders and gathered a group of South Asian entertainers for a public service announcement.

He spent more than $400,000 of his own money on the effort, as well as countless sleepless nights hoping for a match.

After registering thousands of South Asians, a match eventually was found in England. Pia got her long-awaited transplant, the couple married and they finally could start thinking about bathroom vanities and other matters of "normalcy," Tim Dutta said.

However, the battle wasn't over.

"We still got e-mails from people, asking us for help," he said. "We were fortunate. But we |couldn't live with ourselves if we knew we could help and didn't."

As a result, Dutta kept the struggle alive by widening its focus, and he's now attempting to have Matchpia recognized by the NMDP as an official recruitment arm.

That effort is running into problems.

In addition to supplying the national organization with a full application to certify Matchpia, he was also asked to fulfill additional requirements not asked of other groups, such as submitting to an on-site inspection, Dutta said.

NMDP's stance is that the Matchpia campaign has not completed a "standard" application, and that it has not supplied all relevant documentation, said Helen Ng, spokeswoman for NMDP.

Ng added that the organization, which works with 80 donor centers and nine recruitment groups, is taking aggressive steps to increase the number of minority donors.

Increasing the agency's partnership with international donor centers, including a recent addition in South Korea, creates a more diverse donor base.

"What matters the most is that we are able to help all patients," Ng said. "It doesn't matter who they are, the goal is to help all patients."

The Government Accountability Office released a report in 2002 on NMDP, which is under contract to the Department of Health and Human Services, that recognized significant growth in registered minorities to 1 million potential donors in 2002 from just 80,000 in 1992. It also reiterated that the donor database should reflect America's diversity.

However, it said increased recruitment would not guarantee equal opportunity to matches.

"Because of genetic differences among racial and ethnic groups, there is reason to believe that patients from some minority groups, notably African-Americans, may never have the same probability of finding matches, and therefore of access to transplants, as Caucasian patients, regardless of the efforts made to recruit them," the report said.

Ng acknowledged the diversity of DNA within ethnic groups means that matches are never guaranteed. She noted that a person has only a 25 percent chance of finding a match within their own family.

But grass-roots efforts to increase community awareness and recruit donors do help, Ng said.

Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches, or A3M, has been recruiting donors since 1991 from its office in Los Angeles.

The group started with an outreach program into the local Japanese community, but then a Korean patient sought help, said Madhuri Mistry, a spokeswoman for the organization.

"We now have six task forces, and each task force has a coordinator or recruiter that speaks the language that their group speaks," Mistry said.

In addition to facilitating matches, the group devotes considerable effort to education.

"There are myths," Mistry said. "Some people think the donation is extremely painful."

The Duttas continue to answer questions and offer advice based on what they learned during their own tumultuous journey, and Tim Dutta said he wants to create changes within NMDP, including its spending on public awareness.

"At the end of the day, we know there is a problem with the system," he said. "We want to do what we can to fix it."

Pia Dutta is still confronted by a lingering question. While she was ill, she asked, "Why me?" wondering why she was stricken with cancer.

Now she asks the same question, wondering why she was spared.

"The journey we have been on was not easy, but we are grateful for all that we have," she said. "We have each other, life and health." (Source: North Jersey Media Group)

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