Opinions

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more Mexicans exited the United States than entered it from 2005 to 2010. I conclude that aggressive tactics to encourage “self-deportation” work. Deportation (the regular jackbooted kind), border walls, surveillance drones, harassment of brown people with or without suspicious accents, all of it! And recessions. Recessions, too. Recessions mostly, maybe. And maybe not. America’s economic downturn is a big part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. Mexico has an economy, too. And it’s not going so badly there, which is one reason we should not expect Mexican immigration to return to trend as American growth and employment returns to trend.

Mr Barone goes so far as to argue that, since the era of mass Mexican immigration is over for good, the shape of the immigration debate in America will never be the same. “The key immigration issue for the future”, Mr Barone maintains, “is whether America, like our Anglosphere cousins Canada and Australia, will let in more high-skill immigrants.” I’m not so sure American worries about visits from our Mexican neighbours will fade this much, but it does seem likely that Republicans in this year’s primaries have been fanning nativist embers bound to fade, perhaps at great cost to their electoral prospects.

Yet Mitt Romney is stuck with debate clips in which he goes on about “self-deportation” and bullies Rick Perry for displaying the compassion and good sense born of his experience governing a border state. Mr Romney needs to improve his position among Hispanic voters; he trails Mr Obama by about 40% in the polls. And, as my colleagues point out in this week’s print edition, Hispanics “account for over 20% of the population in several swing states, including Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico” and Democrats are looking hungrily at Arizona, which has put in place controversial measures against illegal immigration now before the Supreme Court. So you can be sure Mr Romney is giving this Etch-A-Sketch a good shake. Will it help? Michael Tomasky of the Daily Beast says it’ll help a little, but not a lot; Mr Romney certainly won’t match George W. Bush’s 42% of the Hispanic vote

Does Romney have any choice but to choose Marco Rubio? The Republicans own misguided policies could cost them the presidential election.

The US presence on Okinawa island has long been controversial.

Locals on Okinawa say having the Futenma base near a city is dangerous and noisy and they want it removed from the island altogether.

Occasional well-publicised instances of bad behaviour and criminality by US personnel, including a 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, have fuelled the concerns.

The issue has put a strain on the US-Japan security alliance, which both countries see as critical to maintaining the balance of power in Asia as China rises, says our correspondent.

Happy Earth Day China

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“The research group, at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, is looking at another option - converting a person’s own skin cells into specialist cells, without creating “induced” stem cells. It has already transformed skin cells directly into neurons.

This study created “neural precursor” cells, which can develop into three types of brain cell: neurons, astrocytes and oligodendrocytes.

These precursor cells have the advantage that, once created, they can be grown in a laboratory into very large numbers. This could be critical if the cells were to be used in any therapy.”