Michael Sheehan at Wordmall has posted a very clear and helpful explanation of the conventions regarding use of colons and semicolons in English. These punctuation marks cause so many difficulties in my students’ writing. Probably the only mark that causes more trouble is the comma.
Private First Class Kimberly Rivera had been seeking leave to remain in Canada “on humanitarian and compassionate grounds” to avoid prosecution for deserting her post in the U.S. Army. Her claim, like the claims of other U.S. soldiers seeking to avoid further duty in the Iraq War in Canada, has been rejected, and, unless that decision is reversed, she is supposed to return to the U.S. by January 27th.
I was a bit startled the first time I heard about U.S. soldiers seeking refugee status in other countries to avoid serving, or continuing their service, in the Iraq War. There have been a number of such cases in Canada, and at least one in Germany. (And I should note before continuing that I’m not sure that “humanitarian and compassionate grounds” are quite the same as asylum; still, the remainder of this post focuses on these soldiers’ ability to establish asylum.)
Under U.S. law, the basic definition of a “refugee” is someone who “is outside any country of such person’s nationality . . . and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion,” and Canada’s definition is similar. Generally speaking, as students in my refugee law seminar learn, volunteer soldiers who desert their posts do not qualify as “refugees” under this definition.
I have written numerous times about the need for a Ledbetter bill to overturn the Supreme Court decision in the Ledbetter case concerning the statute of limitations for pay discrimination cases. Recall that the Court ruled that pay discrimination cases are treated as discrete act of discrimination cases and that a claim must be filed within the 180/300 day statute of limitations from the day the employee receives their paycheck. This is an absurd situation as many times employees do not know of a discriminatory pattern until there have been numerous pay periods with discriminatory pay decisions.
Now comes word that as early as today, Congress will have hearings on the passage of a Ledbetter Fair Pay Bill which will allow more flexibility for such pay discrimination claims. More specifically, the
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act legislation would amend all of the employment discrimination law to provide that in effect only one discriminatory pay check with have to fall into the statutory period for such claims – much like sexual harassment claims under the Morgan case.