Word: alien
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...taking precisely the same route. This traffic is directed by Glass's galvanizing Rubric: loud, brash music, pulsing like a motor. One could never join this crowd of pedestrians; anyone who has ever tried to move across a major artery, or even a busy sidewalk, in an alien capital knows how hard it is to catch the rhythm. Yet a series of three couples in pale unitards does invade the mob, finally clearing a space for their own brief dance and slightly skewing the renewed movement of the throng. Clearly this urban ritual could go on forever, but abruptly...
Percy's Cosmos is more challenging than Sagan's because the remote possibility of contacting extraterrestrials palls before a mankind that is alien to itself. Running off to the stars may be far simpler than exploring the black holes of human nature. Percy illustrates this best in a slice of imaginative speculation about four astronauts on an 18-year interstellar flight. The crew, three women and a man, practice "serial monogamy" and procreate. The 186,000-mile-per-second speed law is in effect, so nearly two decades in space amount to more than 400 years on earth...
...probably 2.1 million in all. And they are different in a critical respect from all the other ethnic arrivals: the immigrant from Mexico comes from near by to what was, until 1848, Mexican national territory. He arrives feeling as much like a migrant as an immigrant, not an illegal alien but a reconquistador...
...illegal alien population swells, a controversy roils over the effects of this "invisible" underclass on society. INS officials estimate that illegal immigrants cost the U.S. $4 billion annually in benefits, lost income taxes and wages that would otherwise go to Americans. Another study by the Environmental Fund, a Washington research group, puts the cost at $ 14 billion. It is also estimated that Mexicans ship $3 billion a year to their families back home. With easily forged documents, some illegals get all the perks of citizenship, including welfare, unemployment benefits, food stamps and Medicaid. Many illegals are paid in cash...
...illegal immigrants a free public education. In Los Angeles County, officials say the annual cost of educating these children runs as high as $415 million. Texas spends about $50 million. In Brownsville, on the Texas border, School Superintendent Raul Besteiro estimates that there are some 2,000 illegal alien children among the 30,000 children in his school district. The city has 350 portable classrooms to handle the overflow. Asks a frustrated Besteiro: "Why should Brownsville taxpayers have to pay for construction for people who illegally cross our border...