Free Republic

In the last few months, the growing conflict between Sacramento's Slavic Christians and its politically savvy gay community has erupted on campuses, at school board hearings, and on the grounds of the Capitol. Russian-speaking hecklers lined the march of this year's gay pride parade downtown. At least 15 Slavic students were suspended in April for wearing shirts proclaiming, "Homosexuality is sin." This spring, Slavic Christians packed board meetings in three local school districts to make their position clear: Being gay is not OK. Even more offensive to them is the increasingly strong push by gay leaders to bring acceptance of...

When Israeli director Eitan Anner attended a wedding a few years ago, he saw two Russian children ballroom-dancing. Impressed by the serious way in which they tackled the cha-cha and the rumba, he got the spark of an idea for a film about Israel's immigrant community. That film, whose English title is "Love&Dance," is taking part in the main competition of this year's Moscow International Film Festival, and the director is coming for the premiere. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said by telephone from Tel Aviv on Tuesday. Starring a 13-year-old actor who was born in Russia,...

Since he arrived in Brooklyn as a refugee from Ukraine seven years ago, Boris Khrapunskiy, a 97-year-old widower, has subsisted on federal and state disability payments, as elderly or disabled poor people in New York State have done for the past 60 years. But in June, to his shock, he received a letter from the government saying his benefits would be cut off until he became a United States citizen. The action was the result of a 1996 decision by Congress to eliminate Supplemental Security Income, or S.S.I., for most immigrants who entered the country after Aug. 22 of that...

Gregory Troussov is quite clear about why he has hired only Eastern European engineers to work at his St. Petersburg software company. "A Russian genius will cost $40,000 to $60,000," said Troussov, who has 15 employees -- all from former Soviet bloc countries -- at Trusoft International Inc. "A compatible American would want $200,000 to $300,000 and probably be an entrepreneur." Few employers are as blunt as Troussov in acknowledging the financial incentives of the H-1B program, which has allowed U.S. companies to recruit hundreds of thousands of foreign workers with specialized skills. But after the economic slowdown and the...