There are two pressing issues in today’s debate about immigration in the United States:  the sheer number of legal immigrants who are entering the country, and the impact of illegal immigration from countries such as Mexico.  The goal of legal immigration has always been to continue with the American tradition of welcoming those who are oppressed and otherwise marginalized in their societies.  In the recent century, a second goal was added which was to attract skilled and educated immigrants to come to the United States and to contribute to its efforts to become a world leader in industry, research, and the arts.  This goal was realized as the United States has indeed become a world leader in the 20th century, with world class institutions of higher learning that attract researchers and educators from all over the world.  In fact, the second world war is known to have resulted in major movements of educators who were fleeing the devastation of the war from European institutions to American universities. 

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Every day millions of school children in the world experience the physical, emotional, mental, and academic consequences of bullying.  In writings from the early 18^th century one can read about older students harassing younger students to uphold hierarchies (Harris & Petrie, 2003).  Some might think that bullying is mainly a children’s problem; however, every person who has been part of a group context has likely in some form come in contact with the problems of group interaction that we today label as bullying.  In fact, the sort of behaviors that we identify as bullying such as intimidation, coercion and insults are experienced in many social interactions such as those between husbands and wives.  Bullying in the workplace has also been academically investigated since early 1980’s (Leymann, 1996).

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The modern nation-state is often thought to be a 19^th century European development that arose out of already existent states (Joppke, 2000).  For example, during the 18^th and early 19^th century, European non-nation states were conglomerates of multiple ethnicities that co-existed such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the British Empire (Opello & Rosow, 2004).  However, the birth of the nation-state is credited with an even earlier.  The Westphalia treaty of 1648 is said to mark the beginning of the modern state system (Caporaso, 2000). After more than 30 years of war in the Holy Roman Empire and 80 years of war between Spain and the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, peace treaties was drafted and approved to end the wars.  The results of the treaties are important as it is credited with the creation of the modern system of sovereign nation-states (Caporaso, 2000).

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