The Mumbai attacks are being described by Indian-American New Yorkers as having much in common with the 9/11 attacks — an assault on a particularly modern, cosmopolitan, open-minded city that is tolerant of cultural differences.

I spoke today with Ralph D’ Souza, a New Yorker who spent the first 35 years of his life in Bombay. He is president of the India Center of Westchester, a cultural organization that brings together families from different parts of India.

“Bombay is very New York-ish — a very open society and people of international origins from all over the place move around freely,” he said (using Mumbai’s former name). “In a free society like this, it’s appalling something of this sort should happen. It’s so much akin to what’s happened here from 9/11 and prior to that. … Hopefully they’ll take a lesson from this and be much more alert and conscious and aware of these things.”

D’Souza said he grew up as part of the 2 percent of the Indian population that is Christian. He works as a pension fund consultant here in the United States. The local India Center (see their web site here) is a very lively place with instruction in music, dance, Sanskrit, yoga and other activities out of a building on Route 9A in Elmsford.

D’Souza says he’s hopeful that the international community, including India, Pakistan and the United States, can work together to fight violent extremists.

“They should at least have common goals. Whatever your political affiliations are, whatever your views are in all the controversial issues between India and Pakistan, this is absolutely an unacceptable response… to slaughter innocent people of every dimension.”

Speaking of Westchester Community College: While there I took some photos of the Gateway Center currently under construction. The $40 million center will bring together various services geared toward immigrant students, including language and business classes. Expected to be a certified “green” building, it’s planned for completion in 2010. Here’s a look.

The holidays tend to be a wrenching time for international students at Westchester Community College, many of whom cannot travel home because of the risk of being denied admission back into the United States.

Foreign-born students attended an open-ended discussion last week with an immigration attorney, and such travel questions kept coming up. Many students came to the United States as nannies or tourists, then obtained a new status as visiting students. That technicality causes a big problem when it comes to travel, even though the students are perfectly legal.

A spokesman at U.S. Customs and Border Protection explained it to me this way: Because U.S. visas are not issued to people who are already in this country, these students (who came as nannies or tourists) are not given a traditional visa that allows them to come and go from the United States. Instead, their student status lasts only until they leave the country. So if they leave, they are taking a big chance. They would have to visit a U.S. consulate and hope to be granted a student visa from the State Department. Since 9/11, that has become more difficult, according to Ruben Barato, the college’s coordinator of international and immigrant student affairs.

Students have to be prepared, then, to stay put in the United States for years. Inevitably, family emergencies happen back home and cause some excruciating decisions.

Below is the story I wrote last week.

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Literacy Volunteers of Westchester County will receive a $9,500 grant from Verizon tomorrow night for its Hispanic Family Literacy program. The family program helps young immigrant families navigate the school system, understand good nutrition and promotes reading in the home. The ceremony will take place at 6 p.m. in the Learning Center of the Yonkers Public Library’s Riverfront branch, 1 Larkin Center, Yonkers.

Attorney Robin Bikkal will speak at Westchester Community College tomorrow morning about immigration policies and the current outlook on the issue. The discussion starts in the Library at 11 a.m. on the Valhalla campus, off Knollwood and Grasslands roads.

Newsday has a video from Gualaceo, Ecuador, where mourners gathered for a Mass remembering Marcelo Lucero, who was killed on Long Island in what prosecutors call a hate crime. The ceremony was held in front of the house that Lucero built for his mother.

Newsday’s coverage is compiled on this web page.

The slaying was remembered at a long-planned vigil in Rockland on Friday. Here are photos of Sister Cecilia La Pietra and Jim Ievolella standing on Route 59 in Nanuet.

(Photos: Peter Carr/The Journal News)

Don’t be surprised if you come across more Eastern European and South Korean tourists in the United States after today. Travelers in seven countries were just given the right to visit the United States for up to three months without having to get a visa first — something that visitors in 27 countries already are able to do, the Department of Homeland Security announced today.

The U.S. travel industry has pushed for removing these particular hurdles, and DHS says the program has new security features. The countries involved are required to share security-related data with the United States and meet standards in areas like counterterrorism and document verification. Still, the program has been contentious. Rather than visit a consular official for a visa, travelers will use the online ESTA system to qualify.

The newly eligible nationalities are the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, the Republic of Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Greece is hoping to be included in the next round.

NYC & Company, a tourism and marketing organization, says it’s planning accordingly for increased business with South Korea.

The nations already in the Visa Waiver Program are Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brunei, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Mexico and Canada are subject to separate, special agreements.

Yesterday, I witnessed perhaps the saddest most shocking sight I have ever seen. Lenis Alvarenga arrived at St. Peter’s Church in Port Chester with a blanket covering her head to shield her from the light.

Underneath sat Lenis, her face unrecognizable, disfigured from the tumors and oozing sores that covered it. The 18-year-old Salvadoran teen suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disorder that causes tumors and neurological problems. XP sufferers lack the ability to repair DNA damage caused by sunlight.

Lenis is  here because UCET, a Port Chester-based nonprofit, raised the money to get her medical attention here. Her mother said in El Salvador doctors offered no hope.

Yesterday, I saw a girl in excruciating pain, unable to remove the baby wipe from her face for fear that it would fall off. She was surrounded by dozens of people praying for her, dedicated to giving her some sort of relief. It was tragic and touching at the same time.

Sadly, some of the posts on the forums today focus on the girl’s legal status and on her family bilking the U.S. health care system. I’m not sure that this blog post will change their opinions, but, for the record—and as mentioned in the article today—Lenis and her family have visas (which means they are here legally) and UCET is dedicated to raising the funds needed for her care. They have already collected $9,000.

U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao will be in Tarrytown tomorrow night at a gala of the Organization of Chinese Americans. She immigrated as a child from Taiwan, where her parents lived after fleeing mainland China. Her biography on the DOL web site says,

Arriving at the age of eight from Asia speaking no English, Secretary Chao’s experience transitioning to a new country inspired her to dedicate most of her professional life to ensuring that workers have access to opportunity and the chance to build better lives.

A graduate of Long Island’s Syosset High School, she went on to graduate from Harvard and is married to Kentucky Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell. Another accomplishment, notes the L.A. Times: She’s the only member of President Bush’s Cabinet who has served all eight years of the administration.

OCA’s Westchester and Hudson Valley chapter was established decades ago for people of Asian Pacific heritage, and it now has a formal address in White Plains.

The 28th annual Dynamic Achiever Awards Gala at the DoubleTree Hotel will honor Tom Hei, Ph.D., Professor of Radiation Oncology & Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University; Wesley J. Hom, Vice President, System Z Platform Division at IBM, and Kam Mak, designer of the Chinese Lunar New Year Stamp Series for the U.S. Postal Service and associate professor at New York Fashion Institute of Technology. More info is on OCA’s web site.

A vigil has been planned for weeks in Rockland as a way to bring attention to the immigration issue, but it’s taken on new urgency after the news of a hate crime in Long Island.

The slaying of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcello Lucero is “exactly, exactly goes to why we feel it is so important for us as a community to look at what is happening in the struggle around immigration in this country, the fear and hatred that is beginning to drive the dialog,” Gail Golden of the Rockland Immigration Coalition told reporter Suzan Clarke. The coalition is co-sponsoring the event along with a group of Episcopal ministers who are meeting in the area.

The vigil is from 5 to 7 p.m. tomorrow at Middletown Road and Route 59 in Nanuet. Another begins at 7 in Patchogue, Long Island.