This in reply to Ampang Boy whose experiences may have seemed to have somewhat thwarted the notions of meritocracy and a level-playing field in the US for immigrants of Asian descent.

As for myself, I am a male Indian Malaysian who still believes in the Malaysian dream. I have studied and lived in the UK for seven years, and have studied and worked in the US for eight years.

In the US, I won scholarships for postgraduate degrees up to my PhD, competing with Americans, Europeans and Asians. I won on merit, not on skin colour. I was treated very well by the Americans.

I am currently an academic at a Malaysian university. In the US, unlike the UK, I was not conscious of my skin colour. Indeed, I learned more of my own ethnicity in the US and what more, was even made to feel proud of it by the Americans.

Yet, I've always maintained that I'm a Malaysian and proud of my nationality even with America beckoning me then and now. Upon returning to Malaysia after my PhD, I was constantly told by both Brits, Europeans and sadly, even Malaysians, that skin colour is important in this country. I'm even told this now.

On a cerebral level, just compare the relative success of Indians from India, or Indo-Americans, as they are dubbed in the US. First generation Indo-Americans have for the last 20 years earned the highest median income across all ethnic groups including Jews and whites with a median income of US$60,000 compared to a national average of US$38,000 (US Department of Commerce, US Census Bureau, 2000).

Moreover, they are the fastest growing ethnic group in the US, and most educated Indo-Americans have become so without any need for affirmative action whatsoever. Many are owner-entrepreneurs, technologists, medical doctors, consultants, and academics.

Harvard Business School for example has 10 percent of its faculty from India - the largest from any one foreign nation. Another fact (and believe me these are plentiful) - the dean of the top business school in the world, Kellog at Northwestern University, is from India and holds an Indian passport. He was responsible for its global expansion in Asia.

So was Rajat Gupta, the former managing partner of McKinsey, arguably the most prestigious consulting firm in the world who had opened offices in Malaysia and China. He was responsible for McKinsey's largest expansion in its stellar history.

The list goes on but all of these illustrious figures had their humble origins in India and were first generation Americans or even merely residents. Some of them had even migrated from the UK or Australia and said that the US was the only country which had given them the opportunity to go the top.

No society is perfect, but it appears that both from my own experience and others that the US is still a thriving meritocracy that is part-and-parcel of globalisation. Perhaps after Sept 11, it became less open. They had never collected departure cards from airline passengers prior to this unfortunate date.

The irony is that many of the Indo-Americans are from South India. Unlike the African- Americans and Hispanics, they did not need affirmative action in the US. This is in stark contrast to the descendants of the same gene pool in Malaysia who are at the bottom of the pecking order besides being marginalised.

In Malaysia, the same gene pool is caricatured as crime prone, socially awkward, unschooled and backward. Can someone explain how in one country, Malaysia, affirmative action has marginalised one particular group?

But in another - arguably a most ruthlessly competitive society - this same group, without any need for affirmative action, rises to become successful, respected, wealthy and culturally integrated, a living testimony to unity in diversity?