U.S. Customs and Border Protection offices throughout the country observed Asian Pacific American Heritage Month by hosting notable speakers and exhibits. In Seattle the Editor of the Filipino American Herald, Sluggo Rigor, spoke to employees. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dan Hu, addressed Houston employees, while in El Paso, one of CBP’s own, Assistant Chief Patrol Agent Debi Hines spoke to those that turned out for the program. CBP Headquarters in Washington, D.C. was fortunate to have two speakers for their program; SuChin Pak, News Correspondent with MTV, and Mr. Eddy R. Badrina, Executive Director, White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Over the last thirty years, Southeast Asian refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, including about 30,000 Ameri-asian children of American servicemen and their families, have escaped from war, social chaos, discrimination, and economic hardship to the opportunities available in the United States. Building businesses and communities, becoming active in civic and political organizations, excelling in sports and academics, the 21st century Asian Americans contribute to the evolution of how an “American looks and sounds.”

Celebrations, posters, and activities during the month remind us that the 1,977 CBP employees of Asian Pacific heritage enhance our ability to accomplish the CBP mission, including enforcing the immigration laws of the United States. These employees either immigrated to this country or their parents came to the United States to provide for them the unique opportunities available within our borders. Sandra (Sandy) Yang, a Computer Specialist in the Office of Information and Technology (OIT), graduated from college in Taiwan and then emigrated from China to expand her educational and professional opportunities. “What I enjoy most about America is freedom for everyone,” says Sandy. “Freedom is not something that we should take for granted.”

A brief history of Asian Pacific Americans European nations stumbled on the Americas in their search for the spices, teas, silks and porcelain they sought from China and India. Ever since, there has been a strong connection in the Americas between European and Asian cultures. As early as 1763, Filipino shipmates, working as indentured servants on Spanish galleons, escaped into the Louisiana bayou to create the first community of Asian Americans. Chinese and South Asian Indian sailors disembarked at East coast ports like New York and Boston in the early 19th century and decided to stay and establish communities instead of returning to their home countries. Decades later, Chinese immigrants came to the West coast to work on roads, canals, railroads and mines. By the middle of the 19th century, Chinese immigrants occupied a strategic economic position in the American West, making up more than a fourth of the California Gold Miners, one third of the population of Idaho, seventy-five percent of California’s agricultural labor force and ninety percent of the workers on the Central Pacific Transcontinental railroad. Two hundred years ago, President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark to find a shorter and more profitable trading route to China. While trade was eagerly sought, immigration was fought just as strongly. In 1858, California legally barred entry of Chinese and “Mongolians.” The passage of the14th amendment to the Constitution in 1870, guaranteeing citizenship to all people born or naturalized in the United States, did not remove the exclusion from citizenship for people of Chinese descent. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed by Congress in 1882, was the only U.S. law ever to prevent immigration and naturalization on the basis of race. Korean, Indian, and Japanese laborers replaced the Chinese, and violence soon followed. By 1924, all Asian immigrants (except people from the Philippines, which had been annexed by the United States in 1898) were fully excluded by law, denied citizenship and naturalization, and prevented from marrying Caucasians or owning land. Legal action that gained civil rights for Asian immigrants was not limited to those immigrants who came to this country across the Pacific Ocean. There are more than 170 U.S. Supreme court cases that have centered on the validity of restrictions placed on citizenship and equality under the law for peoples of Asian heritage. These decisions, which favor fundamental rights such as “citizenship by right of birth,” were not victories just for the Asian plaintiffs but for all people born in the United States, regardless of their parentage. In 1952, the McCarran-Walter Immigration Nationality Act abolished the Asiatic Barred Zone, and removed all remaining prohibitions on citizenship for Asian immigrants. Four years later, Dalip Singh Saund, an Asian Indian from California became the first Asian American to be elected to the United States Congress.