History
Asian Americans
Immigration trends of recent decades have dramatically altered the statistical composition and popular understanding of who is an Asian American. The dramatic transfromation of Asian American, and of American itself, is largely credited to the removal of over 75 years of discriminatory immigration laws that banned Chinese, then subsequent Asian ethnic groups, from becoming immigrants or citizens of the United States.
Asian Americans have largely been perceived as members of the East Asian ethnic groups, specifically Chinese and Japanese, the two largest ethnic groups before 1965, as well as Filipinos who became colonical subjects of the US in 1898 due to the Spanish-American War. The Asian communities in the United States now include many Koreans, Filipinos of different classes and educational achievements, and Southeast Asians. Asian America includes people from South Asia - India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. The term includes Thai, Burmese, Lao, Cambodians, Hmong, Tibetans, Nepalese, and other Sourtheast Asian immigrants to the U.S., and sometimes also Pacific Islanders such as Somoans, Tongans, Fijians, Guamanians (Chamorros). Ethnically native Hawaiians are also sometimes included.
This rapid change in Asian American demographics occurred after enactment of the 1965 immigration reforms. This act replaced exclusionary immigration rules of the Chinese Exclusion Act and its successors, such as the Reed-Johnson Act or 1924 immigration act, which effectively excluded "undesirable" immigrants, including Asians. The 1965 rules set across-the-board immigration quotas for each country, opening the borders to immigrants from Asia for the first time in nearly half a century.
Two other influences, however, have been equally worthy of attention. First, in the wake of World War II, immigration preferences favored family reunification. This may have helped attract highly skilled workers to meet American workforce deficiencies. Secondly, the end of the Korean War and Vietnam War or so-called "Secret Wars" in Southeast Asia brought a new wave of Asian American immigration as people from Korea, Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia arrived. Some of the new immigrants, as in the case of the Korean War, were war brides, who were soon joined by their families. Others, like the Southeast Asians, were either highly skilled and educated or part of subsequent waves of refugees seeking asylum.
As of the later half of the twentieth century, Asian Americans have generally been educationally and financially successful. According to 2000 U.S. Census data, the average Asian American household earns a higher income than other U.S. ethnic groups and achieves higher levels of education attainment. The proportion of Asian Americans at many selective education institutions far exceeds the 3% national population rate. For example, several University of California campuses and New York City's Stuyvesant High Schools count over 50% of their student population as Asian American.
However, exceptions to this success story are often found, usually among first-generation immigrants, who sometimes lack documentation or cannot speak English. These people are sometimes forced to work jobs at below the minimum wage, often menial sweatshop or restaurant labor, because they fear mainstream employers will not hire them or will report them to the government.
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