Other Immigrants: The Global Origins of the American People

6. Across the Pacific Again: East Asian Immigrants

Across the Pacific Again East Asian Immigrants During World War II, many Americans began to change their views about Asians. Chinese Americans especially found new economic opportunities, and their participation in the military was welcomed. As K. Scott Wong observed, “Whether or not World War II should be considered the major watershed in twentieth-century American history continues to be debated, but there is no doubt as to the significance of this period in Asian-American history. The war is perhaps as important as the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act, which finally allowed Asian immigration to the United States to proceed on a level equal to other immigrant streams.”1 China was the first Asian nation to receive a quota when Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Acts in 1943. The allotment was only 105, but legislation allowing war brides to immigrate eventually permitted 10,000 Chinese women to come to the United States. The original law excluded Asians, but it was amended in 1947.2 (See Table 3.) Chinese also arrived under the various refugees acts passed in the 1950s, and the Refugee Escapee Act of 1957 permitted “paper sons” to legalize their status; approximately 30,000 did so, although some were reluctant because they feared they might be deported.3 In 1961 President John F. Kennedy used the parole power to admit 14,000 other refugees, this time from Hong Kong. Other Chinese refugees, numbering tens of thousands, entered from Vietnam in 1978 when the Vietnamese communists attacked the ethnic Chinese there. When Congress replaced the national origins quotas in 1965, China (meaning Taiwan) received 20,000 places, not counting immediate family members of U.S. citizens. The new Chinese immigrants initially came from Taiwan or Hong Kong, but in 1981 the People’s Republic of China (PRC) received its own quota of 20,000. Immigration was increased for all countries in 1990, and the immigration law of that year also raised the allotment for Hong Kong to 10,000.4 The 2000 census found 1,391,000 6 157 foreign-born Chinese in the United States, a huge leap from the number reported in 1940. Approximately 2.5 million persons reported Chinese ancestry in the 2000 census, the largest Asian group.5 Post–World War II Chinese immigration was considerably different from the old. The nineteenth-century immigrants hailed mainly from Canton; in contrast, the new immigrants came from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and various regions of the PRC. They often spoke different dialects. Starting with the war brides legislation, women outnumbered men in the flow. On the eve of the new immigration, 80 percent of the Chinese in the United States were men. Half of the women lived in San Francisco. The war brides laws had a direct impact on the gender ratio in American Chinese communities, making it possible to unite families, as did the family unification provisions of the post-1965 immigration laws. As a result, the renewed migration was one of families and not one of single males.6 The new Chinese immigrants came from a variety of classes and included highly skilled and educated professionals, many of whom spoke English because they had attended school in the United States. However, 158 | Across the Pacific Again: East Asian Immigrants table 3 Immigration from Selected Asian Nations (Last Residence) (1970–2001) Country of Last Residence 1971–80 1981–90 1991–2000 1998 1999 2000 2001 Asia 1,588,178 2,738,157 2,795,672 212,799 193,061 255,860 337,566 China 124,326 346,747 419,114 41,034 29,579 41,861 50,821 Hong Kong 113,467 98,215 109,779 7,379 6,533 7,199 10,307 India 164,134 250,786 363,060 34,288 28,355 39,072 65,916 Japan 49,775 47,085 67,942 5,647 4,770 7,730 10,464 Korea 267,638 333,746 164,166 13,691 12,301 15,214 19,933 Philippines 354,987 548,764 503,945 33,176 29,590 40,587 50,870 Vietnam 172,820 280,782 286,145 16,534 19,164 25,340 34,648 source: Immigration and Naturalization Service, Statistical Yearbook, 2001. these immigrants also included many working-class persons who knew no English and possessed few skills suitable for employment in the hightech sector of the American economy. Such differences prompted some observers...