To: sdraoul@aol.com, pjherz@siu.edu, arthurhu@halcyon.com, msk@cis.org, matloff@cs.ucdavis.edu Date sent: Wed, 14 May 1997 15:44:33 PST Subject: FWD: Asian Immigrant Education Success From: dchiang@juno.com While the evidence is clear that the low educated Hispanic immigrant population continues to lose ground, an analysis of APAs (Asian-Pacific Islander Americans reveals relative success for APAs in education and income. It is true, for example, that a greater percentage of APA men and women are college graduates than their White counterparts.(1) Rather than attributing this achievement to biological or cultural deficiencies within any racial group, it is believed that such differences can be explained by specific legal, political, and social factors that have shaped the APA community. For instance, our immigration laws favor highly-educated Asian professionals. The watershed 1965 Immigration Act expressly stated a preference for educated professionals, especially in the scientific, medical, and engineering fields.(2) At the time, the Cold War and the space race demanded an influx of scientific elite to help sustain U.S. military-industrial dominance. Immigrants from elite families in Asia and other countries were attracted by and absorbed into the expanding technological economy.(3) In addition to immigration policy, geopolitical changes also influenced Asian immigrant demographics. The 1972 U.S.-China ditente and the 1975 withdrawal of U.S. troops from Vietnam profoundly realigned domestic and international politics in East and Southeast Asia, thereby rendering many Asian dictatorships politically unstable. Such instability, often accompanied by economic crises, precipitated the immigration of many upper and middle-class families from Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia.(4) From 1965 to the present, the highly educated and upper/middle-class segments continue to be disproportionately represented among APA immigrants, especially those from East and South Asia. Finally, cultural reactions to ongoing racism may be another explanation for improved socio-economic mobility for APAs. This mobility may have little to do with anything essential to Asian cultures as much as their historically contingent reaction to limited opportunity. Professors Stanley Sue and Sumie Okazaki have argued, for instance, that ethnic, racial, and immigrant discrimination blocked off various avenues of success for APAs. Since APAs saw no future in politics, sports, or entertainment, they turned their attention toward education.(5) And as they enjoyed mild success through education, this belief that educational investment is the sole path to success in America was reinforced.(6) Indeed, this belief may have been bolstered by the model minority myth, which inculcated teachers to encourage and place high expectations on APA students while subconsciously discouraging or placing lower expectations on other minorities. (1) Data from 1989 to 1991 reflect that 48% of APA males between ages 25 and 64 have four or more years of college education, compared to 29% of White males in the same age bracket. For females, the percentages are 38 for APAs and 23 for Whites. See Paul Ong & Suzanna J. Hee, Work Issues Facing Asian Pacific Americans: Labor Policy, in The State of Asian Pacific America: Policy Issues to the Year 2020, at 141, 144 (1993) (2) See Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian America Through Immigration Policy, 1850-1990, at 23-26 (1993)., at 198 app. See also Ong & Hee, Work Issues, supra note 97, at 145. At the same time, the Immigration and Reform Act of 1965 granted U.S. labor unions the ability to approve or disapprove preferences according to the supply of blue-collar labor, thereby limiting working-class immigrants. Thus, after 1965, the combined preference for technicians and professionals and limitations on blue-collar immigrants served to increase the proportion of South and East Asian immigrants from middle and upper-middle class families. These professional class Asian immigrants were a marked departure from the largely working-class immigrants from China, India, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines prior to 1965. (3) This preference was modified in 1976 to require a job offer from an employer prior to immigration. Nevertheless, the remaining family reunification preferences continued the disproportionate representation of the educated class by allowing educated Asians who had already immigrated to sponsor their often highly educated relatives. Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Pacific America: Immigration Policy, in The State of Asian Pacific America: Policy Issues to the Year 2020, at 127, 131 (1993). (4) L. Ling-chi Wang, Trends in Admissions for Asian Americans in Colleges and Universities: Higher Education Policy, in The State of Asian Pacific America: Policy Issues to the Year 2020, at 49, 52 (1993). (5) Stanley Sue & Sumie Okazaki, Asian American Educational Achievements: A Phenomenon in Search of an Explanation, in The Asian American Educational Experience 139 (Don T. Nakanishi & Tina Y. Nishida eds., 1995) (To the extent that mobility is limited in noneducational avenues, education becomes increasingly salient as a means of mobility. That is, education is increasingly functional as a means for mobility when other avenues are blocked.¶ ) (6) As Professors Sue and Okazaki have recognized, one must then investigate why other minority groups have not adopted the same attitude toward overinvestment in education. See id. at 141. Tentatively, they suggest that different groups may develop different folk wisdoms about success. And although all people of color may share abstract beliefs in the value of education, APAs seem to hold a more concrete belief that success in life has to do with the things studied in school.¶ Id. at 142