What do Asian Americans think about the US immigration policies?

Although most of America's attention has focused on migration from Latin America, Asian Americans make up 32% of legal immigrants and 16% of unauthorized immigrants among the foreign-born population in the US in 2022, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the American Community Survey.

The growth of the immigrant population is largely due to the high rate of immigration from Asia.. As a result, the flow of immigrants from Asia has made the demographic the fastest-growing segment of the US population.

Based on the US Census, of the 24 million Asian Americans, some 13 million are  immigrants.

With more than half of Asian Americans born outside the United States, a share that rises to 67% among Asian American adults, engagement with the US immigration system is a common experience.

Immigration is a major issue in the 2024 Presidential campaign. Most of Donald Trump's vitriol against undocumented immigrants has fanned the latent racist beliefs of many of his supporters.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris, a daughter of an immigrant, has expressed her support for immigration reform. A bipartisan bill funneling more money to the issue was killed by Congressional Repubicans at the behest of Trump. The GOP candidate did not want to solve the problem but he did want to keep the hot issue for his campaign.

FYI: Read the Pew survey of Asian American immigrants

Asian American immigrants interact with the nation’s immigration system in different ways, the Pew analysis points out. Some Asian immigrants came to the US under differing visa categories, including student visas and temporary work visas. Others obtained permanent residencies through family sponsorship, employment-based preferences, and diversity and refugee categories, among others.

The Pew survey of Asian immigrants' priorities for the nation's immigration policy – conducted from July 2022 to January 2023 – asked Asian Americans about their views on U.S. immigration policy goals.

Despite the influx of immigrants from Asia, few surveys included their views on immigration until Pew. Among Asian immigrants:

• 86% say attracting highly skilled immigrants to the U.S. should be an important goal for immigration policy.
• 82% say it is an important goal to make it easier for U.S. citizens or legal residents to sponsor a family member to immigrate to the U.S.
• 76% say establishing stricter policies to prevent people from overstaying their visas should be an important goal for U.S. policy.

Asian immigrants’ views also vary across ethnic groups. For example:

• Chinese immigrants (69%) are less likely than some other ethnic groups to say it is important to establish stricter policies preventing immigrants from overstaying their visas illegally. They are also less likely to prioritize policies that allow immigrants who are in the country illegally (53%) or who came to the country illegally as children (62%) to stay, compared with most other ethnic groups. Still, half or more of Chinese immigrants say these should be goals for U.S. immigration policy.
• Filipino immigrants are most likely to say making it easier to sponsor family members should be an important goal: 91% say this, compared with somewhat smaller majorities among other groups.
• Vietnamese immigrants (69%) are among the ethnic groups that are most likely to say it is important to increase deportations of immigrants currently in the country illegally. On the other hand, they are less likely than most other ethnic groups to say encouraging high skilled immigrants should be an important policy goal (76%), though a large majority say this.

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