Looming battles: Immigration and affirmative action

Family reunification is a priority for immigrants from Asia.

(UPDATED: Aug. 3, 10:15 a.m. to include comments from AAAJ.)

DON'T PUT away your anti-Trump posters yet. Don't erase the email addresses and hashtags of your Congressional representatives. Don't put away your pink pussy hats. You'll need them for the upcoming battles on immigration and affirmative action.

We barely had time to breathe a sigh of relief at thwarting the GOP attempts to kill the Affordable Care Act when the Donald Trump administration threw more incendiary fuel on the fire.

In the last two days, Trump has set its sights on affirmative action and immigration, two volatile issues that have the potential to divide The Resistance along racial and ethnic lines and at the same time shore up Trump's support among the alt-right and the disaffected whites who flocked to his message of the poor white victim under attack by people of color.

Cutting immigration in half

"This proposal to slash our current legal immigration system by 50% and to create a bureaucratic ‘points’ system will disproportionately impact the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community," said Rep. Judy Chu, chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. 

Under the RAISE act preference would be given to highly skilled and English-speaking people who want to immigrate to the U.S. The authors, Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and David Perdue of Georgia, won't admit this but clearly the policies are aimed at slowing immigration from Latin America but also affecting most immigrants coming from 
Asia, especially China, which has had the highest immigration rate in the last five years.

The policy "discriminates against immigrants who do not have access to high quality education or English language skills," said the National Council of Asian Pacific Americans.
I suspect that the policy is also intended to give an advantage to immigrants from the English-speaking countries of Australia, Canada and Great Britain. However, I wonder if the authors unwittingly gave an edge to immigrants coming from South Asia and the Philippines, which coincidentally, also provides a great number of workers in the health and high-tech industries.

In the last few years, the immigration rates from South Asian and the Philippines (along with China and other Asian countries) have surpassed the immigration rates from Latin America and Mexico.

One need only look at the past five years to see how this trend is taking form. According to a study by PEW, of immigrants who've been in the United States for no more than five years, more have come from Asia (2.5 million) than from Central and South America (1.7 million).

Although AAPIs comprise 6 percent of the total U.S. population, they account for over 40 percent of the 4.3 million individuals languishing in our current family immigration visa backlogs, often waiting decades to reunite with their loved ones.

In the last few years, the immigration rates from South Asian and the Philippines (along with China and other Asian countries) have surpassed the immigration rates from Latin America and Mexico.

One need only look at the past five years to see how this trend is taking form. According to a study by PEW, pf immigrants who've been in the United States for no more than five years, more have come from Asia (2.5 million) than from Central and South America (1.7 million).

By giving preference to needed job skills, the proposal would shift away from the emphasis on family reunification under the current system. Trump is selling this proposal based on his false assumption that non-English speakers are taking low-skill jobs away from poor Americans which will further alienate immigrants from Trump backers.


The vast majority of Asian immigrants have come to the U.S. through the family-based 
immigration system, and many Asian immigrants that come on employment-based visas also use the family-based system to reunite with family members.

"Our immigration system should continue to value families," said the Asian Americans Advancing Justice in a statement. "Instead, the RAISE Act proposes to decimate the family-based immigration system, keeping families separated and preventing immigrant communities from taking root.

"The RAISE Act is part of a larger strategy to scapegoat immigrants and further marginalize people of color. Contrary to the xenophobic and misguided stereotypes that belie the RAISE Act, immigrants contribute immensely to our economy, create jobs for all Americans, and increase safety in our communities," concluded the statement. 

One of the goals of affirmative action is to provide a diverse environment on campus

On affirmative action, Asian Americans used as a wedge 

The other proposal that is going under the radar (because of all the hoopla around Russia) 
is the quiet and almost 180-degree shift taking place in the Department of Justice taking aim at affirmative action policies employed by schools and work places.

Reports from the New York Times, uncovered a memo circulated in the DOJ asking for lawyers who would like to work on the new initiative that would explore discrimination against whites in college admissions.

The document uses not-so-specific language, saying the new project will focus on “intentional race-based discrimination,” which obscures the magnitude of the shift involved and the impact it would have on the beneficiaries of affirmative action, many of whom are 
students of color.

The Justice Department said the stories were much ado about nothing, saying a job posting “sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian/American associations in May 2015 that the prior Administration left unresolved.” A spokeswoman added, “The Department of Justice is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination.”

The case being referred to is a complaint against some Ivy League colleges filed by  relatively new Asian American immigrants and groups formed after affirmative action became a policy in an effort to open the doors to underrepresented minorities. Some of the groups have aligned with conservative organizations that have filed lawsuits claiming reverse discrimination.

The majority of Asian/Americans and established AAPI civil rights organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League and the Organization of Chinese Americans support affirmative action. 

RELATED:

• A closer look at Asian Americans' complaint vs. Ivy League
• Asian American applicants to Harvard fight to keep affirmative action

“The announcement today that [the Justice Department] is now actively seeking to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the Civil Rights Division,” Vanita Gupta, the former head of the division under Barack Obama and president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement.

The memo was circulated among lawyers in the Civil Rights Division once headed by Gupta. According to the Washington Post, those career employees, experts in education, “refused to work on the project out of concerns it was contrary to the office’s long-running approach to civil rights in education opportunities.”

Like the RAISE act, this move against affirmative action, is red meat for Trump's base. According to polls taken after the election, a majority of Trump's white supporters felt that they were victims of discrimination.

Both issues will will be major tests for The Resistance because immigration and affirmative action affect people of color, will the white protestors who marched and attended town halls, join in the fight against these policies? Will white women and environmentalists march and protest as vigorously for affirmative action and against the RAISE act as they have since Trump's inauguration?

The issues could also separate immigrant communities of Asians and Latinos from the African/American community, natural allies on other issues. In particular, Asian/Americans and the model minority myth can be used as a wedge to build resentment against AAPI people by Latinos and African/Americans seeking greater admission rates to college.

By raising affirmative action and immigration at this time, the Trump and his people may be hoping to counter the negative news surrounding this administration, which hasn't passed a major piece of legislation in the seven months it has been in power.

In a statement, the Asian Americans Advancing Justice, a coalition of five legal aid agencies, warned against Trump's and the Republican's strategy of divide and conquer:

"Since the new administration has been in office, it has been moving very deliberately to operationalize its nativist agenda with policies like this one. Instead of attacking affirmative action programs, the Trump administration should use its platform to increase opportunities for all students while continuing to address the persistent equity gaps for low-income students and students of color. We support affirmative action and refuse to allow Asian Americans to be used as a wedge between communities of color.”

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Washington Post editorial: Immigration in reverse

PEW graphic

I THOUGHT this editorial from the Washington Post is worth sharing because a lot of the fear-mongering on immigration is sheer political poppycock from presidential candidates hoping their supporters don't do any research on the issue.

If any further study is performed, it would be found that the largest group coming to the U.S. since 2012 is Asian immigrants, surpassing the numbers coming from Latin America. 
Asians are expected to constitute 36% of the immigrant population by 2055, surpassing Latinos, who by then will be 34% of immigrants.

However, unlike immigrants from Latin America, who share a common language, immigrants from Asia come from a myriad host of countries with their own languages and cultures.

Those political candidates stirring up the anti-immigrant fervor by labeling them rapists and drug dealers and talk about building walls need to catch up with the facts. They have been living in the past too long.

Immigration in reverse

By The Washington Post Editorial Board
January 24, 2016

THE ANTI-ILLEGAL immigrant rancor and outright nativism afoot in the Republican primary field give rise to the impression that illegal immigration has soared to unprecedented levels and that the border is no more than a line in the sand, scarcely monitored and easily crossed. The truth diverges wildly from that rhetoric, as a pair of recent studies demonstrate.

Notwithstanding the demagoguery of Donald Trump and some of his GOP rivals, the number of illegal immigrants in this country, which has declined each year since 2008, is now at its lowest level since 2003, and the percentage of undocumented immigrants likewise is at its lowest point since the turn of the century.

A report from the Pew Research Center shows a decline of nearly a million unauthorized immigrants, to 11.3 million, from 2007 to 2014. An even more recent survey, from the Center for Migration Studies, a New York think tank, indicates that the number of illegal immigrants has now fallen to 10.9 million, a precipitous drop driven largely by declining arrivals from Mexico. In fact, according to Pew, for the first time since the 1940s, Mexican migrants have been leaving the United States at a greater rate than they have entered.

Those numbers underscore what demographers have known for several years: that the great wave of Mexican immigration that began in the mid-1960s crested a few years ago and has been tailing off. Some 11.7 million Mexican-born immigrants, roughly half of them undocumented, are now in this country, down from 12.8 million in 2007 . Most of those who have left have done so of their own accord; comparatively few were deported.

That Mr. Trump has leveraged fact-free rhetoric for political advantage is not news. Still, it is noteworthy that so much of the GOP-primary oxygen, at least until the terrorist attacks in Paris, was consumed by alarmist rhetoric about border security, when in fact the border is more tightly patrolled than ever, and apprehensions at the southwestern border, a rough measure of illegal crossings, have been cut by about two-thirds since Sept. 11, 2001.

The dwindling Mexican immigration since the Great Recession reflects a number of factors, including, on the “pull” side, balky economic recovery and tougher border enforcement in the United States and, on the “push” side, improving economic conditions and a falling birthrate in Mexico. The result, according to Pew, is that in the five years ending in 2014, more than 1 million Mexicans (including 100,000 children born in the United States with dual citizenship) returned from the United States to live in Mexico, while 870,000 Mexicans entered the United States, many or most of them illegally.

Republican rhetoric on immigration has not caught up to those numbers, nor to the reality that the U.S. economy, like other Western economies, cannot function without low-wage, low-skill labor, which Mexico has supplied. An estimate 7 million-plus undocumented immigrants, most of them Mexicans, are employed in this country. Mr. Trump’s fantasies of mass deportation notwithstanding, they will not be replaced by native-born Americans. At some point, Republicans will need to grapple with that reality.

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America's challenge is learning to live with itself

This post was written a year before the 2016 Presidential elections. The thoughts and issues it presents are as relevant now -- even more so -- than when it was first written.

ON JULY FOURTH, 2015, the 239th birthday of the United States, it's an appropriate time to take a few moments to ponder the question raised by immigration reform activist Jose Antonio Vargas: What is an American?

My immigrant parents and their friends, who grew up in the Philippines, referred to white people in this country as "the Americans." Never mind that my father and his military peers fought under the Star Bangled Banner during World War II and the Korean War, never mind that they led active civic lives, involving themselves in their community affairs, voted every election day, they always considered themselves as outsiders, not really what they thought of as "Americans."

To this day, when most of the world think of Americans, they think of the white folks of our country.

When I toured China a few years back, my tour group consisted of African/Americans, Asian/Americans and European/Americans. We were seen as oddities in that land. Chinese would ask to take pictures with us. Some of us bridled at being stared and pointed at. At one photo taking session, I told the person who posed with us, "We are America. All of us."

(Just so you know, in my other travels, Italian and Germans reacted the same way as the Chinese towards us Americans of color. Curiosity and preconceptions of America is universal.)

I'm not sure what I was trying to do but I thought at the moment that it was important for them to know that Americans are a diverse lot. We may be of different pigmentation, our ancestors arrived on these shores in different times, some of us may speak with accents, but in our hearts and minds, we are all Americans.

A new Census Bureau report shows that my generation of baby-boomers fading further into the what demographers like to describe as the silver tsunami, and giving way to Millennials in a country whose younger generations are also becoming more diverse - and more tolerant, despite the Dylan Roots of the world.

The white population in the United States reached an all-time high median age of 43, while those younger than 5 were outnumbered by minority children.

“That’s a reflection of how the U.S. is aging,” said Mark Hugo Lopez, director of Hispanic research at the Pew Research Center. 

***

I live in a small community that has seen its minority population surpass the white population, which has reduced since 1995. The 2000 Census confirmed the trend. Taken together, Latinos, Asians and blacks make up the majority. (As we look at ourselves, we have to be careful not to lump those three groupings into one monolithic bloc.) In other words, my neighborhood is not the "Leave It To Beaver" neighborhood of the 50s and 60s.

This city, this state of California, is a harbinger of what this country is going to be. The next few decades, will be rocky ones as people of color learn to ease their way into the mainstream, not fully accepting of the fact that they ARE the mainstream in many communities. 

Equally critical is the way white Americans become accustomed to just being one of many, instead of the retaining their position of dominance and power to which they are accustomed.

The "privilege" and entitlement many of Euro/Americans believe is the natural order of our society is going to - needs - to change.

Go to any elementary school today, and you will see the diverse future of America.

As this demographic shift occurs, it is being bolstered by the newcomers coming to this country for the same reason my parents chose to become Americans.

The latest census data shows that China has replaced Mexico as the chief source of U.S. immigrants. Immigration from Latin America has slowed overall even as Asian migration continues to grow.

The impact of the Asian/American community goes beyond their mere numbers. 

The Center for American Progress stated in a recent article:

"Asian immigrants play an important role in helping the U.S. economy thrive. The most recent Census Bureau Survey of Business Owners found that Asian immigrants owned 1.5 million businesses, which had total sales and receipts of $506 billion and employed 208 million people in 2007. The number of Asian immigrant-owned businesses increased 40 percent from 2002 to 2007, compared to the average increase of 18 percent for all U.S. businesses.

"Asian immigrants also play an important role in the consumer market. They hold the fastest-growing buying power share—also known as spendable income after taxes—of any racial or ethnic group in the country. The Selig Center at the University of Georgia’s Terry School of Business estimates that the cumulative buying power of Asian immigrants grew from $274 billion in 2000 to more than $700 billion in 2013."

According to a 2012 study, The Rise of Asian Americans, from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, Asian/Americans are projected to make up 1 in 10 residents by midcentury, Asian/Americans as a whole tend to be more satisfied than the general public with their lives and the direction of the country. They lean Democratic and want a government that provides more services.

Besides immigrants, another dynamic is taking place as U.S. universities and colleges seek foreign students to address some of their funding shortcomings.

International students studying at U.S. colleges and universities also are now most likely to come from Asian countries, roughly 6 in 10, and some of them are able to live and work in the U.S. after graduation. Asian students, both foreign born and U.S. born, earned a plurality (45 percent) of all engineering Ph.D.s in 2010, as well as 38 percent of doctorates in math and computer sciences and 33 percent of doctorates in the physical sciences.

In addition, the new immigrants - Latino and Asian - tend to be younger and more prolific than their Euro/American counterparts. “This year is the first time the 0 to 4 population is minority-majority,” said Ben Bolender, chief of the Census Bureau's population estimates branch. It was a shift long expected: In 2013, the rate was close enough — about 50-50 — that young minority children were on the cusp of outnumbering white children, but now the number has decisively moved into the majority, Bolender said.

The University of California released its admittance information for incoming freshmen last week and the data shows that Asians and Latino freshmen outnumbered the white freshmen. The 2015 admission numbers for California students show slight changes in UC's diversity, with Asian-Americans making up 36 percent, Latinos 30 percent, whites 25 percent and African-Americans 4 percent.

Among international students, 15,317, or 62.2 percent of those applicants, were admitted, compared with 13,575, or 60.1 percent, last year, the data showed. Asian students - primarily from China, Korea and India - made up the largest foreign group, according to UC.

New Americans at a citizenship ceremony. 

So what does all of thisl mean?

Rodney King was prophetic when he asked, "Can't we all just get along?" The key to America's future is going to be how, and if, we can answer that simple question.

I'll go one step further and be blunt, the key will be how white Americans learn to live, work and play with the new majority in the coming decades. Will they fight it as those who want to "take back America," or "Make America great again," or return to the "good, old days" when white was right and everyone else knew their place; or will they accept the new Americans' myriad contributions to the American way of life - in all aspects: economically, politically and culturally?

America is changing once again. And for most of us, change is hard. 

The xenophobic fear of balkanization is understandable, but groundless. Over and over again, we have seen that by the second and third generation, English becomes the primary language spoken at home and the "Americanization" process continues. It is already happening with the Latinos who came in the 1990s and 2000s.  "Americanization" will happen with the new Asians.

One possible hopeful sign is the growing multiracial population of America, especially amongst Millennials. 

More and more Americans are identifying themselves as multi-racial, according to a Pew Research Center report released on June 11. "Multiracial Americans are at the cutting edge of social and demographic change in the U.S.—young, proud, tolerant and growing at a rate three times as fast as the population as a whole," says the report.

Although still a small part of America right now, their numbers are expanding exponentially as love does - apparently, indeed - conquers all. 

America is a never-ending work in progress (interpret that any way you like). Each wave of immigrants has changed our country for the better. The latest wave of immigrants and the growing American-born Latino and Asian communities will also have an impact as we all seek our version of the American Dream. America will be slightly different. But, America has always been different. We revel in our individuality and exceptionality, That's who we are, have been and will continue to be.

My apologies to civil rights icon Martin Luther King, Jr., but to borrow his metaphor of reaching the mountain top. What we find when we reach that mountain top ... is the view of ... another mountain.

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Asians are part of America's immigration debate

Pew graphic

WHILE MUCH has been written about our country's "immigration problem," most of our attention has been focused on the United State's southern border and the immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

A large part of Asian America are of the mindset that our country's immigration dilemma  has nothing to do with them. Well, let me tellya...


In recent years, the immigration of undocumented has taken a new twist. A study released this summer has found that the U.S. has seen a higher level of Asian immigration --surpassing the immigration of Latinos.

About 430,000 Asians, or 36 percent of all new immigrants, arrived in the U.S. in 2010, according the latest census data. Hispanics are up 31 percent, or 370,000.
Department of Homeland Security, 12 percent of the undocumented, or 1.2 million, are from Asia; 40,000 of these are under 30; under the Obama administration, over 250,000 undocumented immigrants have been deported to their Asian home countries.

Asian 'Dreamers' speak out

THE VIDEO "Why We Rise" is new documentary short featuring three brave young Asian New Yorkers who reveal what it's like to grow up without having legal immigration status. Their struggles and their strength are on full display as they come out of the shadows and into the light.

"Why We Rise," which provides a unique glimpse into the lives of real individuals affected by immigration reform, will remind you why the immigration movement is so important, not only for Latinos, but for the Asian American community as well.

The video was taped by Brian Redondo and Corinne Manabat with the support of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Why We Rise features members of AALDEF's undocumented youth group RAISE (Revolutionizing Asian American Immigrant Stories on the East Coast).

Join these RAISE members in their fight for change at raiseourstory.tumblr.com.

Antonio Antonio Vargas

Oscar consideration?

ONE OF the most visible undocumented immigrants is Filipno American Jose Antonio Vargas. His story about how he came to this country, went to college and eventually became a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter was turned into a documentary which may get an Oscar nomination according to the Hollywood Reporter.

The film, "Documented" is reportedly being promoted by Silicon Valley's Mark Zuckerberg to push for amnesty legislation. 

He moved out of the shadows in 2011 with an essay in The New York Times Magazine and ever since then, has worked towards immigration reform and amnesty for people like him who didn't discover his immigration status until he was a teenager.

Vargas' next film will "tackle quote-unquote 'whiteness' in America -- what it means to be young and white in post-Obama America."