Asian Americans in the Immigration Debates

Neela Banerjee
April 13, 2006

Longtime San Francisco Chinatown activist Norman Fong was in the lead of the Salon coverage of the protest. He said: “From my community in Chinatown, I see this as a good unifying issue.” It is really interesting to see the voices of other communities come up in the media coverage. New America Media – where I work – has been making a big effort to round up Asian American responses to HR 4437.

Now, there is a lot of talk stirring about the call for a national Day Without Immigrants boycott on May Day -- May 1st. There seems to be a lot of support building for this. It would be interesting to track how many Asian American organizations and businesses participate in this.

Speaking of immigrant communities that are affected by HR 4437 -- if you have never actually read the legislation, you should check it out, it’s nuts – I am curious about responses to these immigration reforms from other communities, especially the Arab American community. I feel like the media has been especially quiet concerning this group. Anyone seen or heard anything?

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Comments

Comments

tim fong wrote on Thu, 04/13/2006 - 8:28pm
I saw a couple of Chinese guys in the background of an MSNBC report from NYC. They looked like they were straight from the mainland.As to why APAs aren't more in the mix...couple of ideas:1. the college educated crowd has been sensitized to "media represenation issues," but not to looking at things in a broader critique. i.e, doesn't affect them, so they don't care.2. perhaps there is some racism in the Asian American community? Let's not pretend that doesn't exist...perhaps there is some reluctance to be associated with a cause that is heavily Latino.3. Newer generation Asian Ams came with documents for the most part, this feeds into 1.
Anonymous wrote on Mon, 06/05/2006 - 1:43pm
Immigration is a race issue. Funny how Dave said this a while ago. Now we get the news about it.http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060605/ap_on_re_us/immigration_racism_1;_ylt=Ao1QNxB4gy3yZTHd_8VMlWlQuk0A;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Michael wrote on Fri, 04/14/2006 - 11:31am
This not a fight over immigration. This is a fight over ILLEGAL immigration. I and many other asians, latinos, and others waited in line to come over here LEGALLY. I didn't just run over here. I don't understand why asians should support this movement. The US immigrations deport Chinese who try to sneak over here through the shipping boats, while they turn a blind's eye to the Illegal Mexican crossing the borders. This is discrimnation. The problem is that Chinese gets deported because, Asians don't have enough political clout.If there is some sort of guess worker's program, will Chinese or other Asian worker be allow to stay and work themselves into Citizenship. I highly doubt that, but hope it works both ways. Otherwise, its just plain discrimination.The Day Without Immigrats is more like The Day Without Illegal Immigrats. They claim to hold the job that Americans won't do, so America's grass will grow a little taller and the toilet will go uncleansed. I myself can't afford to hired any Illegal Immigrants, so I feel no pain.The truth is, this movement is not a protection for all immigrants. This is just a movement to protect the Illegal Immigration who shouldn't be here in the first place.What do you think will happen if they have a guess workers program? 12-20 Millions Mexican workers gets Citizenship 5 years from now. What about 10 years from now or 20 years from now. My as well just annexed Mexico. Once you have a legitimate low wages workers, they will all be unionized sooner or later. You are going to have the House Cleaning Union, Strawberry Picker Union or the Chinese Fast Food Union. The new lower class will just be displaced by the new arriving Illegals coming across the border. The ones that became citizines will just be displaced by the newer arriving Illegals, creating poor legal citizen wokers WITHOUT jobs because everyone hires *Illegal* for cheap.At the end, the only people get hurt the most are the Legal Americans - Mexican, Latinos, Blacks, Hispanics, Chinese and the likes.So - I asked you - Why should we support Illegal Immigrations?

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