You may have noticed it yourself — the number of documented Asian immigrants to the United States has exceeded that of Latino immigrants. A recent Pew study has documented the numbers. The study finds that the current crop of Asian immigrants tends to be both better educated than other immigrant groups and better educated than their peers in their home countries. Asian immigrants also will be more likely to enter the United States through employment-based immigrant petitions than other immigrant groups.
Although my family entered the United States on a family immigrant petition, my mother, who was a computer programmer knowledgeable in Pascal, COBOL, and ADABAS-Natural – computer languages highly sought after in the United States in the late eighties and early nineties – was also a potential candidate for an employment-based immigrant petition. In other ways my family fits the trend documented by the Pew Study. My father has a medical degree, my mother a law degree. My brother and I were too young to have accumulated advanced degrees at the time we came to the United States, but I eventually got my bachelor’s and law degree, and my brother has a bachelor’s and a master’s and is working on a second master’s. My parents and I were recently mentioned, among others, in a Philadelphia Inquirer article about the changing trend in immigration.
However, trends can sometimes obscure individual realities, and serve as a convenient excuse to ignore vulnerable, needy populations. While currently arriving immigrants from Asian countries may include a high proportion of highly skilled and educated individuals, this does not mean that all Asian immigrants are so well off that they do not need help and outreach. Asian immigration over the history of America has included waves of laborers and refugees as well as educated professionals. Refugee populations in particular can be particularly vulnerable when learning how to live in a new country. Refugees generally do not arrive in an orderly, planned fashion, bringing with them money and resources and perhaps English language ability already. Refugees can arrive in a new country with a few meager belongings, few or no relatives with them or already in place to support them, few work skills, limited education, and not knowing how to speak the language of their new home. Asian refugees often come from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and East Timor.
Refugees are displaced people. People who can no longer live in their home countries for fear of losing their lives or those of family members. They often need intensive support services from government, private non-profit agencies, and informal community networks to adapt well to their new homes. Sometimes support services are available, and sometimes they are not, and refugees have to make do. It may not be too surprising then, that some Asian immigrants, especially those from refugee backgrounds, still struggle to get by and still need support services.
While I am glad to think that more and more of the incoming Asian immigrants today are highly skilled and educated, and will probably become valued and sought-after employees and dynamic entrepreneurs, I know from personal experience that this is just one facet of Asian immigration. Like most things in life, while labels and categories are convenient to help organize our thinking, they should be a guide only, and not become rigid walls that stop us from recognizing the real factors that affect people’s lives.