Encyclopedia of Sociology

ASIAN-AMERICAN STUDIES

particularly from the perspective of U.S. immigra-
tion history, the racial overtone is muted by the
inclusion in the 1980 census of people from India
in the ‘‘Asian and Pacific Islander’’ category; they
had been classified as ‘‘white’’ prior to 1980.

IMMIGRATION AND RESTRICTIONS OF

ASIAN AMERICANS

Asian immigration can be divided into two peri-
ods: the old and the new. The old immigration
period was marked by nonoverlapping waves of
distinct Asian populations who came largely in
response to the sociopolitical conditions in their
homelands and to the shortage of unskilled labor
experienced by special-interest groups in the Unit-
ed States. The new immigration was characterized
by the simultaneous arrival of people from the
Asia-Pacific Triangle, spurred principally by the
1965 legislative reforms in U.S. immigration poli-
cy, shortages of certain skilled and professional
labor, the involvement of United States in Asia,
and the sociopolitical situations in Asia in the
context of the Cold War. In between these two
waves, there was another wave of Asian immi-
grants, who came between the end of World War
II and the mid 1960s, though the number was
small and involved principally Filipinos and their
families because of their services in the US mili-
tary. This group came outside the fifty-person
quota allowed for Filipinos as a result of the Tydings-
McDuffie Act of 1935 when the Republic of the
Philippines was granted independence.

The year 1848 marked the beginning of Asian
immigration to the United States when the coastal
Chinese—mostly from Guangdong—responded to
the California gold rush and failures in the rural
economy of China. Within fewer than thirty-five
years, the Chinese became the first group in U.S.
history to be legally barred from becoming citizens
because of race. The 1882 Anti-Chinese Exclusion
Act was followed by an influx of immigrants from
the southern prefectures of Japan during the last
decade of the nineteenth century—until that flow
ended abruptly with the so-called ‘‘Gentlemen’s
Agreement’’ of 1907–1908. Unlike the termina-
tion of Chinese immigration, and reflecting Ja-
pan’s position as a world power, cessation of entry
by Japanese was accomplished through a diplo-
matic compromise between the two governments
rather than through an act of Congress. Without a

continuous flow of Japanese farm workers to ease

the labor shortage on the Hawaiian plantations,

contractors turned to the Philippine Islands—

which had been a U.S. possession since 1898—for

cheap labor. From 1906 to the independence of

the Republic of the Philippines in 1946, over

125,000 (predominantly single) Filipino males, the

majority of them from the Ilocos region, labored

on Hawaiian sugar plantations.

The exclusions of Asians enacted into the

National Origins Act of 1924 essentially remained

in effect until 1965. By Act of Congress in 1943,

however, 105 Chinese were permitted to immi-

grate annually, and in 1952, under the McCarran-

Walter Act, a token one hundred persons from

each Asian country were allowed entry. The sym-

bolic opening of immigration doors to Asians was

attributed to Walter Judd, a congressman from

Minnesota who had spent many years in China as a

medical missionary. The provision of a quota of

one hundred persons seemed to be an important

moral victory for those who wanted the elimina-

tion of the exclusion act, but it was in fact a

restatement of the 1924 national origin quota

basis for immigration.

The new stream of Asian immigrants to the

United States reflected the 1965 legislative reform

that allowed an equal number of persons (20,000)

from each country outside the Western Hemi-

sphere to immigrate. Furthermore, family unifica-

tion and needed skills became the major admis-

sion criteria, replacing national origin. Besides

China and the Philippines, Korea and the Indian

sub-continent became, and continue to be, the

major countries of origin of many newly arrived

Asian immigrants. Refugees from Vietnam, Cam-

bodia, and Laos began to enter the United States

in 1975, and by 1990, peoples from the former

Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) had

become the third-largest Asian group, following

Chinese and Filipinos. In contrast, Japan’s immi-

gration to the United States practically ceased

from 1945 to 1965, when it resumed at a much

lower rate than those reported for other Asian

countries.

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES OF

IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

Several distinct demographic characteristics illus-

trate most graphically past restrictions and the