Tag Archives: immigration

On Being American

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As a daughter of immigrants, I’ve been very disturbed by Arizona’s immigration law and recent calls for courts to re-evaluate the citizenship-by-birth clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

As I have written before, my parents originally came from Taiwan to the United States to study. While they were here, they had me and my brother, and eventually decided to become naturalized citizens.

Because I have lived in the United States most of my life, I speak with an American accent and have American mannerisms. But my Asian hair texture, skin tone and eyes still seem to be what some people use when guessing my nationality. Although I am a U.S. citizen, thanks in part to the 14th Amendment, it seems not everyone understands this.

A few years ago, for example, my son’s teacher invited me to join his class at lunchtime. I was pleased by the opportunity to meet his classmates and anticipated being asked what I do for a living and other questions kids typically pose to visitors.

Instead, the only question I received was, “Do you speak English?”

At first, I was so stunned by the question that I couldn’t respond. I finally stammered out a brusque, “Yes,” then held my tongue as I felt my face flush with embarrassment and a touch of anger. Why would this child — who herself looked to be of Hispanic origin — wonder if I speak English? I may have Asian features, but why should this call into question my language ability?

The girl’s innocent question triggered a number of similar, unpleasant memories. Growing up, people sometimes would “compliment” me on how well I speak English — something I always found mildly offensive and ironic, considering how often my classmates asked me to edit their English compositions. (You can see where that led me, career-wise!)

Another question people would ask me was, “Where are you from?” When I would tell them that I was born in Buffalo, New York, they would respond, “No, I mean, where are you FROM?” I knew they really were asking, “What is your ancestry?” but I hated the implication that I’m not really American because of my ethnicity. (This past weekend a stranger in a grocery store asked me the same question, and I had to struggle to answer him politely.)

Yes, my parents are originally from Taiwan, but I’m American. I have a U.S. birth certificate, a Social Security number and a U.S. passport. I can contribute to political campaigns, vote in U.S. elections and work for the federal government. I am an Asian-American woman, not an Asian one.

As a co-worker wrote, you really can’t separate diversity from democracy in the United States, and immigration is part of what has made America strong. But it looks as though some people — adults and children — are still learning those facts.

Portrait of Peggy B. Hu in front of Yellowstone Lake

The author during a family vacation to Yellowstone National Park

Obama supports lawsuit to overturn Arizona immigration law

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President Obama backed the Justice Department’s lawsuit to overturn the Arizona immigration law Wednesday.

The Arizona law, which Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed in April, requires police to question anyone who appears to be in the country illegally. Critics have called it the strictest immigration law in the United States.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit charges that the new state law, which would take effect July 29, conflicts with federal law and would disrupt immigration enforcement. Obama has previously called the law “poorly conceived” and urged the U.S. Congress to enact national immigration reform.

In a press briefing Wednesday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama supports the lawsuit’s claim that it is unconstitutional “to have 50 states making a patchwork of immigration decisions.”

The White House decision to back the lawsuit is a controversial one. According to a May CBS News poll, 52 percent of Americans agree with the law and 17 percent think it doesn’t go far enough prevent illegal immigration.

Obama’s support of the lawsuit follows his speech July 1 about the need for comprehensive immigration reform.

Obama pushes for immigration reform

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President Obama

“The system is broken,” President Obama said today about American immigration laws. “And everybody knows it.”

The problem, the president said, is that political leaders have been hesitant to deal with such an emotional issue.

Immigrants provide a “steady stream of hard-working and talented people” who have “made America the engine of the global economy and a beacon of hope around the world,” Obama said.

But, “the presence of so many illegal immigrants makes a mockery of all those who are going through the process of immigrating legally.”

In his speech, Obama called for reforming the immigration system, saying businesses need to be held accountable for hiring or exploiting undocumented workers. He also said that illegal immigrants should “be required to register, pay their taxes, pay a fine and learn English. They must get right with the law before they can get in line and earn their citizenship.”

Immigration reform is needed to update the legal process of immigration as well, Obama said, noting that the process is slow and discourages those who come here on student visas to stay here and contribute to the American economy.
“Instead of training entrepreneurs to create jobs on our shores, we train our competition.”

Any immigration reform will need the approval of Congress, which political experts say is not going to be easy. Despite the hurdles, Obama said, “I’m ready to move forward.”

Is the United States Still the “Land of Opportunity”?

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Friends of mine have lost their jobs in the economic downturn that has hit the United States. And that some of them are having a hard time finding new jobs makes me wonder what has happened to America as the “land of opportunity.”

Experts at the Brookings Institution are analyzing preliminary data from the 2010 U.S. national census and are finding that if current trends continue, Americans could find themselves living in a far less equitable society.

According to Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution and Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, a comprehensive study found that currently whites and Asians are more than twice as likely to hold a bachelor’s degree as blacks and Latinos. In addition, the hourly earnings of low-wage American workers declined by 8 percent this decade while high-wage workers saw their pay rise by 3 percent.

With the United States fast becoming a majority-minority society, these educational and economic disparities could become polarizing, but Katz and Rodin say U.S. competitors “in Europe and Asia are either growing slowly, as in Japan and China; or actually declining, as in Germany and Russia. In a fiercely competitive world, demographic transformation may be America’s ace in the hole.”

Participants at a naturalization ceremony in Phoenix

Phoenix-area residents celebrate after being declared new U.S. citizens during a naturalization ceremony.

While this probably won’t cheer up my unemployed friends, the United States remains the “land of opportunity” for many. Millions of foreigners come here each year, and many chose to become U.S. citizens. In 2009 alone, more than 700,000 people became U.S. citizens, according to a recent report (PDF, 320KB) by the Office of Immigration Statistics for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Even for the billions of people in the world who have no interest in leaving home to pursue opportunity in the United States, there is the worry that any malaise in the United States will eventually affect their countries as well. The Obama administration, too, has linked democracy and human rights to the freedom “to seize the opportunities of a full life.”

Do you think the United States is living up to its old image as the “land of opportunity”?

The United States is Still Open to Visitors

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President Obama says there are increased security measures that many travelers to the United States may have to cope with following the attempted attack on an airliner bound for Detroit on Christmas.

“Just as al Qaeda and its allies are constantly evolving and adapting their efforts to strike us, we have to constantly adapt and evolve to defeat them, because as we saw on Christmas, the margin for error is slim and the consequences of failure can be catastrophic,” he said after meeting with his national security team January 5.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is mandating enhanced screening for all air passengers coming to the United States from the four countries designated as state sponsors of terrorism (Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria), and ten other “countries of interest” (Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen). The TSA says the “countries of interest” list is under constant review and may be modified as circumstances warrant.

But at the same time, the Obama administration is also reminding the world that the United States still welcomes visitors, the overwhelming majority of whom come as tourists, students or for work or business purposes. Travelers to United States are important not only for its tourism industry, but also to foster goodwill and mutual understanding.

At the State Department, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs P.J. Crowley said the interaction between Americans and their guests is “actually part of the process by which ultimately we will defeat and mitigate political extremism.”

“We’re not closing our doors to the United States; far from it,” he said. “We’re going to make sure that the process by which people come here and travel here is as safe as it can be.”

Obama sets the latest refugee quotas

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President Obama has authorized up to 80,000 refugees to enter the United States during the 2010 fiscal year (FY), which begins today, October 1. In a presidential determination, he specified what is known as the “refugee ceiling” or the maximum number of refugees allowed from each world region. The figure includes an “unallocated reserve” designed to accommodate unforeseen crises, and specifies that immigrants from Cuba, the former Soviet Union, Iraq, and those identified by U.S. embassies as having “exceptional circumstances” will, “if otherwise qualified” to enter the U.S., also be considered refugees.

The president said his administration is “committed to maintaining a robust refugee admissions program,” which has been an important part of the overall U.S. effort in “support of vulnerable people around the world.” Citing the recent global economic downturn, Obama said an in-depth review of the program was done “with the goal of strengthening support to both the refugees and the communities in which they are being resettled.”

I decided to do a little review of my own, comparing the latest figures with those of a few previous years (FY 2007-FY2010). Not surprisingly, I found that presidents adjust the numbers and allocations for refugee admissions each year, perhaps to reflect the latest needs assessments from their advisers.

There were some interesting developments. For example, in FY 2008 then-President Bush increased the allowed number of refugees from 70,000 to the current 80,000 level, and much of that went towards allowing a dramatic increase in refugees (+22,500) from the Near East and South Asia. In FY 2009, an additional 9,000 were allowed from those regions and President Bush specified that those coming from Iraq would be considered refugees. But during both years, Bush made cuts to the numbers of refugees coming from Africa, Europe and Central Asia.

By comparison to the previous two years, President Obama’s adjustments today were fairly modest. He increased the number of those coming from Africa by 3,500, with the current level now at 15,500. The Latin America/Caribbean region was increased by 500 to 5,000. East Asia and the Near East/South Asia were both decreased by 2,000 for a total of 17,000 and 35,000, respectively, and the numbers for Europe/Central Asia and the unallocated reserve were unchanged at 2,500 and 5,000 respectively.

Marking World Refugee Day on June 20, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the United States is the world’s largest donor for refugee relief, contributing $1.4 billion in 2008, and “nearly 3 million refugees have made new homes in the United States, more than any other nation in the world.”

What are your thoughts on President Obama’s refugee quota? How do you think these kinds of decisions should be made?

Power of faith in America

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Speaking at the Esperanza National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast today, President Obama discussed “the power of faith in America.”

“Each of us come from many different places. We trace our roots back to different nations, and we represent a broad spectrum of personal and political beliefs,” Obama said. “But all of us pray to God. All of us share a determination to build a better future for our children and grandchildren. And that must be a starting point for common ground.”

Obama also talked about immigration. “We must never forget that time and again, the promise of America has been renewed by immigrants who make their story part of the American story,” he said. While Americans favor immigration, they also believe in the importance of immigrants arriving, and staying, in the United States legally, the president said.

A transcript of the president’s remarks is available on the White House Web site.

Legalize Me! Realize Me!

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(I’m listening to “Immigrant Punk” by Gogol Bordello)

In Baltimore, Maryland during the 1850’s, despite not speaking a word of English, my newly arrived ancestors from Germany discovered that not everyone was thrilled that they were there. 

Many American-born citizens were feeling overwhelmed and dispossessed by the waves of German and Irish immigrants, who were willing to work for lower wages and were viewed with suspicion because large numbers of the newcomers were Catholic. 

A secret nativist society, called the “Know Nothings” because members were instructed to answer “I know nothing,” when asked about their affiliation or views, grew strong enough to become a powerful political organization called the American Party, and its supporters routinely used violence to intimidate the immigrants, especially during election season to discourage them from voting.

The American Party’s 1856 platform stated that “Americans must rule America, and to this end native-born citizens should be selected for all State, Federal, and municipal offices of government employment, in preference to all others.”  It also demanded that immigrants should live 21 years in the United States (the period was then five years) before becoming eligible for citizenship.

[image src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/4110/week_1/060509_270px-Fillmore2_500.jpg" caption="Fillmore/Donelson campaign poster" citelink="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fillmore2.JPG" align="left"]Their main opposition was the Democratic Party which, ironically, was then the party supporting slavery.   The Democrats’ 1856 party platform described the United States as “the land of liberty and the asylum of the oppressed of every nation,” and said “every attempt to abridge the privilege of becoming citizens and owning soil among us ought to be resented.”   In the 1856 presidential vote, Democrat James Buchanan won in a landslide over American Party challenger and former President Millard Fillmore.

The fact that a political party that was mainly formed to oppose to minority groups became one of the two main political parties of the time makes me wonder: was this a case of free speech gone too far?  Or did their ultimate defeat prove Thomas Jefferson’s statement that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

Oh Say Can Yu Vote?

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As Michelle and Michael have written, sometimes Americans wonder whether or not to vote. But for some Americans, the issue is being able to vote in the first place.

In a video of an April 7 state legislative hearing, Texas lawmaker Betty Brown and Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey Ko discuss proposed voter identification requirements in Texas. Ko notes that some people of Asian descent have had trouble voting in a number of states because some of their identification papers use legal names transliterated from Asian languages while others include nicknames adopted for everyday use. Others have had problems because of variations in how their names are spelled on documents. Both Brown and Ko agree voters should present proof of identity to participate in elections.

A voter hands over his identification as he registers to vote.During the discussion, Brown asks Ko if “it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here.” She immediately adds that she is “not talking about changing your name,” but then later asks “if there were some means by which you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that was easier for Americans to deal with?”

Brown’s comments have generated a lot of attention in the Asian-American community, including the blog Asian-Nation, the Asian American Action Fund, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Organization of Chinese Americans. I personally find Brown’s comments troubling. The United States is a land of immigrants, and the diversity of our names is a part of our cultural heritage. People of any background – Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latin American or European – should not be asked to adopt different names for identification purposes because others find their true names hard to spell or pronounce.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that many immigrants and naturalized citizens do adopt nicknames for daily use that often are included on common forms of identification such as student IDs, work IDs and driver’s licenses. Should people be allowed to use these documents to register to vote and, when necessary, prove their identity at the polls? Or should they be required to show additional documents that list their legal names, such as naturalization certificates or passports? When there are variations in spelling, how much discretion should voter registration and poll workers have in verifying identification? How can these workers certify people as eligible to vote without unduly burdening anyone?

Thanks to the Watergate Scandal

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I am an American, thanks to the Watergate scandal.

My parents first came to the United States in 1964 as graduate students from Taiwan. My mother was pursuing a doctorate in cell-and-molecular biology, and my father was working on a master’s degree in civil engineering. After a few years, they got married and had two kids. My parents duly registered the births with their hometown in Taiwan under the assumption that the family would return there once they had completed their studies.

[image src="http://photos.state.gov/libraries/amgov/133183/week_4/042809_AP730420013_300.jpg" caption="The Watergate Complex in Washington in 1973" align="left"]On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington. The arrests changed the lives of my immediate family.

My parents followed the news of what became known as the Watergate scandal with great interest. The charges that the five men were connected with President Nixon’s re-election committee; that members of that committee were involved in wiretapping, the illegal transfer of funds and other crimes; and that the White House had tried to prevent the release of evidence under the grounds of national security and have Justice Department employees fired did not really surprise them. What did surprise them was the fact that these charges were being openly reported and acted upon. Rather than being arrested and put in jail, reporters from major news organizations continued to publish stories that cast a bad light on politically powerful men, and lawyers continued to accuse high-ranking officials of crimes.

When President Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, as a result of the scandal, my parents marveled that a country could overturn its leader without resorting to a coup. (Taiwan at the time was under martial law.) The downfall of a U.S. president was a source of wonder to my parents rather than one of shame. The ability to bring down someone so powerful without bloodshed demonstrated to them the strength of America’s freedom of the press and the integrity of its justice system. Because of Watergate, my parents decided to raise their American-born children in the United States rather than Taiwan, and eventually become American citizens themselves.

And so, I give thanks to Watergate.