The purpose of this research is to examine factors that led to changes in patterns of Asian American immigration in recent years. The plan of the research will be to set forth the background that makes exploration of these changes relevant and then to discuss the changes in more detail as well as the most important reasons that they came about.
The main factor of change in patterns of Asian immigration to America in the twentieth century can be summed up in two words from the title of the book edited by Ong, Bonacich, and Cheng: global restructuring, specifically shifts in the distribution of industrial priorities and division of labor for the benefit of holders and controllers of capital. Political policies can be seen to have played a role in this process, such as for example the Immigration Act of 1965, which formally put an end to racial restrictions on Asian immigration (Ong, Bonacich, and Cheng viii). But ultimately the role of capitalist economic struc tures must be seen as dominant, inasmuch as the 1965 Act itself can be interpreted as a response to the perception on the part of policy makers of the needs of capital for labor that could be efficiently provided by the expansion of Asian immigration quotas for the U.S. Ong, Bonacich, and Cheng cite the macroeconomic structure of the Pacific Rim, which includes the American west coast as well as the countries of the eastern Pacific Ocean, with influx of Asians into the U.S. being the focus of study. Within this economic environ ment, social forces influence adaptation and integration of Asian immigrants (Ong, Bonacich, and Cheng ix).
The 1965 Immigration Act opened the way for Asian immigration to change. The Act was made law partly because U.S. industrial economic activity in Asia and assertion of international leadership could not be politically reconciled with either official racist exclusion of certain immigrants or the advancing American civil rights movement (Ong, Bona...