U.S. Immigration: Asian and Latino Perspectives

Asians have a different perspective on immigration. To come to the U.S. from Asia, most likely requires a round trip ticket, and a valid visa (tourist, student, work, or immigrant visa), thus producing a perspective on immigration not completely aligned with what is prevalent among Latinos. The article notes that siblings of Filipinos who are U.S. citizens face a 23-year wait to get an immigrant visa! Think about that for a second: from the Asian perspective their relatives have to wait years in order to get an immigrant visa, why would they support amnesty for those who crossed the border and "jumped the line"? To be fair, amnesty does not mean permanent residency, but for those who have relatives who need to wait years, they would rather have their family here sooner rather than later, and for the most part, those family members cannot simply cross the border to the U.S. While most Asians I talk to recognize the hard work and the valuable contributions of the 11M illegal immigrants, their notion of immigration reform is focused on shortening the wait times for their friends and family.

With those thoughts in mind, the statistics cited below become less surprising. From the LA Times:

... Their priorities, however, are often different from Latinos'.

Statistics help explain why: Only about 8% to 10% of the Asian population is here illegally, compared with more than 20% of Latinos.

Latinos accounted for 78% of the nation's 11 million illegal migrants in 2005, compared with 13% from Asia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

As a result, Asian activists say, their communities are most concerned about reducing family visa backlogs — a goal opposed by some immigration-control groups. Asians also oppose other proposed measures that they say would harshly curtail the civil rights of legal immigrants.

Because their homelands are an ocean away, they are not as concerned with a proposed guest worker program or with enhanced border enforcement.

In addition, more Asians than Latinos are naturalized U.S. citizens, college-educated and professionally employed — attributes that may make some feel less connected to the struggles of predominantly low-skilled illegal immigrants.

... Although the majority of legal Asian immigrants support legalizing the undocumented, one recent multilingual poll sponsored by New America Media, an ethnic media consortium, showed that 39% favored the deportation of all illegal migrants, compared with 8% of legal Latino immigrants who held that view.

A 1994 Times exit poll showed that 47% of Asian Americans voted for Proposition 187, the state initiative that would have denied public benefits to illegal immigrants had it not been struck down by the courts. Less than a quarter of Latino voters supported it.

When San Gabriel attorney Shawn Chou recently spoke about immigration on one of Southern California's most popular Chinese-language radio shows, he said the response startled him: Well more than half of the callers opposed legalizing illegal immigrants, saying they were lawbreakers who shouldn't jump the line and would shrink the pool of public resources.

"If they cross the border illegally, you can't give them citizenship — it's somewhat unfair to people who waited in line," Joe Fong, 40, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Hong Kong, said at a Monterey Park coffee shop.

Overall, Asian American activists say their greatest priority is to ensure that the issue of more family visas does not get shortchanged in the current policy debate, which so far has focused on illegal immigration and guest worker plans.

Asians face among the longest waits of any immigrant group for relatives' visas. Filipino siblings of U.S. citizens, for instance, face a 23-year wait, according to the U.S. State Department website.