Policy and Historical Implications for East Asian Immigration and Education in the United States

• In Event: 15.060 - MTCC Roundtable Session One
  In Roundtable Session: 15.060-6 - Historical and Social Contexts That Shape Diverse Asian American Communities and Their Educational Outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the historical and social contexts experienced by three East Asian American subgroups (Chinese, Korean, and Japanese) through the “Asian American modes of incorporation framework” (Paik et al., 2014). Paik et al.’s (2014) theoretical framework involves four key factors that contribute to the immigrants’ experiences by the host country as being either positive, neutral, or negative. Through this model, 1) Government Policy, 2) Societal Reception, 3) Co-ethnic Communities, and 4) Other Barriers & Opportunities were further explored. Other Barriers & Opportunities is a critical factor for Asian immigrants in the U.S. as it includes the time of arrival, location and settlement patterns, class status, occupation, educational level, and language fluency of the host country.

This paper intends to provide: 1) a better understanding to the broader contextual factors within the East Asian communities through the application of the Asian American modes of incorporation framework (Paik et al., 2014); 2) historical background on the experiences of East Asian communities in the U.S.; 3) current demographic, immigration, education, and economic data; 4) recent trends in education and policies that can affect present-day East Asian immigrant communities; and, 5) a discussion of how this information can inform educators, and policy makers in order to support East Asian American and immigrant communities.

In previous immigration waves, the Asian American modes of incorporation framework has been applied to gain a better grasp of the successes and challenges that each group faced. Today, the framework can be applied to East Asian immigrants and their communities as the trend of international students in the United States continues to rise with Chinese, Korean, and Japanese being within the top 10 countries of origin (Zong & Batalova, 2018). At the same time, the residing East Asian Americans are also affected.

Presently the nation is facing a change in the policies of recent immigrants. Under the new administration, these changes can impact the educational and economic trajectory of the recent immigrant population already settled in the U.S., as well as those planning to enter. Executive Order 13769 or more widely known as Trump’s travel ban made international headlines and was met with great contention as it reverberated the anti-immigration acts from the previous two centuries such as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which barred Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. for more than half a century (Trump, 2017a). Other Executive Orders that had once helped many of the Asian immigrants entering the U.S. are now being amended (Connor, 2017; Trump, 2017a, 2017b). Present day policy changes with the East Asian immigrant population will be explored as well as the impact policy changes have on societal reception of these groups with discussion of educational and occupational outcomes (Wike, 2017).

Author

• Lorine Erika Saito, Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education & Psychology