Today there are some 19 million Asian Americans who contribute in all facets of society. Below are but some of the more notable members of this strong community.
- Norman Yoshio Mineta, appointed secretary of commerce in 2000.
- Elaine Chao, the first female Asian-American cabinet member, appointed secretary of labor in 2001.
- Mazie Hirono, the first Asian American female senator appointed in 2013.
- Dalip Singh Saund (1899 – 1973) The first Asian Indian American to be elected to Congress (1956) and only person of the Sikh faith ever to serve thus far.
- Amy Tan - (1952 - ) Multi-award winning Chinese American author (Joy Luck Club, The Bonesetter’s Daughter)
- Vera Wang (1949 - ) Chinese American noted fashion designer, former senior fashion editor of Vogue Magazine known for her great fashion sense especially in wedding gowns and formal wear.
- Kristi Yamaguchi (1971 - ) Japanese Filipino American Olympic figure skater and World Champion.
- Jerry Yang (1968 - ) Taiwan Chinese American co-founder of Yahoo!
Gen, Our Roots, is a Reminder of this History of Strife & the Stories We Must Remember
As portrayed in the excellent PBS documentary Becoming American - The Chinese Experience, Chinese immigrants worked as small time merchants, gardeners, domestics, laundry workers, farmers, and starting in 1865, as railroad workers on the famous Transcontinental Railroad project.
At its peak, 9,000 to 12,000 Chinese worked for the Central Pacific in some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs (different sources have different estimates on exact numbers). Many sources claim that up to 1,000 Chinese died during the project as a result of avalanches and explosive accidents as they carved their way through the Sierra Mountains (other sources claim much lower numbers of casualties).
Even though the Chinese workers performed virtually all of the hardest, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs, they were only paid 60% of what European immigrant workers got paid. The Chinese workers actually went on strike for a few days and demanded that they get paid the same amount as the other ethnic groups. Officials of the Central Pacific were able to end the strike and force the Chinese workers back to work by cutting off their food supply and starving them into submission.
The project was completed on May 10, 1869 and a famous ceremony was staged where the two railroad lines met in Promontory Point, Utah. You might have seen the famous photograph were everybody posed in front of two train engines facing each other. Although a handful of Chinese workers were allowed to participate in the final ceremony and a small group were personally congratulated by Stanford Leland and his partners who financed the project, perhaps not too shocking, the Chinese workers were forbidden from appearing in the famous photograph of the ceremony, even though without their work and their lives, the project may never have been completed. Further, as Helen Zia points out in her excellent book Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People:
The speeches congratulated European immigrant workers for their labor but never mentioned the Chinese. Instead, Chinese men were summarily fired and forced to walk the long distance back to San Francisco — forbidden to ride on the railroad they built.
After they returned to California, the Chinese increasingly became the targets of racial attacks and discriminatory legislation because their labor was no longer needed and Whites began seeing them as an economic threat. This anti-Chinese movement, which was accompanied by numerous anti-Chinese riots, lynchings, and murders (including Tacoma, Washington and most famously at Rock Springs, Wyoming), culminated with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This act barred virtually all immigration from China and prevented all Chinese already in the U.S. from becoming U.S. citizens, even their American-born children. For the first time in U.S. history, a specific ethnic group was singled out and forbidden to enter the U.S.
A More Diverse Group
In 1979, the United States and China resumed diplomatic relations, making immigration easier for Chinese. But, new arrivals came from other Asian countries as well, including India and Pakistan. And in 1975 following the Vietnam War, more than 130,000 refugees fleeing from the Communist governments of Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos arrived on U.S. shores. Million of Asians arrived in subsequent years.
In 1980, more than 2.5 million Asian immigrants entered the U.S., up from under 500,000 in 1960.
The Immigration Act of 1990 increased the numbers of Asians coming to the U.S. by raising the total quota and reorganizing system of preferences to favor certain professional groups. This allowed Asians with training in medicine, high technology, and other specialties to enter more easily. From 5 million in 1990, the number of Asian immigrants more than doubled by 2009, reaching 10.6 million.
Read more: Asian-American History | Infoplease.com http://www.infoplease.com/spot/immigration1.html#ixzz31sPdjoZp