American Dreaming: The centuries-old market for Asian Immigrants

Part I of APASA’s American Dreaming, an essay series by APASA intern Yusuf Rahman

The family of Vaishno Das Bagai, a Sikh immigrant from India to San Francisco in the early 20th century. He became a naturalized citizen in 1923, but by court order, it was revoked and his family lost their home and business. Source: CNN

I vividly remember when, in my sophomore year of high school, one of my Desi classmates asked me which type of Pakistani my family was: the doctor or the engineering kind. It was an odd question, because my mom actually ran a small business doing tailoring and clothing design. We also lived in a part of town that was far lower income than where my school was located, so it was certainly quite awkward to answer and expose myself. 

But the question wasn’t an entirely unfounded one, no matter how reductive. Growing up, it always seemed like my Asian American peers had the same in-jokes, the same stories about being presented with only three career options (can you guess them?), the same identical suburban lifestyles. 

We love to paint Asian America with this brush of affluence and comfort. Whether we were expressing our frustrations over the pressures to attend elite universities or the hours we spent on tutoring for the SAT, it was an image that was familiar to many of us. Yet as I grew older and began to better understand my socioeconomic status, I questioned why my life was so much different from my friends. 

It turned out, there’s a far different reality that many Asian Americans face today. While my Pakistani and Indian classmates lived in quiet towns of new money, there were people like my family, who often relied on food stamps or lived in cramped apartments to survive since coming to America. There were communities like the Hmong people who grew up in lower-income neighborhoods in Fresno. Those people didn’t come in two varieties, “engineer” or “doctor,” like my classmate had laughed about. 

We brush these communities to the side, more often than not, as financial barriers are often in conflict with what we experienced growing up Asian. The truth is, however, no matter how uncomfortable to discuss, class stratification pierces through this community. Eviction rates are on the rise in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. The pandemic has destabilized small business owners. 

How is it that we ended up with such stark divides? 

It is lofty to think about, but when one considers the origins of immigration from Asia, it becomes clear that today’s economic injustice was centuries in the making. We have a shared history of labor exploitation and class oppression, that when investigated, reveals that today’s barriers were inevitable.

The California Gold Rush is a prudent place to start. Beginning in 1848, it ultimately tied the making of Asian America to labor rights and worker oppression for the decades to come. The story is often told as follows. Tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants arrived in the San Francisco area in hopes of finding rumored mountains of gold. After arriving, however, gold was scarce to find and many of these immigrants suffered from poverty and discrimination. The reality was even more brutal than this, though, and the Gold Rush would pave the way for decades of discrimination, particularly on economic lines. 

In fact, poverty was extremely pronounced as merchants in San Francisco took advantage of Chinese migrants, severely marking up the prices of basic goods like eggs, costing more than $25 a piece in today’s money. Thus, many of these immigrants took up other occupations to make ends meet and became cooks, launderers, and more while still facing discriminatory wages and hiring practices. Essentially, Chinese immigrants became trapped in new lives as underpaid workers, who could neither afford to go back home nor support their own lives in the U.S.

As industrialists realized that immigrants could become a source for demanding labor, they turned towards the Chinese community, legally underpaying them and subjecting them to backbreaking work. The creation of the Central Pacific Railroad, which sought to connect the country by train in California, is a prime example. By 1865, nearly 10,000 laborers began work on the railroad, many of whom were new immigrants joining those already in the region since the Gold Rush. Conditions were brutal, forcing people to work in poor weather while facing illness and unequal wages compared to white workers. 

This was the reality for early immigrants from Asia: cold and industrial, seen as simple, logical solutions to fulfill undesirable labor requirements. With increases in sinophobic sentiment and the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, however, companies in need of labor throughout America merely moved on to other Asian nations as potential sources for difficult work. If one low-income Asian country was no longer allowed immigration, then corporatists would simply go to the next one over. 

At least, this was the scene that emerged within Hawaii in the late 1800s and throughout the 20th century. In 1884, Japan began permitting people to migrate to Hawaii to work in the sugar plantations, as the industry was booming and the current labor supply was insufficient to meet demand. To recruit farmers from southern Japan who faced poor crop yields to join Native Hawaiians and other ethnic groups, many were promised high wages and the potential for a new, more successful life for them and their families. By 1868, Japanese workers were already (even if not legally) coming to Hawaii to work on plantations, and by 1886, more immigrants came by the thousands. 
Yet in a repeat of history, plantation life turned out to be incredibly harsh and exploitative, with workers stuck in contracts. In fact, these immigrants were forced to work upwards of twelve hours a day at only six cents per hour. Poor living conditions also caused illness to spike, and any attempt of protest or escape was met with jail and physical punishment. Despite this struggle, there was a steady political uprising among workers who were forming a unity to demand better conditions.

But these protests resulted in an unexpected move from plantation owners. Seeking to quell their restless workforce, they sought to create division among laborers, going so far as to once again use immigration as a tool to stoke tension. They contracted Filipino workers and created race-based wages where certain workers were paid more—though, no one was actually paid fairly—in an effort to incite conflict and deflect attention. 

Eventually, strikers achieved key victories by the 1920s, but the precedent had already been set. By the turn of the century, immigration was a tool for political strategy, domestic and abroad. For some decades as the U.S. became more isolationist and racism persisted, Asian immigration became severely restricted. The passage of the Foran Act in 1885, for example, forbade companies from bringing in immigrant workers on contract, accelerating the idea that immigrants posed a threat, even if they were coming for work. 

Although in practice, the law was difficult to enforce, the Foran Act pioneered the concept of specialized immigration. A key clause within the act made exceptions for certain professionals, like actors or workers deemed skilled, but also “persons employed strictly as domestic or personal servants.” Immigration was now legislatively solidified as a process primarily used for economic reasons above anything else at the cost of tainting a white majority. With further passage of The Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907, which blocked further arrival of Japanese workers, and the 1924 National Origins Act that effectively ended immigration of all Asians, many previous immigrants were condemned to impoverishment for years to come.

Take the story of Sikh immigrant Vashno Das Bagai, for example. After the court in Oregon ruled that because Indian Americans were not white in 1923, South Asians were no longer allowed to become citizens. Das Bagai, who lived in San Francisco as a naturalized citizen since 1921, suddenly had his own status revoked following the court decision. Having achieved significant economic mobility by creating a successful shop, he and his family found themselves losing their property—something non-citizens could not own. His struggles didn’t end there, as he then lost his home and could no longer return to India as a stateless person. Just as he managed to climb a few rungs on the social ladder, he was thrown back to the bottom.

In 1928, Das Bagai committed suicide, leaving a letter detailing his trauma. The law now became the most potent weapon for subjugation of Asian immigrants, able to strip livelihood from anyone. This is the reality we all must come to terms with about Asian American history. Far too few of us know the stories of people like Das Bagai, and far too few of us realize that our heritage is rooted in the subjugation of the disenfranchised and the homeless. 

Such tragedies should not be surprising though, because as the years passed, the legal system of immigration was not being designed with human wellbeing in mind. It was instead a method of maintaining socioeconomic hierarchy. By World War II, immigration became politically convenient when international alliances became crucial for the United States. On one hand, Japanese Americans were funneled into internment camps on the basis that they could present a threat. On the other, naturalization rights were once again extended to Indian and Filipino people, because building alliances with those respective countries could prove useful in combating German propaganda and advancing the American position. 

Culturally, too, common narratives started to shift to what was useful for the white majority. Chinese immigrants began to be viewed as more desirable when they began to attain more technical jobs and even fought in the military, moving away from agriculture and other industries seen as unskilled or primitive. This is where the model minority myth began to materialize, as white media began cherry-picking Asian American success stories to further subjugate other racial groups, primarily Black Americans, through an ‘if they can do it so can you’ mentality. 

In reality, social stratification within the Asian community was soaring as such narratives began to dominate and legislation continued to promote specialized, skilled immigration. The law continued to change in drastic ways, and by 1965, Congress would enact an admittance process that would emphasize professional skills while doing away with national origin as a criterion. A move to create equality, what resulted instead was a concentration of immigrants that were already wealthy and well-educated. The more immigrants that came from well-off backgrounds, the easier it was to tout the existence of a model minority.

Certainly, it was a good thing that many were able to come to America and find financial success. However, many Asian ethnic groups began to be left in the dust. As the Vietnam War progressed and refugees from throughout Asia were allowed entry, many continued to encounter poverty as they faced language barriers and discrimination. 

By 1990, the disparity became clear: 88% of Japanese Americans would have high school diplomas, but only 64% of Tongan Americans would have attained the same level of education. 31 years later in 2021, Burmese Americans have an average income of just $44,000, nearly half of the national average of all groups. 

Other ethnic groups within the Asian community have similar backgrounds, even if they aren’t at the forefront of the discussion. The Hmong community, as of 2019, has nearly double the poverty rate of all Asian Americans on average. Yet these were not the facts that my high school classmates were thinking about as they inquired about my origins. Even now, as a college student, this awareness is still startlingly lacking. 

I am happy to know that many of my friends have parents that are doctors or engineers, or upper-middle class in general, who have managed to find success in a deeply hostile country. To survive as an immigrant in this country is quite commendable. Of course, though, I think back to people like my own family. For as many success stories as we hear in the media, there are dozens who still struggle every day in this same, deeply hostile country. 

Perhaps this is what our history is trying to tell us.