Chapter 8 notes of Helen Zia's Asian American Dreams book. One of the designated chapter books for UCI's Asian American Communities course (AsianAm52).
Chapter 8: “For Richer, for Poorer”
Chapter Questions:
➔ What industries do South Asian immigrants enter?
➔ Many took up menial jobs as busboys and sweatshop workers. A majority of the
taxi cab driver pop was Asian Indian. Bc of “Brain Drain,” however, some ethnic
groups made skilled professions their economic niche. Ex many “healthcare
professionals emigrated from the PI.”
➔ Over 900,000 immigrated after 1965, compared to the few thousand immigrants
previously.
➔ How does income and class play a factor in creating communities and organizing?
➔ An example would be The IndUS Entrepreneurs, a business that consists mostly
of successful South Asian entrepreneurs. Despite being the “wealthy extreme” on
the US immigrant spectrum, they use their resources to integrate future
generations of immigrants into American society.
➔ In what ways does class (and even gender) play into ideas of assimilation and
stereotyping?
➔ The migration of highly-skilled professionals after 1965 correlated with the model
minority myth. Success stories of those like members of TIE overshadow the
increasing Asianam poverty of the working class Asianam and Vietnam war
refugees.
➔ Zia wrote this book in 2000. Have things changed since then?
➔ Not by much. Many details of her book are still in effect today. For example, when I
volunteered at a convalescent center in Sharp, a majority of the nursing staff were
Filipino women, who mainly spoke in Tagalog.
● 1965 Immigration Act “allowed family members of long-ago immigrants who were now
US citizens to come to America.”
● The American Dream doesn’t apply to those “with little money and limited English.”
Immigrants take up menial jobs as busboys, sweatshop workers, cab drivers, etc.
● Majority of South Asians came after 1965
● Majority of cab drivers in NYC were from Pakistan, Bangladesh, or India; in 1998 South
Asian cab drivers and the NY Taxi Workers Alliance staged a successful strike against
Mayor Giuliani. Wanted to bring attention to their derision as immigrants and taxi drivers.
● Many didn’t classify themselves as Asianam.
● At one end of the immigrant spectrum, entrepreneurs were the “wealthy extreme” of the
4.5 mil Asian immigrants who migrated between 1970-90s. At the other end were
refugees of the Vietnam war. Example: In Silicon Valley, poor refugees worked in the
assembly lines of factories owned by rich Asian immigrants, producing technology
“created by The IndUS Entrepreneurs.”
● The I in “TIE” represents the Indian subcontinent, the “birthplace of many of its
membership.” However, their focus is mainly to integrate future immigrant generations
into American society.
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