Asian Americans Support Immigration Reform

I meant to post this a few weeks ago but got caught up with school.

So it turns out that Asian Americans do care about immigration reform. I mean, we were the first illegal aliens.

The Institute for Asian American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston released a study about a month ago showing that many Asian Americans pay close attention to immigration issues. According to The World Journal, a survey of 412 Asian Americans by Paul Watanabe, director of the Institute and associate professor of political science at the university, and his colleagues found that about 80 percent of them were “very concerned” or “concerned” about immigration. The study shows that 58 percent of Asians are sympathetic to undocumented immigrants and 52 percent of them are supportive of the idea of legalizing undocumented immigrants. (newsamericamedia.org)

More interestingly though, is the study's potential to show to how Asian Americans are not only supportive of immigration reform, but are actually willing to participate outside of their ethnic communities in making that happen. The study found that 60% are supportive of Latino activism for immigrant rights. Additionally 19% know another undocumented Asian immigrant. 70% would sign a petition 30% would participate in a rally or march, and 38% would contact government officials. I am impressed by these numbers, but this study needs to be compared to similar questions asked of other immigrant groups.

Relating this to the DREAM Act, we all know that undocumented students are a diverse bunch, but for some reason it doesn't always look that way at rallies, meetings, etc. So it's a matter of building those bridges. I think we also need to understand that agency and activism is manifested in different forms--its not exclusive to public rallies.

Even though this survey clearly lends a lot of hope for inter-racial solidarity, other news sources are spinning the survey results in ways that Asians have always been portrayed in the media with articles such as "Survey Finds Asian Community Passive on Immigration" (Boston Globe) and "Asian Americans Reluctant to Stand Up to Immigration Issues" (New American Media). Agh, we all gotta work together on this one.

Check out the report here as I may have missed some other interesting stats.