Gian Carlo Ascano
Professor Lee
AAS 213
20 November 2018
The Journey Asian Americans are Faced with Gaining A Better Life in The United States of America
America is dubbed the land of opportunity and equality where anyone can come to this country and be able to live their lives the way that they would want. But even though opportunity and equality is said to be what America provides, it does not always provide these ideas to all Americans. Minorities in America, more specifically Asian Americans have experienced inequalities throughout their lives living in the country and even though they were American citizens themselves. Based off their appearances, Americans saw Asian Americans as invaders and that they were here to take over America. But most Asian Americans only wanted what any other American would want and that would be freedom and to live their lives equally. Asian Americans were prohibited to own land in the United States and men were not allowed to marry women that were white. So to ensure that Asian Americans were kept to be and maintained to be sub-citizens, Americans set limitations on Asian Americans to slow down their progression in the country. Asians came to America to fulfill their American dream and create a better life for them and their children but America implements laws and legal barriers that prohibits Asian immigrants to achieve their goals and ostracize Asians.
As an American, any citizen should have the right to land ownership regardless of skin color or origin. Owning land gives the owner of the property the right to do whatever they may please with their land such as, defacing, renting, establishing homes or farming. And limiting Asian Americans to this opportunity is limiting their rights to live free as Americans. Oyama v. California is an example of land ownership limitations based off a person’s skin color or origin. According to Edwin E. Ferguson, author of California Laws Review, “The California Alien Land Law of 1913 did not specify that they were targeting Japanese residents living in the United States but regardless, they were the main target of limiting ownership of land in the United States” (Ferguson). Several California farmers became worried that Japanese immigrants had different ways of farming and that the Japanese farmers would be of competition to the California farmers and render their product useless. But to get around many Japanese Immigrants have switch their ownership to their U.S. born children. This was so that the land owned by Japanese immigrants were to be owned within the family and the land would be owned by an American. But once The California Alien Land Law was updated in 1920, the government grew suspicious and started to believe that if the land owned was bought with a different name, that the owner did this to get around the Alien Land Law. Officials seemed to have tried to find ways in order to set limitations on Japanese immigrants and their children. The Alien Land Law and the Oyama v. California implies that America, did not provide equal protection for immigrants even though they have property in the country.
As Americans regardless of ethnicity they have the right to marry whomever they please to marry and limitations should not be set based on race. Around the 1930’s, the Anti-miscegenation laws were put into place prohibiting interracial marriages and enforcing racial segregation in any form of intimate relationships. Based off of their premise, Anti-miscegenation laws were racist and targeted minorities. Corinne Standjord, a writer at the University of Washington, Asian Americans, more specifically, Filipinos were a prime example of victims of Anti-miscegenation laws. Since, The Philippines was a colony of the United States, Filipinos were given the opportunity to have the status of “U.S. Nationals”. This granted them access to enter the United States. Majority of the Filipinos that entered the United States were male and have low chances of finding a Filipina to start a relationship with. So many Filipinos began to court white females and began relationships with them. Finding them as a threat, white male Americans started to rumor that Filipinos were only getting into relationship with white women just for the sex and creating a racial divide between groups. Later on February 6, 1935 King County Representative Dorian Todd proposed a bill “prohibiting marriages” between “white persons” and “Negroes, Orientals, Malays, and persons of Eastern European extraction.” (Strandjord) Any Filipino who attempted to get into a relationship with a white woman would face jail time and the white woman could risk her citizenship. These laws were obviously implemented to suppress minority groups in order for them not to live normal lives in America and to live side by side with other Americans.
Even though laws that explicitly prohibit Asian Americans from living a normal life in America are no longer allowed, there are laws today that cunningly attack Asian Americans’ lives. There are many Asian Americans that were brought to the United States from Asian countries that were affected by U.S. war affiliation. Many Asian Americans were brought to the United States after the aftermath of the Vietnam war. Once in the the States, APIs (Asian Pacific Islanders) were left in bad neighborhoods and exposed to the dangers of the streets and eventually leading APIs to be incarceration. Organizations such as APSC (Asian Prisoner Support Committee) protect and spreads awareness for Asian and Pacific Islanders (API) that have been incarcerated. They also spread awareness on the rise of APIs being deported, imprisoned and detained. Many APIs are brought into the country by the United States and are now being kicked out and sent back to a country they know nothing about. These issues that these APIs are facing are similar to the experiences our Asian American ancestors faced when first coming to the United States. Being allowed to come to America but eventually slowly ostracized for being different and slowly forced to not contribute to the countries economy. Even though there are no laws that discrimination against Asian Americans, The United States finds ways to suppress their progression by not putting enough effort in assuring Asians practically raised in the United States to be protected.
Asian Americans have experience different types of discrimination through the years they have been presented in the United States. Asian Americans were ostracized for being different in the eyes of Americans and labeled as invaders that came to take over the country. Even some Asian Americans have the fear of being deported and sent to a country they know nothing about. And through those years America has found ways to suppress and slow down the progression of Asian Americans by setting limitations onto their lives such as prohibiting land ownership, limiting relationship status and overall taking away the freedom that many Asian Americans came to the United States of America for.
Work Cited
“Asian Prisoner Support Committee.” Asian Prisoner Support Committee, www.asianprisonersupport.com/.
Ferguson, Edwin E. “The California Alien Land Law and the Fourteenth Amendment.” California Law Review, vol. 35, no. 1, 1947, pp. 61–90. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3477375.
Strandjord , Corinne. “Filipino Resistance to Anti-Miscegenation Laws in Washington State.” Chicano Movement Geography, depts.washington.edu/depress/filipino_anti_miscegenation.shtml.