Immigration Law’s Effect on Asian Immigrant’s Job

The issue of Immigration Laws in 1952 had a lot effect on Asian employees. Before the Law has been established, most of the Asian immigrants in United States are doing the job like waiter, dustman, or other low skills required job. These kind of jobs often associated with low pay, low social status and low education level. At 1940, the research showed that whether on mainland of United States or on Hawaii, the number of Asian immigrants doing technical work was less than half of the number of original residents. At the same period in California, only 3% of Chinese immigrants were doing the job required high skills, which the percentage of white people was 8%. After the Law issued in 1952, the situation changed quite much.  The Immigration Law gave out the opportunities to those who had special skills that was highly needed by American company or society, and allows them to enter the United States as the identity of new immigrants.  The structure of Asian immigrants changed a lot at that time.  Take Chinese immigrants as an example, the percentage of Chinese people doing technical job in California had risen to 6% compare to 10 years ago. In 1960, 16.6% of Chinese male immigrants were doing job as senior executives, when female immigrants were 5.8%.  Also 19.7% of male immigrants were hired as skilled personnel while the data for woman is 17.9%.  In addition, the number of Asian immigrants doing low-level job had decreased compare to the situation 10 years ago. However those basic jobs were still in high percentage of all job types. Even though, the establishment of Immigration Law still brought some positive affects on Asian immigrants. First, the higher-level job could bring Asian immigrants higher income. Second, it can also reveal that the education level of Asian immigrants had improved. Last but not least, with the higher income and higher education level the Asian immigrants could gain better political and social position. This is the foundation for Asian immigrants to gain more their rights in the future development.

--- By Zhaoya Zhang

Dr. Dai Chaowu, “The Influence of 1952 America Immigration Law Towards Asian Immigrants and Asian Community.” Journal of Northeast Normal University: Philosophy and Social Science Edition (1997) 59-66