Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015. viii, 335 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$35.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-691-16402-1.
Asian Americans were portrayed as “bad” immigrants in American society for a long time. Since the mid-1960s, however, the stereotype has been changed from that of “problem minorities” to that of “model minorities.” As a consequence, one of the hottest debates and discussions in Asian American communities has been over the motives and impacts of the model minority characterization. Madeline Hsu’s book, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority, proposes an historical perspective to understand the invention and its impacts. Hsu argues for two historical influences behind the myth’s construction: US-China educational diplomacy, and Cold War refugee politics. These two historical factors shaped both Americans’ perceptions of Chinese as “good” immigrants and US immigration policies. The creation of “model minorities” were embedded in these contexts.
Hsu details throughout the book how US immigration systems—not only restrictive, but also selective processes—contributed to the invention of this myth. She turns her eyes to the important but insufficiently discussed Asian immigrant subgroup—Chinese students and the institutionalized US-China constituencies that supported student migration—to fill the gap. Unlike its historically tight restrictions on Chinese low-skilled labourers, US immigration controls have been lenient to Chinese students and high-skilled professionals, exempting them from exclusion and treating them as welcome immigrants who can be readily assimilated into American society, even at the height of the Chinese exclusion period. By tracking the trajectory of US-China educational exchange activities, Hsu argues that because of trade and diplomatic relations with China, wartime allies, the need for valuable skilled trainees, and Cold War international competition, the US developed double-track immigration systems. On the one hand, the United States continued to exclude Chinese working-class immigrants from the country; on the other, it allowed economically and strategically useful immigrants to enter the country. The selectivity of US immigration laws, in other words, came to be based on class (individual merits and economic achievement), not race. This neoliberal thinking gradually came to dominate in US immigration law in 1965 and afterward.
Hsu shows unusual ingenuity by addressing another interesting but neglected topic: the Chinese refugee crisis in US global Cold War politics. She sheds light on the intertwined relationship between US foreign outreach and domestic immigration reforms. In chapters 6 and 7, Hsu demonstrates how economic nationalism and the effort to create propaganda showcasing US humanitarianism served as major principles and strategies in the US policy on Chinese refugees during the Cold War. On the one hand, to undercut communist influence on high-skilled Chinese refugees and strengthen America’s economic and technological advancement beginning in the 1950s, the US government prioritized visas for Chinese refugees with educational credentials and valuable job skills. This policy challenged the conventionally race-and-nation-based immigration controls and therefore opened the door to the future immigration reforms of 1965. On the other, to propagandize about the American dream and the vision of the nation as a world leader promoting racial integration and equality, American media in domestic and international spheres emphasized the “good immigrant” images of Chinese refugees and immigrants. Hsu convincingly argues that though the State Department only allocated a few thousand Chinese refugee visas, it greatly maximized the symbolic meaning of US refugee relief programs to cater to anti-communist sentiments.
Together, US-China educational collaboration and Cold War refugee politics paved the way for the immigration reforms of 1965 and repositioned Chinese immigrants as model minorities. As Hsu states in her conclusion, “the encoding of economic priorities and recoding of racial stigmas into immigration laws and employment preferences that began during the Cold War have transformed Chinese and other Asians into model immigrants” (237).
Transnational approaches have been widely used in recent Asian-American historical scholarship. Hsu demonstrated how to do transnational history in her award-winning book Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Homes. Here again, she adeptly analyzes English and Chinese sources and transnational perspectives in the book. Through the medium of Chinese student and refugee migration, Hsu shows how the dynamic and inextricable relationships between different nations shape their histories of each other. She tells the history of US immigration and refugee legislation, but also of the US-China educational and cultural exchanges in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern Chinese transpacific migration, the 1950s-1960s Hong Kong refugees, and of socio-political change in post-World War II Taiwan. This multi-centric historical writing complicates the current Asian immigration narratives that focus on domestic motives and impacts. Scholars of US-China foreign relations may be familiar with Hsu’s analysis of the US-China “open door constituency.” But they may be amazed at the imaginative combination of this material with other histories, a blending which produces this groundbreaking story.
An interesting comparative perspective between Asian and Latin American immigrants is briefly discussed. Further comparative analysis may highlight the differentiation and racialization of US immigration policies toward the two minority groups. For example, Hsu mentions in chapter 5 how the State Department had begun facilitating international education programs as an effective form of diplomatic outreach in the mid-1930s, particularly with Latin American neighbours and China (203). What were the similarities and differences in US policies toward the two different groups? If the educational exchange program was implemented in both groups, why did it seem to have more influence on Asian immigrants than on Latin American immigrants? Why did it not turn Latin American immigrants into model minorities?
Considering that the greater percentage of first-generation Asian Americans enter the country through education or employment, Hsu reminds us in her conclusion of the evil legacy left to both US foreign and domestic racial relations by the neoliberal logic of the immigration selection system. The Good Immigrants provides much insight on a variety of topics. Those who want to learn more about US immigration policies, cultural relations between the US and China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chinese refugees during the 1940s to 1960s, and Chinese transpacific migration will not want to miss it.
Chi-ting Peng
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
pp. 884-886