New America Media - Asian

US Schools Vie for Partners in China

2013-05-24T18:04:50Z

US universities are seeking out partnerships in China, hoping to broaden their international reach and provide academic and research opportunities for students and faculty, as two campus presidents' trips to China show.

The University of Pennsylvania "is deeply committed to its engagement in China", said Amy Gutmann, president of the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, who hosted a Penn alumni event in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Her visit also is intended to promote the planned Penn-Wharton China Center in Beijing, involving the university's prestigious business school.

The center, Gutmann said, "will help build relationships with the local entrepreneurial community in China, bringing together prospective students, alumni and business leaders through various partnerships and programs".

Michael McRobbie, president of Indiana University, is on his third trip to China since 2007. He said he would renew partnership agreements with Peking University and return with several new ones involving other Chinese higher-education institutions.

"We have seen significant growth in students from China in recent years, and they have added a great deal to our campus and to the Bloomington community by bringing unique experiences and perspectives that they share with others," said Mark Land, an Indiana associate vice-resident.

More than 4,700 students from East Asia are enrolled at Indiana, including about 3,250 from the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong. More than 100 students from the university's main campus in Bloomington, Indiana, studied in China last year.

Read the rest at China Daily

APA Families May Be Price of Immigration Reform

2013-05-24T09:00:00Z

U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii said last Tuesday in Washington, D.C., the immigration reform bill, passing 13-5 out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “does much to improve family immigration, but I fear that the bill contains some fundamental changes to our immigration system that move us away from the principle of family reunification.” She conceded the bill is “a step in the right direction” to fixing a “badly broken” system, while pledging she would continue to strengthen its family provisions. Among 10 of Hirono’s 24 proposed amendments passed – reunifying Filipino World War Two veterans with their children and qualifying DREAM Act students for federal education aid.

Speaking in the Bay Area last weekend, Hirono, the Senate’s only immigrant, considered herself the body’s “strongest voice” for family reunification. However, the bill shifts away from family and focuses on a merit system highlighting education and experience, attracting overseas STEM talent to places like Silicon Valley.

“STEM people, they have families too,” Hirono argued. “They need their support of their families to succeed in their new country.”

In 18 months after Senate and House passage and the president’s signature, the law would “wipe out” categories for siblings and children over 31 who are married. Siblings, said the Senate Judiciary Committee member, don’t stand a chance.

The merit system is also “going to have a tremendous effect on women,” she said. Asian women do not have the same educational opportunities and don’t score well when it comes to STEM points, said Hirono.

At the Pacific Asian American Women Bay Area Coalition luncheon on Sunday, she said non-STEM entrepreneurs like Socola’s Wendy Lieu would be hurt. The San Francisco chocolatier had emigrated from Vietnam and started her business as a teen.

“It is a mistake to focus on the economic elements of immigrants,” said Senator Hirono.

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Caregivers Break the Silence: Japanese Americans at Risk

2013-05-24T07:55:00Z

Photo: Frances Kakugawa, author of Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver’s Voice, at a book reading.

LOS ANGELES— When Frances Kakugawa’s mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, she turned to poetry to express her emotions. Soon Kakugawa was able to see the gift in her mother’s dementia, leading her to develop ways to teach others how to channel their emotions in a constructive way.

An award-winning children’s author and poet, Kakugawa wrote Breaking the Silence: A Caregiver’s Voice, which has been acclaimed as a teaching tool for the field of gerontology. “In the Japanese culture, we try to keep things in the house,” Kakugawa said. Many believe it’s a sign of weakness to have to go to a support group.”

Caregiving
For Yourself

The Family Caregiver Alliance (FCA) advises caregivers to pay attention to their own care. Feelings of anger, anxiety, sadness, isolation, exhaustion—and then guilt for having these feelings—can exact a heavy toll.

FCA’s website notes, though, “Caregiving does not cause depression, nor will everyone who provides care experience the negative feelings that go with depression. But in an effort to provide the best possible care for a family member or friend, caregivers often sacrifice their own physical and emotional needs.”

The organization suggests:

Set realistic goals; break large tasks into several small ones.

Try to be with other people; confide in someone. Support groups can serve as an emotional outlet and an information resource.

Participate in activities, such as mild exercise, going to a movie, ballgame or a community event.

Let your family and friends help you.

Remember: Positive thinking will replace negative thinking.

FCA also has fact sheets for caregivers in several languages (although not in Japanese).

--Ellen Endo

She believes that more Japanese American (JA) caregivers would benefit from joining. Kakugawa conducts three such support groups in Northern California, teaching poetry and memoir-writing.“ Sansei are really very private people,” she lamented, saying she wishes more would take advantage of help that is available to them.

Caregiving and Confucian Values

Influenced by deeply rooted cultural beliefs, family members caring for Japanese American seniors—this country’s largest ethnic population over age 65—are vulnerable to ailments attributed to physical and psychological stress, say experts.

In separate studies conducted at Stanford with San Jose State University and in Hawaii, researchers found that while cultural values can help individuals cope with day-to-day challenges of caring for aging loved one, those same values can keep caregivers from addressing their own needs.

Researchers list eight cultural values, based in Confucianism and passed down from early immigrants (Issei) to subsequent generations, that influence behavior of American-born Japanese to some degree, even among those who considered themselves fully assimilated. Those values are:

• gaman (internal strength and endurance)
• shikataganai (acceptance, it cannot be helped)
• oyakoko (filial piety, respect for elders)
• giri (family obligation)
• haji (shame)
• enryo (reluctance to speak, refusal of assistance)
• kodomo no tame ni (for the sake of the children)
• hazukashii (embarrassment)

Palo Alto clinical psychologist Lisa M. Kinoshita and co-researcher Dolores Gallagher-Thompson, reporting in the journal, Clinical Gerontologist, state that such values served as coping mechanisms for the Issei struggling to survive in their adopted country. Issei turned to gaman/strength and shikataganai/acceptance when faced with adversity.

“Traditionally, Japanese American adult children are expected to care for their parents lovingly and with gratitude (oyakoko/filial piety and giri/family obligation), showing their appreciation for the care their parents provided to them during their childhood,” the clinicians reported. “It is believed that to not do so would bring great shame (haji/shame) to the family.”

Case Study of Nisei Woman

To illustrate their findings, Kinoshita and Gallagher-Thompson cited the case of a Nisei woman, 77, who was caregiver to her husband suffering from dementia.

The woman sought psychotherapy because she wanted her adult children and her daughter-in-law to help her with “socializing” her husband. When her children didn’t offer their help, Ms. S would become upset and frustrated. She relied on gaman/strength and shikataganai/acceptance) to allay her disappointment.

“Ms. S indicated that she experienced pain from chronic arthritis and gastrointestinal difficulty,” the study said. “Her primary care physician recommended surgery for the arthritis in her hands, but Ms. S had been reluctant to have surgery due to her ongoing caregiver responsibilities.”

According to a 1989 study by Evelyn Lee and Francis Lu published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, “JA family members often send nonverbal messages” to one another which communicate that strong emotional displays or direct discussions about stressful experiences will not be tolerated. Therefore, silence related to an uncomfortable topic may occur.”

Kinoshita and Gallagher-Thompson reported that Ms. S expected her non-Japanese daughter-in-law to help with the caregiving responsibilities. When Ms. S’s unspoken expectations were not met, she became increasingly resentful.

The clinicians guided her in practicing assertive communication to address asking her children for help. “She soon discovered that all of her children were happy to assist her but had not realized her need because she did not directly communicate it to them,” the report stated.

Attitudes Changing

An estimated 30,000 JAs serve as informal caregivers in Los Angeles and Orange Counties alone, according to Los Angeles-based Keiro Senior HealthCare, and the numbers are increasing steadily. Steven P. Wallace, of UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research and School of Public Health, predicts the number of Asian American elders will quintuple by 2050.

Nancy Hikoyeda, an ethnogeriatric specialist for the Stanford Geriatric Education Center and former director of the San Jose State University Gerontology Program, said enryo/refusal of assistance can prevent family caregivers from seeking professional help at an early stage, but she adds that attitudes toward institutionalization are changing, and Sansei (third generation) are more open to outside assistance than their parents or grandparents were.

In a 2010 report, entitled “Japanese American Older Adults,” Hikoyeda along with Marianne K.G. Tanabe of the Veterans Administration Pacific Islands Health Care Systems, asserted that kodomo no tame ni brings “an element of expectation from parents and sense of obligation on the part of the children to support and care for their parents.”

According to Hikoyeda and Tanabe, while JAs were less likely to place their elders in nursing homes when compared to their non-Asian American counterparts, the notion of oyakoko/filial piety is fading with increasing cultural integration and assimilation.

“Trends in nursing home statistics are expected to change,” they add.

Sansei Issues Emerge

Ms. D, a 65-year old Sansei, appeared cheerful and upbeat whenever she visited her dementia-afflicted mother. But soon after leaving her mother in the assisted living facility, Ms. D would sit in her car and sob. Her blood pressure became elevated, and she began to lose some of her hair.

Although she didn’t realize it, Ms. D was experiencing a form of depression over the loss of the mother she had known all of her life.

Three and a half years ago, Mr. A, a 59-year old Sansei, noticed that his parents’ forgetful “senior moments” were becoming more frequent.

“They didn’t seem to be able keep track of their meds, and I was worried about what they were eating and about whether they should be driving,” he recalled.

Rather than continue to be stressed over what to do, Mr. A decided to take full control. He contacted an assisted-living facility and put Mom and Dad on the waiting list.

After his parents were safely situated, Mr. A’s new concern is what will happen if their dementia progresses at a different rate. If one has a more debilitating form of dementia than the other, what if each parent requires a different level of care.

“If they have to be separated, that would be hard for them,” he worried.

Meanwhile, efforts to encourage his sibling to share the caregiving responsibilities on a regular basis have been unsuccessful.

“When I first noticed that our parents were going to need help, I asked my brother, ‘Why don’t we take turns?’ He did it at first, but that didn’t last very long,” Mr. A said.

“Working together smoothly for the benefit of a parent is often easier said than done. Old family patterns and unresolved issues often surface. We continue to play out the roles we fell into as children (the ‘good child,’ the ‘favorite child’). The caregiver may perceive more distant siblings as uncaring, critical or ‘in denial.’

According to the website Elder Care Team [www.eldercareteam.com] “While the primary caregiver may feel resentment because he/she is doing the lion’s share of the work, other siblings may feel shut out.”

Poetry in Family Conflict

Another emotional challenge adult children often face with a parent who has dementia is in their relationship with their mother or father.

Recently, someone in author Frances Kakugawa’s support group complained, “My mother just wants to push my buttons. She’s so negative.”

Kakugawa encouraged the individual to try writing poetry. Soon, she was able to regard her mother’s negativity differently. She began to see her Mom as full of love. In one of Kakugawa’s poems, “Plastic Orchids,” she describes how he mother, Matsue, 91, reacted when an aide addressed her by her first name and told her she loved her.

Matsue, perceiving the aide as insincere, muttered two harsh curse words to herself. Frances applauded this in her poem—a glimpse of the “real” Matsue, before she slides back into the fog of dementia.

This article is adapted from a story Ellen Endo wrote for Rafu Shimpo through the MetLife Foundation Journalists in Aging Fellows program, a collaboration of New America Media and the Gerontological Society of America.

First Asian American Exhibit Debuts at the Smithsonian

2013-05-23T12:40:00Z

In honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has launched its first-ever pan-Asian exhibit.

The exhibition, “I Want the Wide American Earth,” opened in Washington, D.C., on May 4 and will run until June 28, before heading to Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum in September, the first leg of its three-year, multi-city tour.

The exhibit looks back on the contributions of early immigrant communities from Asian laborers who helped to construct the Transcontinental Railroad to farmworkers who helped build the nation’s agricultural industry. It also explores the community’s struggle for civil rights, as APAs fought exclusionary laws that severely limited or denied new immigrants entrance to the U.S., and against such racist policies as the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.

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Osaka Mayor, Sex Slavery is 'Never Necessary'

2013-05-22T17:49:34Z

The San Francisco Department on the Status of Women joins other organizations in condemnation of the May 13 assertion by Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto that the system of sex slavery imposed by the Japanese military in Asia during World War II was “necessary” to provide relief to soldiers.

This statement is very damaging. To justify the exploitation and suffering experienced by the women, some just girls, who were forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during World War II is a flagrant denial of basic human rights. Sex slavery is never “necessary.”

Here in San Francisco, we are a human rights city where a landmark 1998 Women’s Human Rights Ordinance recognizes the right of women to be free from violence. We are part of an international movement to eradicate gender-based violence. In March, Department staff led a delegation of women leaders from around the Sam Francisco Bay Area to participate in the UN Commission on the Status of Women meetings based on this year’s theme of addressing violence against women. Sexual violence as an instrument of war was a major discussion topic.

San Francisco’s commitment to fight violence against women is clear: just two months ago, Mayor Edwin Lee, District Attorney George Gascon, Susan Swan of V-Day, and Marily Mondejar of the Filipina Women’s Network, and President of the Commission on the Status of Women Julie Soo hosted over 2,000 participants at the One Billion Rising dance action to end violence against women at San Francisco Civic Center, part of Eve Ensler’s global campaign against gender-basedviolence, including many events in Japan.

San Francisco’s sister city relationship with Osaka, the third largest city in Japan, is the nation’s oldest, dating back to 1957 under then-Mayor George Christopher. A long line of San Francisco Mayors have invested in this important relationship. The recent statement by Mayor Hashimoto is counter to our values and it is our duty as a sister city to condemn his remarks. As a city, we continue our efforts to engage in people-to-people citizen diplomacy and to connect with non-governmental organizations in Osaka and San Francisco that are holding leaders accountable in the fight against gender violence.

I am joined by other leading organizations in the Japanese American community such as the US Japan Council that asserted, “Statements that are demeaning to women or that are historically inaccurate are inappropriate and harms the relationship between Japan and its allies.” In addition, the San Francisco – Osaka Sister City Association released the following, “Statements that justify controversial wartime abuses and devastating violence against women are damaging to international relations, and contrary to the mission of the Association.”

As the head of the Department on the Status of Women, and a board member of the San Francisco-Osaka Sister City Association, I stand together with women’s groups in Japan and around the world to urge Mayor Hashimoto to take immediate steps to repair the damage resulting from his inflammatory statement, and to publicly recognize the tremendous human suffering and human rights violations of the wartime sex slavery system against women.

Emily M. Murase, PhD is executive director of the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women.

Better Language Interpretation Crucial for New Social Security Commissioner

2013-05-22T07:25:00Z

WASHINGTON, D.C.—As advocates for elders and people with disabilities anticipate President Obama’s choice of a new Social Security Commissioner, a group of us from the Strengthening Social Security Coalition presented our recommendations at a briefing on Capitol Hill last week calling for changes to improve the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) ability to serve large numbers of the program’s most vulnerable beneficiaries. That includes lower-income individuals, especially immigrants and those from ethnic groups.

The Social Security Coalition includes over 320 national and state organizations representing more than 50 million Americans. Our “Transition Report for a New Social Security Commissioner” covers a range of concerns from the agency’s overloaded staff to SSA’s need for enhanced research on retirement and disability.

Almost 2 Million Elders

One factor underlying all of these issues in our increasingly diverse population is the need for greater access to assistance for individuals with limited English proficiency. The organization I direct, the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), whose staff helped coauthor the new report, has shown, that those struggling to understand English face serious obstacles in learning about and gaining access to government programs, such as Social Security.

The 2010 U.S. Census contains some startling statistics related to the number of older adults who are not proficient in English. More than one in seven (14.2 percent) of our nation’s 43 million adults 65-plus speak a language other than English at home. Among them, almost 2 million elders are considered Limited English Proficient (LEP), a term the federal government has standardized to refer to those who speak English less than “very well.”

The new report, developed with a range of organizations, such as the National Women’s Law Center, the Diverse Elders Coalition and Latinos for Secure Retirement, states, “It is essential that SSA communicate with individuals in a language in which they are proficient and that up-to-date informational material on benefits be provided in a variety of different languages.”

Among those applying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—people requesting a small boost in their benefits because they have extremely low-incomes, a third seek this additional income support based on old age. Previous analysis by SSA showed that almost four in 10 of those older adults asked the agency to receive assistance in a language other than English.

Early Language-Access Leader

Previously, SSA was an early leader in language access among federal government agencies. For example, after SSA installed point-of-entry kiosks in its local field offices some years ago, advocates pointed out that they were generally working in English only. SSA instructed local offices to make them available in several of the most commonly spoken languages.

In fact, SSA has a very good policy of providing interpreters. It requires its offices to provide an interpreter at no charge on request and prohibits the use of children as interpreters. And the agency requires the same policy for state agencies performing disability determinations (DDSs).

However, as our report states, “At present, implementation is spotty, with advocates reporting that in many SSA offices LEP individuals are still asked to bring their own interpreters.”

Simply put, it is crucial that SSA communicate with individuals in a language they understand. And it needs to do more to ensure that its offices apply these regulations uniformly.

That means the administration needs to require more resources for training SSA personnel on the interpreter policy—including the additional time necessary to interview an individual with an interpreter.

The report also calls on the new commissioner, when appointed, to implement a systems change to fully implement SSA’s interpreter policy. Currently, SSA asks people for their language preference when they apply for benefits. But if the person doesn’t answer or the reply isn’t clear, the program defaults to English. SSA needs to eliminate the English default option.

In addition, SSA has increasingly come to rely on the use of telephone interpreter services as a primary means of serving LEP individuals. Although these are useful for simpler requests, telephone interpreter services should not be permitted for handling more complex matters and certainly not for administrative hearings or conferences.

The report recommends, “The best and most economical means of serving LEP individuals is through the use of bilingual SSA employees.” We believe that before picking up the telephone to call a general interpreters’ service, agency offices should look for an interpretation-trained SSA employee, someone who knows the program, is more apt to be more sensitive to the person’s needs and understands the confidentiality requirements.

Serving Immigrant Communities

As we concluded in the report, “The new commissioner needs to make a concerted effort, as hiring opportunities arise, to hire more bilingual staff for assignment to field offices,” particularly where there is a high level of language access needs, such as newer immigrant communities.

Currently, SSA provides its notices in English. And it offers only some, but not all, in Spanish. The agency provides none of its notices in any other language. To address this, SSA needs to provide all notices in Spanish and in other major languages spoken by recipients of its programs. It also needs to do a better job of identifying the language spoken by each of the people it serves.

Even though SSA has a number of publications on its program benefits in 16 different languages, these are only available online and are no longer stocked in local Social Security offices. A majority of people over age 65, especially those with low-incomes and those with limited English proficient, still do not have consistent Internet access—in any language—including African-American households.

Clearly, SSA policy needs to be rethought and informational publications should be made available to those who visit local Social Security offices.

The ability for all those who receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income benefits to understand their benefits and their rights is essential. With the appointment of a new Social Security commissioner, NSCLC and other advocates believe these and other fixes can and should happen.

Paul Nathanson directs the National Senior Citizens Law Center. He co-chairs the Strengthening Social Security Coalition’s Adequacy of Benefits Committee and NSCLC staff contributed to new report.

'Why Are There So Many Filipino Nurses in the US?'

2013-05-18T09:25:00Z

This was the question posed to me by a curious TV news reporter on May 7, just three days after a stretch limousine, carrying nine Filipino nurses to a bridal party across the San Mateo Bridge, suddenly burst into flames killing five of the occupants, including the bride.

Ann Notarangelo, the reporter who is also the weekend anchor of CBS 5′s Eyewitness News, explained that she was only asking the question because it was on the minds of her viewers. She came to my office to interview me because she thought I might know the answer as I taught Filipino American History at San Francisco State University and I am the legal counsel of the Philippine Nurses Association of Northern California. Plus, I added, I am also married to a Filipino nurse.

She said that she was frankly surprised to learn that 20 percent of all the registered nurses in California are Filipinos, a considerably large percentage since Filipinos number only 2.3 million (officially 1.2 million) out of a state population of 38 million.

“I just never noticed it before,” Ann told me, “because I generally don’t see people in racial terms.” But, she said, in reflecting back on all the times she visited friends and relatives in hospitals all over California, she now recalls seeing Filipino nurses everywhere. Not just in California, I said.

Filipino nurses in the US may be invisible even when they are visible everywhere but not anymore.

Tragedy Sheds Light on Filipino Nurses

The video clip of the fire-engulfed limousine was the top story over the weekend. The fatalities included Neriza Fojas, 31, a newlywed bride who was planning to get married again in the Philippines in June; Michelle Estrera, 35, the bride’s Maid of Honor who worked with her at a Fresno medical facility; Jennifer Balon, 39, and Anna Alcantara, 46, of San Lorenzo, both of whom worked at the Fruitvale Healthcare Center; and Felomina Geronga, 43, who worked at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.

Americans also learned about the nurses who escaped the fire and were treated for burns and smoke inhalation: Mary G. Guardiano, 42; Jasmine Desguia, 34; Nelia Arellano, 36; and Amalia Loyola, 48. In a TV interview, an anguished Nelia Arellano blamed the limo driver for failing to stop immediately and for selfishly refusing to help them get out of the burning limo.

As the San Francisco Chronicle described it, “They came from little towns scattered all over the Philippines, hungry for the good life in America. A nursing degree was each one’s solo ticket over, and once they found each other, they became the best of friends.”

As the TV camera started rolling, the TV news reporter posed the question to me:“Why are there so many Filipino nurses in the US?”

There are push and pull factors that are at play, I explained. The main push factor is the poor Philippine economy where an average Registered Nurse earns only about 5 percent of what an RN is paid in the United States. The main pull factor is the nursing shortage in this country.

But Americans should not to be too surprised at the large number of Filipinos here, I told her. After all, the Philippines was a U.S. colony from 1899 until the Japanese occupation in 1942 and, some would argue, a “neo-colony” for many decades after the Philippines was granted independence by the United States in 1946.

It certainly does not surprise the British to see many Indians and Pakistanis in England, nor does it surprise the French that there are many Algerians in France. They understand that people from the colonized countries generally tend to gravitate and immigrate to their “mother” countries, even after their native countries are granted independence.

Four Waves of Migration

Filipino nurses did not arrive in the United States overnight. They have been immigrating here for more than a century. In fact, there are four distinct waves of Filipino nurse immigration to the United States.

The first wave came after the United States began its colonization of the Philippines and needed local health care professionals to meet the health needs of the subject population which is why the U.S. Army recruited Filipinos to work as Volunteer Auxiliary and Contract Nurses.

Under the Pensionado Act of 1903, Filipino nursing students were among those sent to the United States as government-funded scholars (pensionados) including those pursuing a nursing education. Some of those who stayed for employment as nurses went on to form the Philippine Nurses Association of New York in 1928. The association’s first president was Marta Ubana, who completed her Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Many other pensionado nurses returned back to the Philippines to help set up and manage the 17 nursing schools that were established in the Philippines from 1903 until 1940. Large numbers of the graduates from these nursing schools thereafter immigrated to the United States as, unlike with the Chinese and Japanese, there were no exclusion acts enacted against them since Filipinos were considered “U.S. nationals” and even traveled with U.S. passports.

One of the pioneer Filipino RNs was Isabel L. Mina, who graduated with a nursing degree from the University of the Philippines in 1919 before working at the Mary Chiles Hospital in Manila. Isabel and two other Filipino nurses, Josefa Cariaga and Petra Aguinaldo, boarded a ship in Manila 1921 bound for Hawaii where they worked in a hospital before moving on to California. They then boarded a train and traveled to New York where they worked in a local hospital for several years.

Information about Isabel Mina was obtained by her San Francisco-based granddaughter, Lissa Sobrepena, who learned about her grandmother when she logged on to Ancestry.com. For a fee, the website produced photos of her grandmother in 1921 and her documents including the ship’s passenger manifests and the two passport applications she filled out when she lost her U.S. passport while traveling in the United States.

What stunned Lissa was when she found out that her grandmother’s best friend, Petra Aguinaldo, coincidentally just happened to be the grandmother of her husband, Robert Sobrepena. Neither Lissa nor Robert knew that their grandmothers – who died before they were born – were close friends and that they had traveled together across the United States as RNs.

The second wave of nurses from the Philippines began in1948 when the U.S. State Department set up an Exchange Visitor Program to “combat Soviet propaganda." According to Catherine Ceniza Choy, associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (Duke University Press, 2003), owing to the “special relationship” between the mother country and its former colony, a large percentage of the exchange visitors came from the Philippines.

Among these nurses was Maria Guerrero Llapitan who came to the United States in 1948 to take post-graduate nursing courses at Baylor University in Texas. Maria had served as the supervisor of the operating room of a hospital in Bataan before it fell to the Japanese invaders in 1942. After completing her postgraduate studies at Baylor, Maria moved to Chicago to work at the Cook County General Hospital where she met her fiance. She then went to Hunter College for Women in New York to get her nursing degree while working at Sloane-Kettering Memorial Hospital in New York.

Maria married her fiancé in San Francisco where they set up a family in 1951. She later was among the Filipino nurses who formed the Philippine Nurses Association of Northern California in 1961.

The third wave of Filipino nurse immigration to the US came after 1965 when U.S. Immigration laws were liberalized to allow Filipino nurses and other professionals to immigrate to the United States. It also allowed Filipino nurses to come to the United States on tourist visas without prearranged employment and to then adjust their status in the country.

During this period, the number of nursing schools in the Philippines soared from 17 in 1940 to 170 in 1990 to more than 429 at the present time. Many of these nursing schools were diploma mills exploiting the desire of many Filipinos to enter the nursing profession.

Unfortunately, as a result of the inferior education offered by these subpar nursing schools, only 15-20 percent of the Filipino nurses who immigrated to the United States after 1965 could pass the state nursing board exams. This led to the establishment in 1977 of the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools (CGFNS) to help prevent the exploitation of graduates of foreign nursing schools who immigrate to the United States to work as nurses but who can’t pass the nursing board exams here.

The CGFNS developed a pre-immigration certification program that consisted of a credentials review; a test of nursing knowledge (CGFNS qualifying examination), and an English-language proficiency examination (TOEFL).

Since 1977, CGFNS has administered more than 350,000 tests to approximately 185,000 applicants in 43 test sites worldwide. From 1978 to 2000, the data showed that 73 percent of CGFNS test takers came from the Philippines, followed by the United Kingdom (4 percent), India(3 percent), Nigeria (3 percent), and Ireland (3 percent).

'Grow Your Own Nurses'

Menchu Sanchez is a 3rd wave nurse immigrant who has worked as an RN for more than 25 years, the last three years at the New York University Langone Medical Center. Menchu was in charge of 20 at-risk infants in the Intensive Care Unit of her hospital when Superstorm Sandy battered New York last October and knocked out the electric power to the hospital. Menchu organized the nurses and doctors to carry the babies in warming pads down 8 flights of stairs to safety. Menchu was invited to sit beside First Lady Michelle Obama at the State of the Union address of Pres. Barack Obama on February 12, 2013.

In his speech, Pres. Obama cited Menchu as a role model: “We should follow the example of a New York City nurse named Menchu Sanchez. When Hurricane Sandy plunged her hospital into darkness, she wasn’t thinking about how her own home was faring. Her mind was on the 20 precious newborns in her care and the rescue plan she devised that kept them all safe.”

Many Filipino nurses who entered the United States on H-1work visas after passing the CGFNS tests benefited from the passage of the Nursing Relief Act of 1989 which provided for their adjustment to permanent resident status if they had H-1 non-immigrant status as registered nurses and had been employed in that capacity for at least 3 years.

But the “sunsetting” of this law in 1995 effectively decreased Filipino nurse immigration to the United States. The passage of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1998 (IIRIIRA) further discouraged nurse immigration.

The passage of nativist legislation was fueled by fears of foreign nurses taking American jobs as former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry complained : “it’s so bad, that if you go to the hospital now, you find a number of immigrants who are nurses, particularly from the Philippines,” Barry told the Examiner. “And no offense, but let’s grow our own teachers, let’s grow our own nurses — and so that we don’t have to be scrounging around in our community clinics and other kinds of places — having to hire people from somewhere else.”

Grow your own nurses, that’s what the United States did. According to the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, U.S. nursing schools produced close to a million nurses from 2006 to 2011.

While the demand for Filipino nurses may have waned in the United States, the demand for Filipino nurses in the rest of the world did not diminish. Filipino nurses working for the National Health System (NHS) in England drew international attention last February when Britain’s 91-year-old Prince Philip, while on a tour of a new cardiac centre in Bedfordshire, England, turned to a Filipino nurse and said: “The Philippines must be half-empty – you’re all here running the NHS.”

Not quite, not by a long shot, your majesty.

According to Reuben Seguritan, general counsel of the Philippine Nurses Association of America (PNAA), the Philippines is the world’s largest supplier of foreign-trained nurses with 429 nursing schools and 80,000 nursing students.

To place this number in context, City College of San Francisco, with 89,000 students, does not have the resources to accept more than 75 students into its nursing program. The nursing students are chosen by lottery from a list of about 500 students who otherwise qualify for acceptance, a selective system practiced by community colleges all over California.

Is there a fourth wave of Filipino nurse immigration to the US?

Yes, but it hasn’t arrived yet. According to recent CNN report, “Demand for health care services is expected to climb as more baby boomers retire and health care reform makes medical care accessible to more people. As older nurses start retiring, economists predict a massive nursing shortage will reemerge in the United States.”

The CNN report adds: “We’ve been really worried about the future workforce because we’ve got almost 900,000 nurses over the age of 50 who will probably retire this decade, and we’ll have to replace them,” [economist and nurse Peter] Buerhaus said.”

The fourth wave may come as early as 2014 when the U.S. Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, comes into effect and about 30-40 million Americans without any health insurance will finally be covered by health care insurance.

LPG Marketer’s Association party-list Rep. Arnel Ty believes that Obamacare will “stimulate” the U.S. hiring of foreign nurses. “This will hopefully spur U.S. demand for new foreign nurses and other health practitioners such as pharmacists, physical therapists, medical technologists, radiologists, and speech pathologists,” Ty said.

To another question posed by TV reporter Ann Notarangelo, I answered that I do not know the exact number of Filipino nurses in the United States. All I know is that number, whatever it is, was significantly reduced by 5 on the evening of May 4, 2013.

Los Angeles School To Be Named After Korean American Legend

2013-05-16T09:25:00Z

Los Angeles is naming a new elementary school after a Korean American living legend.

The board of directors of the Los Angeles Unified School District met today and approved the new elementary school’s name to be the “Dr. Sammy Lee Medical and Health Science Magnet Elementary School,” named after the 92-year-old former Olympic diver.

Dr. Lee was the first Asian American to win a gold medal for the United States and competed at the London Olympics in 1948 and the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, winning gold medals in the 10-meter platform at both Olympics.

The native of Fresno, Calif., was already a physician when he won his gold medals, having earned a medical degree from the University of Southern California in 1947. He also served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during the Korean War.

“If approved, this will be the third LAUSD School to be named after a Korean American hero,” said Yonah Hong, a board member for the Wilshire Center-Koreatown Neighborhood Council, in a statement released prior to the vote. “This is a true accomplishment and a celebration for the entire Korean American community.”

Dr. Sammy Lee Elementary will join two other Koreatown schools, Charles H. Kim Elementary School and Young Oak Kim Academy (middle school), to be named after Korean Americans.

Korean American Helen Kim has been nominated to be the first principal of the school, which is expected to house 32 classrooms and is set to open in August. The building is located in the northeast corner of Koreatown at 3600 W. Council Street, Los Angeles, CA 90004.

The Tragedy of Self Immolation - No One Cares

2013-05-16T08:35:00Z

Self-immolation isn’t what it used to be.

This ultimate form of protest became global news in 1963 when the venerable monk Thich Quang Duc set himself ablaze in the middle of Saigon, Vietnam, protesting religious oppression. Doused in gasoline, the monk sat serenely in lotus position and lit a match. A bird of paradise thus blossomed and bloomed, and quickly charred his body.

The photographer Malcolm Browne captured Thich Quang Duc’s fiery renouncement of the mortal coil, the image quickly becoming an icon of the Vietnam War era. The term “self-immolation,” in fact, entered into common English usage after his death, which led to a coup d’etat that toppled the pro-Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem regime.

Half a century later, to die by fire in protest registers little more than a media blip.

As of this writing, 117 Tibetans have set themselves ablaze since 2009 in a series of protests against Chinese rule. The most recent incidents came in April, when two young Tibetan monks and a lay Tibetan woman set themselves on fire. There was little coverage of their deaths.

Indeed, with the exception of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian fruit vendor who set himself on fire and thus sparked what became known as the Arab Spring, self-immolation has by all accounts become a failed form of protest as an agent of change. Since Bouazizi, in fact, 150 more Tunisians have set themselves on fire in protest against the new government that took over after the downfall of Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali's secular dictatorship.

Whether in Syria or Palestine, Greece, Italy or Vietnam, individuals continue to go up in flames as crowds look on.

“All the Tibetans who resort to self-immolation do so because they feel they have no other way to make China and the rest of the world listen to their country’s call for freedom,” Byrne-Rosengren, director of the London-based advocacy group Free Tibet, told Radio Free Asia last month.

Alas, China has turned a deaf ear to their cries, while the world media has averted its eyes.

Aristotle once observed that the plot of a tragedy should be so framed that, even without witnessing the events, simply hearing of them should fill one with “horror and pity” — even lead to insight and action. But the amphitheater of the 21st century has fallen into decay, scattered and fragmented into a multitude of media platforms. There are too many actors in too many theaters and their tragedies — overwhelming, lacking in context, incoherent, truncated or badly reported — have lost their grip on the human psyche.

Studies about desensitization of the modern mind are aplenty, but the general consensus is that over-saturation of images and narratives of violence have resulted in a collective numbness. A profound act of public death cannot hope to sway a world in which horror itself has lost its power.

What we want instead is entertainment, and what we gravitate toward and react to, more often than not, is profanity.

A year after Bouazizi went up in flames in Tunisia, an unknown amateur filmmaker named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula,” aka “Sam Bacile,” inflamed the Middle East with incendiary video clips ridiculing the prophet Muhammad. His film turned the Arab Spring of 2011 into the Autumn Rage of 2012, resulted in the death of an American ambassador in Libya, and continues to be a bone of contention in Washington.

The cynic observer can’t help but wonder: If self immolation no longer works as an agent for change, then is it still worth the price?

At its most profound the act stands as the highest form of human compassion, a confirmation of life by giving up one’s own. At its most incoherent self-immolation becomes more expressive of the frustration of the powerless. The individual, enamored by death, possessed by anger, elicits neither horror nor pity but cynicism. After all, to burn with passion is very much different than to be consumed by rage.

Fire — this gift and curse to humanity — is a terrifying beauty. Contained, it hints at elegance, cooks our food and propels our world. Out of control, it engulfs body and soul. It seduces. It overpowers. And it destroys.

In a world where individuals leverage more power online than in the public square, it may be that to live burning with desire for change — regardless of the oppression and humiliation — is the real challenge to becoming actual agents of change in the world. So why not live instead? And find new paths that call attention to the suffering of one’s cause. Find a way to force the world’s attention once more back onto the stage — and evoke pity and horror in us all.

To burn with that desire, to call our attention and hold our gaze until we weep — isn’t that worth living for?

Andrew Lam is editor and cofounder of New America Media. He is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres, and most recently, a collection of short stories, Birds of Paradise Lost.

Data Reveals Immigrants’ Financial Contribution to States

2013-05-16T07:00:00Z

LOS ANGELES – In California, Asian and Hispanic immigrants pay nearly $30 billion in federal taxes, $5.2 billion in state income taxes, and $4.6 billion in sales taxes each year.

In New York, immigrants are responsible for $229 billion in economic output in the state. Even in Alabama, a state not known for having a large immigrant population, the purchasing power of Asian and Latinos in Alabama totaled $5.8 billion since 1990.

The Immigration Policy Center released last week a partial state-by-state analysis highlighting the importance and economic impact of Asians and Latino immigrants in the United States.

The release of the data comes at a crucial time as the bipartisan “Gang of Eight’s” comprehensive immigration reform legislation that would provide a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented people living in the US, makes its way through Congress.

Introduced on April 17, the bill, S.744, formally known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, currently sits in the Senate Judiciary Committee where they will next discuss it on Tuesday, May 14.

The Immigration Policy Center data cites several eye-popping numbers about the contributions of Asian and Hispanic immigrants in the country.

For example, in California, which is home to 10.2 million immigrants (more than the total population of Michigan), “the average immigrant-headed household contributes a net $2,679 annually to Social Security, which is $539 more than the average US-born household,” the research shows.

Acclaimed professors and researchers Marshall Fitz and Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, reveals: If all unauthorized immigrants were removed from California, the state would lose $301.6 billion in economic activity, decrease total employment by 17.4 percent, and eliminate 3.6 million jobs.

And if unauthorized immigrants in California were legalized, it would add 633,000 jobs to the economy, increase labor income by $26.9 billion, and increase tax revenues by $5.3 billion, added Fitz and Hinojosa-Ojeda.

“Immigrants comprise more than one-third of the California labor force. They figure prominently in key economic sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and services. Immigrants provide leadership and labor for the expansion of California’s growing economic sectors – from telecommunications and information technology to health services and housing construction,” according to the Immigrant Policy Center data.

In places like Alabama, where undocumented immigrants comprise 4.2 percent of the state’s workforce, these workers paid $130.3 million in state and local taxes in 2010, according to data from the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy.

They cited a report by the Perryman Group, an economic and financial analysis firm. If all undocumented immigrants were removed from Alabama, the state would lose $2.6 billion in economic activity, $1.1 billion in gross state product, and approximately 17,819 jobs.

In Rhode Island, Perryman research reveals that the state would lose $698 million in economic activity, $310 million in gross state product, and 3,780 jobs.

In Texas, if all undocumented immigrants were removed from the state, it would lose $69.3 billion in economic activity, $30.8 billion in gross state product, and 403,174 jobs.

The data released on Thursday only highlights 10 of the 50 states. The Immigration Policy Center said they will plan the rest in the next few weeks.

(www.asianjournal.com)

City Agency Criticized for Producing Video for Caricature

2013-05-15T17:27:34Z

The City of Los Angeles Department of Public Works has apologized for producing a video that promotes racial/ethnic stereotypes.

An image from the controversial video, which has been taken down from YouTube.

In a report that aired on May 9, CBS2 investigative reporter David Goldstein broke the story of the video — which has since been taken down from YouTube — in which a non-Asian man dressed in kimono and wearing heavy makeup speaks in a mock Japanese accent. It was produced by L.A. CityWorks, which airs on Channel 35, and funded by the Department of Public Works.

With the Tillman Water Reclamation Plant in Van Nuys as the backdrop, the actor says, “The Japanese water park is a beautiful, beautiful site, with blooming, blooming lotus and water lilies.” The goal was apparently to teach viewers about recycled water, which is used at the Japanese Garden.

After being shown the video, Japanese American National Museum President and CEO Greg Kimura told CBS2, “It’s just awful … I find it personally offensive and in poor taste … It brings back all the worst stereotypes. The accents, the whiteface. I’m embarrassed for everybody who is involved in this.” Read more here.

Study Finds People Of Color Nearly Invisible On Evening Cable News

2013-05-14T20:00:39Z

A new analysis released yesterday by the media monitoring group Media Matters found that evening cable news guests are overwhelmingly white and male. According to the report, titled “Diversity on Evening Cable News in 13 Charts,” women and other people of color are underrepresented as guests on evening cable news programs at MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Media Matters examined the guests of thirteen evening cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during the month of April 2013. During that time period, only 33% of MSNBC guests, 29% Fox News guests and 24% CNN guests were female. Latinos fared much worse. Only 3% of Fox News guests and 2% of CNN and MSNBC guests were Latino.

An excerpt of some of the findings are below:

White Guests Were Hosted Most Often On Cable News. Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. African-Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and 5 percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively.

Read more here.

‘Little PSY’ Subject of Online Racial Hatred

2013-05-14T17:53:30Z

Hwang Min-woo, popularly known as ‘Little PSY’ for his stint in the Gangnam Style music video, has been catapulted into the limelight. The boy’s multicultural background (his mother is a naturalised Korean from Vietnam) attracted the attention of Ilbe which mounted a high-profile hate-campaign this week. Given the track-record of Ilbe’s kulturkampf and their unabashed xenophobic stance, this fray with the 9-year old is likely to continue until some form of legal intervention takes place.

From Nocut News:

- Min-woo finds difficult to cope with insults against parents
- Cries often when called Vietnamese boy
- Plans to file libel suits against the Akpeulers

Read more here.

Marvel Studios’ Andy Park Brings Iron Man, Avengers to Silver Screen

2013-05-14T09:30:00Z

When Andy Park attends the Hollywood premiere of Iron Man 3 on May 3, along with Robert Downey, Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow, he will see the products of his creativity up on that silver screen. Having the opportunity to bring his wife to this star-studded event is just one perk of being a concept artist for Marvel Studios, where he gets to craft the cinematic look for the heroes and villains of the iconic comic book company.

Reaching this point took not only talent, but a whole lot of initiative, traveling a road—which included dropping out of UCLA—that his parents certainly didn’t want him taking. But when Image Comics offered him a job as a penciller back in 1995, college would have to wait.

“My first love was comic books. That’s what I dreamed of doing as a kid,” said Park, 37, who would go on to draw for the likes of Marvel and DC.

However, as an adult excelling at his profession, Park realized he wanted to expand his artistic horizons.

“As a comic book artist, you’re a penciller; that’s your specific title. You draw the comic book with a pencil, from the script, page by page. Someone else inks it, someone else colors it, another person letters it,” said Park, describing the process of completing a comic book. “It’s all about sound drawing ability. And you need to tell a story, [and] to be able to tell it excitingly. Your drawings just have to be solid.”

His abilities to do just that resulted in a level of success craved by countless comic book artists. It was Park whom publisher Top Cow turned to when the video game Tomb Raider and its singular Lara Croft character were un-digitized into a comic book (Park had developed quite the reputation with buxom women, drawing them, that is.). So Park, who had by then returned to school to attend the Art Center College of Design, dropped out once again when that opportunity came along.

What Park would end up wanting to do more of was creating complete illustrations and painting, skills he learned from his formal training at Art Center. That would lead him to the field of concept art, and eventually to Sony Computer Entertainment, creating the designs for many of the main characters in its highly successful God of War video game series.

“But I would not have been able to get a job [as a concept artist] by just showing [employers] my comic book work. I knew I had to start from scratch and build a new portfolio and show them I know how to paint, how to design,” said Park.

“For concept artists—and there’s always exceptions to everything I’m saying—you have to able to paint, not necessarily traditionally, but digitally. And you have to be very versatile, in style, in genre.

“For many concept art gigs in film, television and video games, a strong art style is not always welcomed. You have to be adaptable to the style of the project you are working on. For God of War it was a stylized realism. For live-action films like The Avengers, painting in a more photo-real manner is required,” said Park.

That opportunity to craft the concept art for the heroes that make up the Avengers and other Marvel characters came after five years at Sony, where he had become one of their leading concept artists. And Park had just become a father in 2008, so the thought of leaving the stability of Sony was daunting. But Marvel Studios, with the success of its Iron Man and Captain America films, had launched a new department to handle the concept art for all of its upcoming movies, and the first person the heads of the Visual Development branch recruited was Park.

That got Park, a self-avowed “Marvel guy,” very excited. “The fanboy inside of me was just like jumping up and down,” he said. When he joined Marvel in 2010, his first task was preparing 2012’s biggest blockbuster, The Avengers. “And if you’re a Marvel fan, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Avengers,” said Park.

In 2012 he traveled to England where Thor: The Dark World is in production (and will come out in November). And with Marvel planning to release two movies a year, he bounces between the different projects in the pipeline: in 2014 are the Captain America sequel and a new franchise, the Guardians of the Galaxy; and in 2015, expect Ant-Man and the next Avengers film. (For the comic book geeks: Park is so tight-lipped about these future releases that he will not even confirm if Thanos will indeed be the villain of The Avengers sequel, as was hinted at the end of the first movie.)

“[As a concept artist,] you get hired to work on a film, and you work a couple of months and that’s it; you have to find another gig,” said Park. “But this is unprecedented because a group of guys are hired full-time. We get to work on every single Marvel film. We are the ones responsible to keep a consistent and believable look to the entire Marvel Studios’ cinematic universe. It’s definitely a dream gig whether you’re a self-professed fanboy or not. To work on one Marvel film is amazing, but we get to play in this massive play pen.”

This article was published in the May 2013 issue of KoreAm. Subscribe today!

Election Drama Offers 'Lessons in Diversity' for One Calif. City

2013-05-14T08:15:00Z

On March 5, 2013, in a historic election, Chin Ho Liao was elected to serve on the San Gabriel City Council, but the city council refused to let him take his seat. This was unheard of and something no city had ever done before. The council took this unprecedented action because of a single complaint filed by a city resident with close ties to one of the losing incumbents, who contested Liao’s eligibility to run.

But this is more than a story of local politics gone awry. There are lessons here that increasingly diversifying communities across the country should heed as we embark together on the important task of fortifying the rights of every American to take part in our proud democracy.

On May 7, after two intense months of legal battles and community outrage, Liao was finally permitted to take his oath of office and join the council as its newest member. What happened during these two months tells a story of Liao’s courage, one that began a quarter-century ago. It also highlights how demographic shifts like one that has been taking place in San Gabriel can set off dynamics that present challenges – and opportunities – for communities with rapidly changing populations.

The city of San Gabriel, one of California’s oldest settlements, is nestled in the San Gabriel Valley, in the eastern part of Los Angeles County. San Gabriel has a population of less than 40,000, and is celebrating its centennial year. In recent decades, the city and the region as a whole have undergone massive demographic changes resulting in a diverse population of Asian Americans and other immigrants. In San Gabriel itself, over 60 percent of the population is Asian American, over three quarters of whom are immigrants.

Among those who now call the San Gabriel Valley their home is Chin Ho Liao, an immigrant from Taiwan who came to the U.S. to seek out higher education and who then settled in San Gabriel. Since his retirement, he has engaged in one of the most longstanding of American traditions – volunteerism. For the past 24 years, he’s served the community of San Gabriel through his involvement with nonprofit and civic organizations. Then he sought office so he could serve the community as a public servant.

Prior to the March 5 election, San Gabriel’s five-member city council had no Asian American members, and only two Asian Americans had previously served on the council. The five candidates in the city council race included three incumbents and two Asian American challengers, including Liao. In a result that surprised many, Liao and the other Asian American candidate were the top two vote-getters and won seats on the council. Only one of the three incumbents won re-election.

Three weeks after the election, when it came time to install the winners of the election, the city council told Liao that he could not take his seat. At that point the council still included the two incumbents who lost. Despite the conflict of interest, and despite the appearance of undermining a historic moment for Asian Americans, the council ignored the plain and clear requirements of state law to seat Liao.

The council justified its action by pointing to the complaint contesting Liao’s eligibility to serve. However, the proper procedure was to let Liao assume his seat first and then to consider the complaint.

Compounding its error, the council announced that it would conduct its own review of the complaint, rather than refer the matter to a neutral third party such as a court or an administrative hearing officer. The council that was to conduct the review included three of Liao’s political opponents: two incumbents who were not up for re-election in March but who supported the re-elected incumbent and the two losing incumbents, plus the re-elected incumbent who similarly supported the two losing incumbents. These circumstances cast doubt on the integrity of the council’s decision to conduct its own hearing.

The Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC) took on Liao’s case because we are a civil rights organization and we believed this to be a civil rights case. It was clear that Liao’s fundamental right to hold office, a right recognized by the courts, had been violated. It was equally clear that the fundamental right to vote of the San Gabriel electorate had been infringed.

This is because the two rights are inextricably linked – the confidence that voters have in democracy depends on their belief that elections fairly won will not be unjustly taken away from the candidate they supported. And nowhere is this more critical than with newcomers to the American electoral process, including Asian Americans whose burgeoning but fragile political participation was threatened by the council’s ill-founded actions.

In the end, the council defied expectations and ruled in favor of Liao – an issue that was never in doubt in the hearts and minds of the San Gabriel community. Certainly the efforts of our legal team played a part in this outcome, but even more important was the inspiring courage demonstrated by Liao in fighting for his right to represent the people of San Gabriel. Also inspiring was the activism of San Gabriel community members, who formed a multi-racial coalition to voice concerns about the threat posed by the council’s actions to San Gabriel’s democracy.

As San Gabriel looks ahead to its next 100 years, those who serve the community would do well to embrace the future and welcome the participation of all Americans, including the newcomers who have come to pursue their aspirations. In our rapidly diversifying society we must all be prepared, like the residents of San Gabriel were, to demand that all Americans are afforded their right to take part in the political process.

Stewart Kwoh is the founding President and Executive Director of Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC). Kwoh is a nationally recognized leader and expert in race relations, Asian American studies, nonprofit organizations and philanthropies, civil rights, and legal services. He was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 1998, becoming the first Asian American attorney and human rights activist to receive this highly prestigious recognition, often referred to as the “genius grant.”