More Chinese Americans are expressing concerns about U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policies as his recent "Muslim ban" reminds them of decades of discrimination under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
Several organizations, such as San Francisco's Asian Law Caucus and New York's Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, are openly voicing their opposition to Trump's executive order banning people from seven Muslim-majority countries, fearing that Washington is repeating its old mistakes committed nearly a century ago, Al Jazeera reported.
The latest move to defend immigrants' rights came after door tags of students at Columbia University who have non-Western - specifically East Asian - names in several residential halls had been ripped off. In response to the name-tag vandalism, Chinese students recently made a video to explain what their names mean.
Since Trump took office in January, his controversial immigration policies that have many people concerned would promote white supremacy have made Chinese Americans alert about their own legitimate rights and discrimination, Li Haidong, a professor at China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times.
Seen as a blight on the country's history, 60 years of Chinese exclusion (1882-1943) caused myriad harms to Chinese who could neither immigrate to the U.S. nor be naturalized citizens.
Liu Weidong, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies of the China Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that xenophobia has gained popularity in the U.S. nowadays, especially among blue-collar white people who believe they are the real natives and refuse to accept people of other skin color.
The Trump administration is considering a plan to weed out would-be immigrants who are likely to need public assistance, as well as to deport — when possible — immigrants already living in the U.S. who depend on taxpayers' help, according to a draft executive order revealed by The Washington Post on January 31.
Rising activism
In stark contrast to the silence kept by the Chinese who were at the mercy of the U.S. government 100 years ago, now more Chinese people living in the U.S., including Chinese Americans, are becoming used to resorting to legal channels to voice their appeals, Li said.
A Californian bill, known as AB-1726, requiring certain state education and health agencies to break down demographic data they collect for Native Hawaiian, Asian and Pacific Islander groups, drew a backlash from the Chinese-American community for possible discrimination against subgroups with higher academic performance in August 2016, which finally led to the amendment in the bill, NBC reported.
In October 2016, elected officials and activists staged a protest outside the Manhattan headquarters of Fox News over a segment on the "O'Reilly Factor" in which a correspondent conducted a series of mocking interviews of Asian-Americans in New York City's Chinatown that critics said trafficked in stereotypes and veered into racism, the New York Times reported.
"The Chinese people have to think about raising their political status and try to participate in political affairs once they tighten up their financial security," Liu explained.
In spite of Asian-American voters' overwhelming preference for the Democratic Party, Trump won the support of some Chinese immigrants and met with a group called "Chinese Americans for Trump" near his Beverly Hills home in June 2016. The group took a picture with a T-shirt saying "Chinese Americans [heart] Trump," PBS NewsHour reported.
Liu, however, pointed out that "Since a majority of Chinese Americans are unfamiliar with the U.S. political structure and legitimate channels to express their demands, those protests do not mean Chinese people have achieved progress in seeking participation in the administration and discussion of state affairs."
