http://chaddict.tumblr.com/post/1198856107/glee-asian-invasion-tina-asian-american-gleek.
In the United States, some people may see successful Asian people as well as Asian businesses to be Asian invasion toward the U.S. They also commonly may say that there are too many Asians in the U.S. and that because of such successful Asians, the number of available jobs for non-Asians is significantly decreasing. This type of thinking is categorized into yellow peril; in addition, model minority myth can reinforce it. Is what they say true? Or, are they just racists?
First of all, I do not think that there are too many Asians in the U.S. Let’s look at demography of the United States in a website of U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/popest/data/intercensal/national/nat2010.html. In 2010, the total population was 309,349,689. The number of whites was 242,295,420, that of backs was 40,357,516, and there were 15,239,011 Asians. Thus, about 78% of the population was white, about 15% was black, about 5% was Asians, and about 4% was others. To see the data more visually, go to a website, Political Calculations, U.S. vs. Canada: Comparing Apples to Apples: http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2011/03/us-vs-canada-comparing-apples-to-apples.html. I remember that a famous American political scientist, Pat Buchanan, said that America needs more whites: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201110180019. However, it seems like there is already a significantly high white population in the U.S. He didn’t clearly say, but he seemingly blamed the current American economic recession on racial minorities in his book, titled Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025. For example, according to his book, California bankruptcy is due to the fact that there are too many minorities and not enough whites. He also says that immigration is the same as invasion. Is he a racists? He probably does not understand that one of the reasons why the U.S. became a super power is because people buy American products outside the U.S.; in other words, the American super power economically relies on other countries. That is to say, there is interdependence between the U.S. and its allied countries, such as England, Japan, and Korea.
As Buchanan mentioned, Asian invasion or yellow peril relates to immigration. From my perspective, mainly why someone believes that immigration is not acceptable is because they think that immigration causes an increase of unemployment rate. Does immigration actually increase unemployment? The answer is no. According to Cato Institute and the National Immigration Forum, “Immigrants do not increase the rate of native unemployment in the aggregate.” http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/pr-imnative.html. Another reason why some disagree with immigration stems from a belief that the rate of immigrant crime is high. According to the Center for Immigration Study, unfortunately, we do not have enough data to measure the rate: http://www.cis.org/ImmigrantCrime. However, the rate of crimes by Asians is lower than other racial groups in the U.S. http://www.colorofcrime.com/colorofcrime2005.pdf. Because of the fact, if you go to find some statistics of jail population depending on the race, interestingly, you will find that the category, Asian, is often omitted. For example, take a look at this website: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1182/hispanic-confidence-in-criminal-justice-system-low.
Another important facet is whether or not Asian businesses are damaging American job markets. Typically, I often heard that workers in American automobile companies were jealous of or even angry at a Japanese automobile company, particularly Toyota. But, as American businesses created more jobs in other countries, such as McDonalds, international Japanese companies created more jobs in the U.S., such as Sony, and so did Toyota. For example, my friend from Thailand who studies in the U.S. has a best friend in a small town in North California. His best friend works in a factory of Toyota and makes his living. If Toyota did not make its factory there, when it is a recession, it would be usually very hard to find a job in such a small town; thus, he would have to leave his hometown and go to a big city, such as San Francisco or somewhere else. Importantly, it is true that international Japanese companies and other foreign companies make American businesses’ competitions harder and more heated, but they do not necessarily decrease the number of jobs available; rather, they could potentially increase that of jobs. Also, without competition, an improvement of products will be slow, and a price will be stabilized and thus can be arbitrarily high. In other words, with competition, consumers can prosperously have better products and prices.
As shown above, the population of Asians in the U.S. is not too many. Moreover, Asian businesses and immigrants do not cause an increase of unemployment rate. Asians are even less likely to commit a crime. Who said that Asians are invading America? I must say that it is nothing more than a myth!
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