Harish Dhruv did it legally. A native of India, Dhruv came to the United States on a student visa in 1970, earned an undergraduate degree in textile chemicals, found an employer willing to sponsor him for a green card and obtained citizenship in 1977. Then he filed a petition to bring his younger sister here, finally winning approval in 2001 – after 17 long years.
So ask Dhruv about the immigration debate raging across the nation, and he will tell you that his top priority is neither to legalize undocumented immigrants nor expand a guest worker program. He says it is reducing the long wait for visas for family members.
“It’s too long,” said Dhruv, 60, a South Pasadena financial planner. “I feel it’s very unfair to the people who are waiting and to those who want to bring their families together. I want Congress to stop playing politics and resolve this issue in the best interest of legal U.S. citizens, rather than concentrating on the undocumented.”
In the recent immigration debate, Hispanics have generally been the face of the immigrant. But then nation’s roughly 10 million Asian immigrants also have an enormous stake in the debate, which will resume as Congress returns from recess this week.
Their priorities, however, are often different from Hispanics.
Statistics help explain why: Only about 8 to 10 percent of the Asian population is undocumented, compared with more than 20 percent of Hispanics.
Hispanics accounted for 78 percent of the nation’s 11 million illegal migrants in 2005, compared with 13 percent from Asia, according to the Pew Hispanic Center.
As a result, Asian activists say that their communities are most concerned about reducing family visa backlogs – a goal opposed by some immigration-control groups.
Because their homelands are an ocean away, however, they are not as concerned with a proposed guest worker program or with enhanced border enforcement.
In addition, more Asians than Hispanics are naturalized U.S. citizens, college-educated and professionally employed – attributes that may make some feel less connected to the struggles of low-skilled undocumented immigrants.
Relatively few Asian immigrants have joined the marches, rallies and other pro-immigrant events that recently have taken place in cities nationwide, perhaps viewing the movement as a Hispanic cause.
There are other factors as well. Asian communities’ media outlets lack the breadth and clout of those catering to Hispanics, and many Asian immigrants come from countries with less-developed political protest traditions.
“There’s a general apathy among Chinese immigrants because they come from societies where they were not allowed to vote or voice their opinions,” said Daniel Huang, 38, an Alhambra, California immigration attorney with clients mainly from China and Taiwan.
“If you criticize the government or march in the streets in China, you’re harshly punished. The last time they did that, they were run over by tanks,” he said, referring to the Chinese government’s violent suppression in 1989 of pro-democracy activists in Tiananmen Square.
Not all Asian immigrants, of course, are uninvolved. South Korea and the Philippines both have traditions of ousting dictatorial regimes and their émigrés in the United States are stepping up for immigrant reform. Korean-American business, faith and community leaders are scheduled to announce plans to join Hispanics and other immigrants in the next major immigrant rights’ demonstration set for May 1.
Indeed, Asian Americans share some concerns with Hispanics about legalization of undocumented immigrants.
At a recent town hall meeting sponsored by the South Asian Network in Artesia, New Mexico, Khadim Hussain spoke of his fears as an undocumented immigrant who came to the United States in 1991 to support dozens of destitute family members living in the disputed territory of Kashmir on the India-Pakistan border. A convenience store clerk, he has been struggling to pay mounting medical bills for his parents, who were injured in the region’s earthquake last year.
“My biggest hope is a green card, so I can see my parents again,” he said.
Nonetheless, some evidence suggests that people of Asian heritage are less sympathetic than Hispanics undocumented immigrants. Although the majority of legal Asian immigrants support legalization, a recent multilingual poll sponsored by New American Media (NAM), an ethnic media consortium, showed that 39 percent favored the deportation of illegal immigrants, compared with 8 percent of legal Hispanic immigrants who held that view.
Asian-American activists say their priority is to ensure that the issue of more family visas does not get shortchanged in the current policy debate, which so far has focused on illegal immigration and guest worker plans. Asians face among the longest waits of any immigrant group for relatives’ visas. Filipino siblings of U.S. citizens, for instance, face a 23-year wait, according to the U.S. State Departments’ web site. Asian American activists stress the need to work with Hispanics to avoid pitting the two communities against each other in the struggle for legalization and family visas.
