Madeline Y. Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2015) (The Good Immigrant contributes to discussions concerning the relationship among foreign policy, the naturalization of neoliberal principles, American immigration laws, and domestic ideologies of racial difference and inequality. Celebratory narratives emphasizing the successes of Asian 'model minorities' have obscure how selection processes serve economic purposes by screening immigrants for educational attainment and economic potential, thereby eliding domestic limits on access to opportunities and systems enabling upward mobility and success for those without such advantages. Cold War policies laid the groundwork for transformations associated with the Civil Right era in repositioning Asians, here particularly Chinese, as capable of, and even ideally suited to, participating in American democracy and capitalism. Attributed with exemplary economic, social, and political traits, educated and readily employable Chinese, and other Asians, gained preferential access to 'front-gate' immigration as permanent residents eligible for citizenship, in the framing of Aristide Zolberg. In contrast, 'back-door' immigrants such as refuges and unsanctioned migrant laborers, face greater, sometimes insurmountable, barriers to naturalization. To these I would add the 'side-door' through which migrants such as students, paroled refugees, and now H-IB workers legally enter through less scrutinized temporary status yet routinely gain permanent status leading to citizenship. Between 1948 and 1965, such side doors enabled thousands of Chinese screened for educational and employment credentials to resettle in numbers far exceeding quota allocations as part of campaigns for general immigration reform. The H-IB visa side-door system, which primarily admits Asian workers in the high-tech sector, exemplifies twenty-first-century priorities in immigration selection that demonstrates how this metamorphosis has become naturalized, thereby rendering invisible how our system of border controls continues to designate certain racial and ethnic groups for success while severely penalizing others." Id. at 4-5.).
Richard Reeves, Infamy: The Shocking Story of the Japanese American Internment in World War II (New York: Henry Holt, 2015) ("The story of the 'Japanese Internment,' as it is usually called, is a tale of the best and worst of America. I learned, I think, that what pushes America forward and expands our liberty is not the old Anglo-Saxon Protestant values of the Founders, but the almost blind faith of each wave of immigrants--including the ones we put behind barbed wire: The Germans. The Irish. The Italians. The Jews. The Chinese. The Japanese. The Latinos. The South Asians. The African Americans. We are not only a nation of immigrants. We are a nation made by immigrants, foreigners who were needed for their labor and skills and faith--but were often hated because they were not like us until they were us." Id. at xix-xx. "I finally decided to write this book when I saw that my country, not for the first time, began turning on immigrants, blaming them for the American troubles of the day. Seventy years ago, it was American Japanese, most of them loyal to their new country; not it is Muslims and Hispanics. The story is not about Japanese Americans, it is about Americans, on both sides of the barbed wire surrounding the relocation centers, the Americans crammed into tar-paper barracks and the Americans with machine guns and searchlights in watchtowers." Id. at xiv. Also, see Evan Thomas, "Involuntary Relocation," NYT Book Review, Sunday, 4/26/2015.).
Ellen D. Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Politics and Society in Twentieth-Century America) (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton U. Press, 2014) (From the bookjacket: "The Color of Success tells the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the 'yellow peril' to 'model minorities'--people distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplar of traditional family values--in the middle decades of the twentieth century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership." "Weaving together myriad perspectives, Wu provides an unprecedented view of racial reform and the contradictions of national belonging in the civil rights era. She highlights the contest for power and authority within Japanese and Chinese America alongside the designs of those external to these populations, including government officials, social scientists, journalists, and others. And she demonstrates that the invention of the model minority took place in multiple arenas, such as battles over zoot suits leaving wartime internment camps, the juvenile delinquency panic of the 1950s, Hawaii statehood, and the African American freedom movement. Together, these illuminate the impact of foreign relations on the domestic racial order and how the nation accepted Asian as legitimate citizens while continuing to perceive them as indelible outsiders." "By charting the emergence of the model minority stereotype, The Color of Success reveals that this far-reaching, politically charged process continues to have profound implications for how Americans understand race, opportunity, and nationhood.").
