Zhou, Kim, and Chin’s “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles” discusses how different today’s incoming immigrants are from immigrants of the past. Modern immigrants have moved away from the “huddled masses” image that characterizes past waves of immigrants. The reasons as to why immigrants choose to leave their homelands has undoubtedly changed overtime. Many immigrants of old left their home countries to escape all sorts of persecution or to escape poverty. Modern Chinese immigrants are not arriving in the United States already having acquired degrees of higher education. Furthermore, modern Chinese immigrants in New York and Los Angeles are no longer  bounded to strictly Chinese only neighborhoods. In fact, many Chinese immigrants have no problem with settling down into diverse suburban areas. However, this is not to say that predominantly Chinese areas no longer exist. A slew of satellite Chinatowns still exist, but these areas are becoming more and more diverse with each new wave of immigrants. Satellite Chinatowns such as Flushing are not limited to a solely Chinese population. In fact, many of these areas are home to a wide variety of backgrounds.

I found it very interesting the change in reasons for coming to the U.S. Before, most immigrants came from the lower social class, such as peasants and farmers. They were driven by the possibility of achieving a better life for their children and family in the U.S., a chance to rise in social mobility. More recent immigrants, however, are motivated by a completely different reason. Recent immigrants are of the middle-class with an education level. Usually, they are forced to immigrate to America seeking political or religious asylum.

Because the majority of immigrants now are of a higher social class, they settle in more affluent areas, creating ethnoburbs. They create diverse and economically stable communities. Also, immigrants are able to obtain higher paying jobs with fewer competition because of their higher education levels.

We all know that the older immigrants were more unskilled, uneducated and poor compared to today’s college degree holding middle to upper class immigrants, but what I really found interesting was the growth and differences between of the satellite Chinatowns and the original Chinatown in New York City.  The older immigrants that settled in Manhattan’s Chinatown were mainly from Guangdong Province, thus making it a Cantonese speaking community. Today there is a bigger diversity of Chinese immigrants from different origins and regions, so they all don’t necessarily share the same cultures and experiences. One of the biggest differences is language, so those who speak Mandarin were more likely to settle outside of Chinatown. This is the case for the immigrant community in Flushing. Many Taiwanese came to Flushing since they lacked ties to the old-timers in Chinatown, and since they were better well off, they were able to move right away outside of Manhattan. Many other coethnic Chinese followed, and some from Chinatown as well, seeing it a move up socio-economically. The migration to Flushing has caused it to become diverse not only among the Chinese community, but among other Asian ethnicities as well.

According to Zhou, Chin, and Kim’s “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles”, the classic immigration idea of poor, underprivileged people moving to America to find a better life is becoming less and less relevant to today’s group of immigrants. That is not to say, of course, that this reason does not apply, but rather the extent to which new immigrants suffer in their home countries is nowhere near the same degree to which they suffered in the past. The Chinese immigrants of old were often unskilled, uneducated, and came from poor economic backgrounds. The newer wave of Chinese immigrants often have already attained a college degree and come from middle to upper class standing in their home country. In the past, most, if not all, Chinese immigrants flocked to urban centers with a majority Chinese population, i.e. Manhattan’s Chinatown. Nowadays, in both New York and LA, Chinese immigrants are moving straight to more suburban areas outside the metropolis. The diversion of immigration to other areas has caused the growth of satellite Chinatowns in NYC’s other boroughs such as Flushing and Sunset Park. In LA, ethnoburbs, or suburbs with growing minority populations, are becoming more predominant as immigrants of different ethnicities move there. These new immigrant communities provide the proper resources and opportunities for immigrants to prosper and flourish, which makes sense why they have become more attractive to newcomers from China and other areas around the world.

The article on Asian immigrants was very interesting. Immigrants nowadays are different from the previous “tired, poor, huddled masses”, many of them now come to the country as educated middle-class individuals. It is through these middle class individuals that the poor class, the ones who usually cannot afford to immigrate to the US by themselves, can come and settle in established “ethnoburbs” through the help of their middle class friends and relatives. It is also interesting to find out how the established Asians in the US tend to not want to associate themselves with the lower class Asian newcomers even to the extent of outmigration because these people tend to bring along bad old habits associated with their home countries. These bad habits can make the area both overcrowded and unsafe. In a sense, this is natural because people tend to want to move up the social ladder or move into places where people can relate to them. This is why the established or middle-class Asians may want to move towards more upscale areas whilst the new lower class immigrants may want to move into the already established ethnic communities, where a huge population of lower class immigrants are concentrated. Even in schools, I tend to see Asian immigrants keeping to themselves in small cliques instead of hanging out with other later generation Asian Americans. The only solution to this problem unfortunately, is assimilation, changing the way one lives in order to fit in with society.

The article “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles” by Zhou, Chin, and Kim compares the ethnic Chinatowns of both New York as well as Los Angeles. The article also continues on to compare the difference between “old” and “new” as well. In the talk about “old” and “new”, many differences are mentioned. They mention that the older Chinese immigrants, who came to the United States years ago, tended to settle in areas of their own ethnic groups. These old Chinese immigrants were also not as skilled.

The newer immigrants however were the exact opposite. The New Chinese immigrants who arrived to the United States tended to settle in places that did not bring back ties to their ethnic and cultural background. Instead of settling in an area, such as Chinatown, which was full of Chinese immigrants, these new waves of immigrants settled in places such as near Central Park. This was something I found to be extremely interesting. Why would these new immigrants settle in places where they may not feel comfortable, or at home? These new immigrants were also more skilled, and arrived to the country with a well-educated background, some were even exceeding other Americans in their academic studies. So if these people were so well educated, why did they decide to come to America to start a whole new and different life, when in China they would have probably had an amazing standard of living?

This article highlights the interesting contrasts of ethnic chinese enclaves within New York City and between New York and California. The introduction begins by presenting the “general belief… that new immigrants first clustered in ethnic enclaves and toiled to pave a path for their children… to “melt” into middle-class suburbia and to become ‘indistinguishably’ American.” As is abundantly clear from our other class readings, this is no longer the typical trajectory; Nancy Foner addresses this phenomena in chapter two of From Ellis Island to JFK. This article explores the process by which ethnoburbs,” middle-class suburban communities defined by the concentration of ethnic minorities, form.

Often, we study ethnic neighborhoods along sociological lines: who lives there, how do they live, what is their socioeconomic status, how do they interact among each other and with other groups in the same city? What I found refreshing about this article was that it approached the issue from both a sociological and economic perspective. The driving forces of globalization have altered local economies and changed opportunities for upward mobility on a world-wide scale: the economic motivations for migration of fifty years ago have been radically transformed. Just as the receiving economy in which immigrants is different, so is it with the sending economy; many immigrants of today have the means to settle directly into suburbs that were once exclusively white (page 3). I’m sure that in the coming years, we will find this to be increasingly true; as developing countries attain an increasingly high standard of living, immigrants to the United States will be more educated and more affluent.

Furthermore, I found it interesting, though not shocking, that incoming immigrants could have such a revitalizing effect on the local economies, both in New York’s chinatowns and in Montery Park in California. Of course, the case of Montery Park is a dangerous example: many would perhaps argue that the transformation of a sleepy, quiet suburb into a vibrant commercial center is not an improvement. However, if you consider the overall health of the larger district/city economy (and even on the State level), it is clear that we all benefit from the ingenuity and initiatives of immigrant entrepreneurs.

            This reading was important in showing how the reasons that people emigrated from their countries in the past have changed drastically in present times. Economic, religious, political, and financial reasons used to drive immigrants into America in search of higher paying jobs and employment opportunities, but times have changed. The reasons for moving to the United States have become more complex such as specific educational opportunities for future generations and developing stable establishments. There is a new type of immigrants arriving to the country. Rather than poor, uneducated and unspecialized workers, new Chinese immigrants are highly-skilled, educated, and specialized.

Chinese immigrants are usually well educated and sometimes exceed American classmates in academics. The middle class young immigrants arriving to America are not settling where their ancestors used to in Chinatown, but are instead branching out to various communities and view Chinatown as a cultural link. It is Chinatown that allows youngsters to stay in touch with their Asian roots, but they are becoming more Americanized.

In “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles,” Zhou, Chin, and Kim reflect on the prevailing theme of new immigration as opposed to trends of the previous generations. It compares the old generation of uneducated and poor immigrants to the new middle-class and educated immigrants. This ultimately influences where and how immigrants populate and settle in certain areas. For example, Chinese immigrants are starting to not settle as frequently and prevalent in the traditional Chinatowns of previous generations. New immigrants are spreading across different neighborhoods, significantly impacting the diversity of the cities of Los Angeles and New York City. Immigrants are now living more and more amongst Americans and are really trying to assimilate into this culture. I found this article particularly interesting because it points out the discrepancies with popular perceptions of immigrants in present times. Most people seem to stereotype immigrants as incompetent and often blue-collar workers. I feel like this is especially prominent amongst Chinese immigrants. They are often stereotyped in the media’s perception of them throughout the decades. When we visited the MOCA for example they had racist books in the exhibition of Chinese brothers who were colored yellow. This also made me think of the extremely popular comic series “the yellow kid” that helped coined the era of yellow journalism. It was a stereotyped depiction of an Asian boy.  In actuality, many Asian immigrants are very well educated and maybe would have a better opportunity to be successful and contribute to society if they were better received in today’s society. I think that society would benefit from knowing the new trends of immigration and how there copious amounts of well-educated immigrants who can really benefit the well-being and success of our country as a whole.

“The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles” by Zhou, Chin, and Kim is an article which discusses the changes in the Chinese immigrants who come to the United States. The immigrants are no longer poor, unskilled laborers, but are now younger, middle class, educated people. The new immigrants are also no longer settling in the traditional Chinatowns, but branch out into communities and look back to the traditional Chinatowns as cultural links and ties. The article also talks about how the children of first generation Chinese immigrants are becoming more and more assimilated with American culture but still manage to maintain ties with their roots. I found this article interesting because in many cultures in the US it is seen as beneficial to assimilate with American culture and move closer to the idealized “white” status. I, however think it is important for ethnic cultures to maintain some of their customs because the interwoven diversities are what make the US the land of immigrants.

In the article, “The Transformation of Chinese American Communities: New York vs. Los Angeles”, Zhou, Margaret M. Chin, and Rebecca Y. Kim discuss how the immigrants that are now coming into the country and moving into the middle class suburbs and living next to native born population. Many Chinese immigrants are described in the article of being a part of this new generation of immigrants.  Many of these new Chinese immigrants have a college education. These new immigrants are trained and more skilled than previously before.

Does having more educated immigrants in the country help or hurt our economy? Immigrants do many of our country’s menial tasks and jobs. Could there be a lack of immigrants to fill those necessary positions? Many immigrants might not find jobs in their respective fields because their education isn’t recognized in this country or our economy doesn’t have enough jobs for them in their field. The immigrants would have to do jobs that don’t properly fit their specialty, which many native-born college graduates are facing themselves.  Immigrants could possibly use their knowledge and ability to help this nation progress technologically and scientifically but how do we create an economy that helps them to flourish as well as the native born find jobs they want. It is one of the many arguments that politicians debate when they discuss immigration. How will the future policies be shaped, as more educated immigrants enter this country?