immigrants
Fruit Cut By Your Asian Parents is Worth a Thousand Words
It’s a quarter past midnight. There are about a million jumbled thoughts racing through my scrambled mind, but one common theme interconnects them all: I am completely, utterly, devastatingly unprepared for my chemistry test tomorrow. I can’t tell the difference between an alkene and an alkane, and I haven’t even gotten around to studying NMRs yet.
There’s a certain gut feeling you get in situations like this. It’s a taunting, tiny, yet deafening voice circling the back of your head, whispering “you’re screwed” over and over again; it’s a sinking feeling in your stomach you get when you’re almost to the drop of the roller coaster, like you know the worst is coming and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Life is a highway, and I was about to crash.
Gosaeng: An Ode to the Struggle of My Korean Immigrant Parents
I grew up as the child of immigrant parents who, like countless other immigrants, did what they could to provide for their family. Having immigrated to Canada in the 1970s, my parents first ran a 24-hour convenience store in downtown Toronto (within a few miles from where the Netflix series “Kim’s Convenience” is filmed), had a failed business venture in the velvet print industry, and then went on to run a video store, “Video 99”, for the bulk of my childhood.
When I think of my parents during my childhood, certain images are seared forever in my mind. Like the time my mom was weeping in rage, Korean profanities flowing out of her mouth, because a customer had spat on her for attempting to collect a $3.99 video late charge in her thickly-accented English. Or like the time my dad overturned a video shelving display because of his frustration with the slow business painfully amplified by the number of thefts that had occurred in our store. Or the time he ran out of our store in his slippers with a baseball bat convinced he could somehow attack one of these teenage thieves and teach them a lesson. Or all the times my mom hugged me wearily while reminding us not to open the front door and to only pick up the phone after we heard our special phone code (three rings, pause, and then another three rings) as she left us to work overnight at the print shop.
Asian Immigrants May Be the Easiest Targets in Trump’s Upcoming ICE Raids
The U.S. administration’s plans to commit mass raids of the homes of undocumented immigrants has the Asian community on edge.
Undocumented Asian immigrants ballooned from 500,000 to 1.7 million between 2000 and 2015, according to estimates from the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Center for Migration Studies (CMS).
Meet the Children of Immigrants Who Grew Up in Their Parents’ Chinese Restaurants
A fascinating new feature by BBC Stories sheds light on the children of Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong who moved to the United Kingdom in the 1950s to begin a new life.
Many of them started small restaurants for their livelihood, creating a generation, or two, of kids who grew up helping out in the family eatery business a couple of decades later.
L.A. Judge Stops ICE From Conducting Raids on Cambodian Immigrants For Now
A judge in Los Angeles ordered federal immigration officials to temporarily halt any surprise raids on Cambodian immigrants living in the U.S. with deportation orders.
The order undermines efforts of the Trump administration to ramp up deportations to Phnom Penh, which suffered visa sanctions when it stopped issuing travel documents to returnees in 2017.
The U.S. Army is Allegedly Discharging Immigrant Recruits They Promised Citizenship To
The U.S. Army is allegedly discharging some immigrant reservists and recruits who enlisted through the special recruitment program that offered a path to citizenship, a report from the Associated Press revealed.
Citing immigration lawyers privy to the details, the report claimed that at least 40 immigrant recruits have been discharged or whose status has been put at risk recently.
Thousands of Vietnamese Immigrants Protected By Treaty Now Targeted By ICE For Deportation
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is preparing to deport thousands of Vietnamese immigrants who have been in the U.S. for more than two decades and are protected by a long-standing treaty.
Why it’s a problem: Many of the targeted Vietnamese immigrants, who are legal U.S. residents but not citizens, arrived in the United States before 1995, most likely as refugees of the Vietnam War, former U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius explained to Reuters.
Meet the ‘Crazy Rich Asian’ Teaching Others ‘How to American’
I was first introduced to Jimmy O. Yang after seeing him on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” where he plays Jian-Yang, a Chinese app developer struggling to immerse himself in American culture while creating groundbreaking apps, like the infamous Not Hotdog app.
Yang’s character instantly became my favorite, and I laughed as he outshined his co-stars with his personality. In one scene, Jian-Yang gets confused and physically looks up after being asked, “What’s up?”
Racist Woman at Starbucks Verbally Assaults Student For Speaking Korean
Annie An, an international student from Seoul, South Korea was getting coffee at a Starbucks in Walnut Creek, California with her tutor Sean H. Lee on Sunday when an elderly woman in a lumpy teal sweater told her “this is America” and to “use English only.”
An was perplexed. “Excuse me?” she said.
ICE Releases Asian American Sexual Assault Survivor After Viral Social Media Protest
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released Ny Nourn, the sexual assault survivor it plans to deport to Cambodia, after an extensive social media campaign.
Nourn, who immigrated to the U.S. at the age of 5 after spending her early childhood in a Thai refugee camp, is out on bail after organizations and individual supporters rallied for her release, crowdsourcing more than $10,000 to meet her bond. The remainder of the money will be used to support her transition to freedom.
Over 100 Cambodian Immigrants Arrested in Latest ICE Deportation Crackdown
Officers of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have arrested more than 100 Cambodian nationals with deportation orders throughout the country in recent weeks.
Advocates claimed that some of the people who were taken into custody had been living in California’s Long Beach area, where a tight community and busy businesses thrive.
Armed Robbers Who ‘Terrorized’ Chinese Immigrants in Philadelphia Now Face Up to 70 Years in Prison
A group of Chinese immigrants in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania have banded together to stand up against being victimized because of Asian stereotypes.
West Philadelphia has seen its share of traumatizing armed robberies which targeted various Chinese families between May and August 2016. During this period, 13 cases of home-invasion and armed robberies took place at the homes of Chinese business owners, according to The Inquirer.