A new invasion from the east
by digby
Uh oh. A new invasion:
For the first time, the influx of Asians moving to the U.S. has surpassed that of Hispanics, reflecting a slowdown in illegal immigration while American employers increase their demand for high-skilled workers.
An expansive study by the Pew Research Center details what it describes as “the rise of Asian-Americans,” a highly diverse and fast-growing group making up nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population. Mostly foreign-born and naturalized citizens, their numbers have been boosted by increases in visas granted to specialized workers and to wealthy investors as the U.S. economy becomes driven less by manufacturing and more by technology.
“Too often the policy debates on immigration fixate on just one part – illegal immigration,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science professor at the University of California-Riverside and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “U.S. immigration is more diverse and broader than that, with policy that needs to focus also on high-skilled workers.”
“With net migration from Mexico now at zero, the role of Asian-Americans has become more important,” he said.
Somehow, I don’t get the feeling that the usual xenophobes will any problem switching their attention from the “illegals” to the job stealing “yellow peril”. China bashing is already in vogue and as we’ve seen from their resurrection of the words “socialist and communist” I just have a feeling that they’ll have no trouble accessing all kinds of racist canards from the past.
Keep a couple of things in mind as you watch this unfold. It was only 15 years or so ago that they managed to create a yellow-peril scandal out of whole cloth. (A scandal, by the way, that destroyed an innocent scientist’s career.) And also remember that the neocon view on China has always been well … war. Obviously, there are major economic considerations but they tend to take the long view of such things and have no problem ginning up the kind of crisis needed to make people support all kinds of self-destructive actions. I think they probably believe they could make this work.
Anyway, I’ve long thought that the only way they could get out of the electoral bind they’ve put themselves in with Hispanics is by finding someone else for their neanderthals to hate. This could fit the bill.
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