The debate surrounding US President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has focused almost entirely on the Latino community, leaving other groups affected — notably Asians — largely out of the discourse, experts say.
Of the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the US, about 80 percent are from Mexico or elsewhere in Latin America, but the second-largest group — 1.5 million — are from Asia, according to government figures and researchers.
The majority hail from China, India, Philippines and South Korea, representing the fastest-growing segments of unauthorized immigrants in the US since 2000, according to the Pew Research Center and the Migration Policy Institute.
Photo: AFP
The number of unauthorized immigrants from India, for example, grew by about 130,000 from 2009 to 2014, to an estimated half a million, Pew said.
And yet Asians have often been overlooked in the debate over illegal immigration, which has mainly been cast by the Trump administration as a Mexican issue that can be tackled by building a wall along the US-Mexico border.
“Asians in the United States have not received the same sort of focus as people from Mexico and Latin America,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, an immigration lawyer and professor at Cornell Law School.
“It may be more sociological than anything else, but they are certainly concerned, as everyone else, about the new enforcement policies,” he said.
Korean American Coalition in Los Angeles executive director Joon Bang said that since Trump’s election in November last year, he has witnessed mounting fear within the Korean community over the president’s immigration policies.
“To give you an idea ... we normally get about 60 calls a month regarding immigration issues and since Trump was elected we’ve had an average of about 150 calls per month,” Bang said.
“It’s all fear-related, from people with or without status, to those with a visa or in the process of applying for citizenship,” he said.
The anxiety is such that in one instance a Korean woman in Los Angeles who was domestically abused refused to go to the police for fear she and her family would be deported, Bang said.
While most of the Latino undocumented immigrants cross into the US by slipping through the US-Mexico border, those from Asian countries typically arrive on tourist or student visas and then overstay their allotted time.
Moreover, unlike immigrants from Mexico or Central America, they usually do not come from a poor background and have immigration petitions in the pipeline.
Bang said that many undocumented Asians, especially Koreans, have taken advantage of executive policies during the administration of former US president Barack Obama on Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents.
These defer deportation for unauthorized immigrants who grew up in the US and for parents of US citizens or legal residents.
“There is a demographic among the Asian community that wants to take advantage of this, so that they can be seen ... and come out of the shadow,” Bang said.
However, the concern now is that these programs face an uncertain future under the Trump administration.
Yale-Loehr said he has counseled a number of undocumented students at Cornell who fear for their future and are unsure where to turn.
“Some of them have come in for a formal immigration consultation to determine whether they have other avenues to become legal, such as political asylum or marrying a US citizen for love,” Yale-Loehr said.
Given the uncertainty on immigration, Yale-Loehr said his advice is often to just lie low and wait it out.
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS