Erika Lee > Quotes

“Furthermore, contemporary Asian Americans are creating new, multi-layered identities.”
― Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History

“They are transnational because it allows them to achieve something that is quintessentially American: to improve their lives and socioeconomic status for themselves and their families whether that may be solely within the United States, or often, in the United States and somewhere else at the same time.21 These transnational immigrants are helping us all become global Americans.”
― Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History

“continue to affect both Asian immigration patterns and the treatment of Asian Americans in the United States.6 Asian immigration is about moving from Asia to the United States and making new homes in America.”
― Erika Lee, The Making of Asian America: A History

“Federal immigration laws became the means to achieve restrictionists’ goals and reflected and reinforced the existing racial hierarchy in the country, leaving America’s gates open to some and closed to others.”
― Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943

“After the Chinese were excluded, calls to restrict or exclude other immigrants followed quickly, and the rhetoric and strategy of these later campaigns drew important lessons from the anti-Chinese movement.”
― Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943

“Edith Abbott, who authored one of the first comprehensive studies of immigration, argued that “the study of European immigration should not be complicated for the student by confusing it with the very different problems of Chinese and Japanese immigration.”
― Erika Lee, At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943