Michael Luo

“President Johnson and others would turn out to be wrong about who would come through the door. The law—actually, a series of amendments to the McCarran-Walter Act—would unleash a tide of immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and set in motion a demographic transformation of the country that is still unfolding today. By 1970, the Chinese population in the United States would grow to more than 430,000 people, almost double what it had been a decade earlier. The number would continue to double every ten years until the end of the century. Since 1965, about a quarter of immigrants to the United States have been Asian. They have become the country’s fastest-growing ethnic population. Today, there are more than five million Chinese Americans in the United States.”
― Michael Luo, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America

“You call your United States a free country, but there are a great many in it who do not like it to be free at all,” he said. “Why are they not stopped in their assaults upon the Chinese? We only ask to be allowed to live peaceably and labor honestly. We are not robbers, thieves, drunkards, or paupers, but honest, industrious men. We are invited here by the same invitation upon which the Germans, the Irish, the Italians, and other foreigners come here.” Quong Lee revealed that he had been an American citizen for thirteen years. “Consider us without prejudice, and you will have to admit that in all that goes to make good citizens, we are worthy of better regard than is shown to us,” he said.”
― Michael Luo, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America