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Similarities And Differences Between Early Asian American Immigrants

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There are both similarities and differences between early Asian American immigrants and the modern immigrants of Asian descent. For example, most of the early Asian American settlers came from China and Japan, as well as South Asian countries such as Malaysia. However, the largest group of Asian American immigrants were men from China who came to the United States looking for economic opportunities in building the transcontinental railroad and working in the gold mines during the California gold rush in 1849 (Hall, 2010). In comparison to the early Asian American immigrants, the more recent Asian immigrants typically originate from areas such as the East Asian countries (e.g., Korea), the Asian Pacific Islands (e.g., the Philippines), and Southern Asian …show more content…

For instance, while most of the early Chinese settlers worked either on the development of the railroad or in gold mines in Northwest part of the United States, modern Korean immigrants are generally self-employed or work solely for Korean-owned companies due to the language barrier (Hall, 2010). Modern immigrants have also been given the opportunity to develop close-knit communities and become relatively self-sufficient after immigration. Japanese Americans, on the other hand, originally migrated to areas like California in the early days to help farm the land and establish new techniques for agriculture. However, many lost their land when they were sent to internment camps following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the onset of World War II (Hall, 2010). Alternatively, recent Indian immigrants came to the United States for educational opportunities (e.g., medical school) so they could later bring back the information they learned during their time in the United States to help advance the knowledge and technologies in their country of origin as well (Hall,

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