Asian American Studies Immigration Laws And Gender Inequality - 2750 Words

Asian American Studies: Immigration Laws, Gender Inequality World Systems Theory, Racialization, Capitalism, And Imperialism (Essay Sample) Content: Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Date Asian American Studies (History) INTRODUCTION Mrs. K was 19 years old picture-bride from Kyong Sang in Korea, and she moved to Hawaii to marry another Korean immigrant. Their family was impoverished, and the Japanese denied them freedom from talking to even walking 10 miles outside, and the only place they would go to was Sunday School. She, therefore, sent her picture so that she could find a husband, move to the United States, get married and be allowed to live there. She then made arrangements and finally managed to get to the US. Her journey in the US was not very easy since she had very many setbacks or challenges. Based on a literature review of an extensive open-minded interview, the paper provides a comprehensive overview of her life in the US contextualizing it with broader themes of the Asian American History. It is evident being an immigrant in the US is not easy, and therefore the Asian American immigrants have different experiences in the country. For some, it is difficult to blend in while for others it is easy. Some of the factors that led to migration from Asia include capitalism which increased the demand for cheap labor, imperialism in their countries which forced them out of their countries and the desire for better opportunities or living conditions. After immigration to the US Mrs. K and other Asian immigrants were faced with yet other issues like racialization, gender stratification and the overall effects of the world systems theory. IMMIGRATION Mrs. K moved across an international border which is a fair definition of immigration which is otherwise the movement of people who lack citizenship to a destination country. The immigrants usually want to secure permanent residence in the counties they move to. Mrs. K wanted to move to the US, and when she did, she had to get married to a forty-five-year-old who was young in the photo he had sent. Most people immigrate to give themselves better lives. There are also some other reasons for Asians immigrating to the US and they include education, employment and the many chances and opportunities for people from all walks of life. Imperialism is also a reason for migration, and it implies a country or nation extending its control on another. Even though she was disappointed and failed to talk or eat for eight days, she had to get married to avoid being deported back to Korea. The laws were still very rigid since it is only in 1965 that the number of Asian immigrants to the US rose dramatically due to the passage of the 1965 Immigration and National Act CITATION Zon16 \l 1033 (Zong and Batalove). This removed the laws that barred immigration from Asian and Arab countries while limiting those from Africa and Europe. When Mrs. K was moving, their only way out of Korea was being pictured brides, but things have changed over the years. The Asian American community has since grown, and as of 2014, most immigrants were from Philippines, India, China, Korea and Vietnam. The Asian immigrants also increased from 491 000 in 1960 to 12.8 million in 2014 CITATION Zon16 \l 1033 (Zong and Batalove). Mrs. K wanted to move to Hawaii because there was freedom of speech and even work therefore she was in search of freedom and economic pr osperity. Mrs. K said, â€Å"Hawaii is a free place, everybody living well† CITATION Cha79 \l 1033 (Chai) . She, therefore, sent her picture and became one of the Korean picture brides. Imperialism also drove her to the US since in Kyong Sang’ the Japanese had taken control making life unbearable for them. CAPITALISM AND IMPERIALISM Capitalism is the economic system in which resources are privately owned, and it is the present system in the US. The main driving force in capitalism is profit making by the owners, and therefore it doesn’t provide for those who lack competitive skills. Owners also compete against each other for profit, and they ignore external costs like labor, pollution and climate change CITATION Ama18 \l 1033 (Amadeo). It was there in the 1800s and therefore affected Asian migrants to the US. During the Second World War, there was labor shortage, and women filled the shortage in military industries because men entered the armed forces CITATION Sef06 \l 1033 (Sefla and Scott). Mrs. K, her husband, and other Koreans endured long working hours, and they were given very little compensation. The work conditions were also very poor since when she managed to get a job, they both worked for sixteen hours a day, and there was no rest given for special days like Christmas, New Year or even Sunday. They worked like animals CITATION Cha79 \l 1033 (Chai) and lived in tents into which rainwater leaked through. But they still needed to work so that they could earn money. Mrs. K and her husband had to move to Schofield where they could find jobs and coincidentally they worked in an army soldiers’ laundry. This was as a result of capitalism. They were also paid poorly since immigrant workers were most likely to be unionized and they were therefore controllable. Mrs. K said two women cooked for fifty people. The compensation was as low as 70$ for washing and 30$ for ironing. It was therefore half pay for women. Employers therefore exploited them for cheap labor. Ot her studies also show Chinese migration across Asia and United States and majority of the immigrants dug gold and built railroads. They were therefore regarded as just a pool of laborers who most capitalists would have loved to control since they were regarded as powerless. Mrs. K’s condition however improved with time even after the death of her husband. She bought a laundry even her own operated a boarding house and later managed to own businesses. GENDER Today Asian America has stirred debates about their gender, and their activists frame social injustices regarding race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nationality CITATION Kar97 \l 1033 (Juan). There was the absence of gender activism in the 1970s, but this should not be perceived as an absence of gender inequality or disengagement of Asian American women from issues of social justice CITATION Kar97 \l 1033 (Juan). Empress Tsu-his who ruled China was referred to as ‘The Wicked Witch of the East,’ and she killed those who challenged her rule. This made it difficult for Asian female Immigrants. The women who came in the mid-1800s were kidnaped or even struggled. Also in the 1920s and 1930s, Asian immigrants who were women suffered a fair deal of gender injustices. These range from job stratification to little salaries and wages for compensation of labor offered. Even the immigration department made them suffer by insisting on marriage for residence. Also for a fact, A sian women who did emigrate before the 1960s were employed for cheap labor and almost half of all Japanese women were either laundresses or servants in San Francisco CITATION Kar97 \l 1033 (Juan). Mrs. K had to be married for her to stay in the US without deportation. She says, â€Å"If I don’t marry immigration law sends me back to Korea for free† CITATION Cha79 \l 1033 (Chai). This shows how the females were discriminated against. Out of shame she could not go back home. Even after their marriage she did not manage to find a job in Honolulu despite the fact that her husband was working. When moved to Schofield, Mrs. S got an ironing job at a military base. The wages were poor for both males and females but the females were paid half what men were paid. Also, females were only given ironing jobs which shows gender stratification in the employment sector in the US at that time. Mrs. K was worked very hard and managed to be a successful businesswoman. She bought a laundry in which she worked until 3 am. She washed a shirt and pant 15 cents an ironed both at 5 cents. It is also important to note that even when Mrs. K was expecting her first child, she worked until when a day or so to her due date. After delivery she would leave her baby alone and care for her during coffee breaks. She took a loan from a friend to open up a boarding house. Other Asian women have also flourished over the years by concentrating on education and meaningful service projects. Mrs. K is among those who chose education since she took an initiative to learn and even small boy ask her why she has to learn even though she can write letters. On a positive note, Korean women were somehow regarded as necessary since the men drank so much. They were lonely, and most single men stayed in boarding houses in Honolulu where they ate and slept. Mrs. S says even her husband was drinking excessively. However, this was just a perception since in reality they were thought of as being inferior sex or gender in the society. RACIALIZATION With the 1965 reforms, very many Asians and Latin Americans moved to the US. It is also evident that America is not only about black and white but even Asian Americans and Mexicans. Racialization is, therefore, the construction of meaning to races, and it is not biological but created by the society. The Racial formation of Asian Americans was a pivotal moment of defining the color line between immigrants, extending whiteness to European immigrants and targeting non-white immigrants for racial oppression CITATION Bob05 \l 1033 (Wing). This, therefore, led to a polarized racial category system. The Chinese were part of the 1847-1874 coolie trade which was a new form of slavery. Some few years back, a phenomenon of racial caricatures as â€Å"satire† emerged with Asian Americans being the object of a joke CITATION Sha08 \l 1033 (Lee). This came up even though Asian American students are excellent students who go to schools with very high rates. The fact that they are also rega rded as great academic performers means that the concept of racialization is changing. From the interview, most of Mrs. K’s acquaintances lived in Hawaii. This shows that due to racialization, they felt inc...

Financial liberalisation - Free Essay Example

Financial Liberalisation refers to deregulation of domestic financial market and liberalisation of the capital account that implies removing the ceiling on interest rates. When it is in a liberalised system the competition between the different lending institutions for the deposits will increase interest rates on deposits which will increase the deposits. The availability of credit will increase and this will cause an increase in investment growth. The stages of growth increases activity in the financial markets that makes the introduction and the development of financial institutions. It is argued that financial institutions, by gathering and evaluating information from borrowers, allow the allocation of funds for investment plans to become more efficient and therefore encourage growth and investment. Banks have a role in the process of development. These banks gives the chance for individuals to hold their savings in the form of deposits, so lowing the need to hold them in the form of illiquid unproductive tangible assets, as this increases liquidity in the economy. Banks could use the deposits to invest such as currency and capital etc. While an individuals need for liquidity remains unpredictable, banks, by law of large numbers, face a predictable demand for deposit withdrawals, and this in turn allows banks to invest funds more efficiently. The rate of growth reacts positively to the interest rate but investment reacts negatively to the interest rate. Higher interest rate discourage low return investment, investors will be induced to undertake high return investments, thereby bringing efficiency to investment, which in turn will improve the growth rate to a greater extent than that which is possible under financial repression. Interest rate does not affect of saving indirectly but it is instead a role of income. The relationship linking the availability of credit and investment growth can be about interest rates which play a role more in particular, lenders and borrowers. The theory is they can be sure about the loans being repaid. The problem is that borrowers can not guarantee their repayments. With this in mind uncertainty enters into the equation in to the loan repayment so lender take measures in case borrowers plans are unsuccessful and lenders try not to lose their loan capital. So in order to cover this they use the credit standard in the loan calculation. For borrowers that mean they will have to be able get the credit standard in order to receive a loan. If liberalisation happened and the reason was a rise in interest rate this will increase the deposit and increases in the availability of credit. But a rise in deposit will affect the loan rate by increasing but in relation with the size of the loan cause increase in the repayment rate. So credit standard is set on size of the loan and when interest rate increases it does not cover the banks loan capital. So if banks would want to be covered by the credit standard they like to have zero credit risk. To achieve this they would increase the credit standard to make sure that they zero credit risk. This will mean that borrower would take a large amount or unable to meet the demand they will not be allowed the loan. This means an increase in the availability of credit will not guarantee access to the loan market. When interest rates increases, investors who want to get high returns will be attain less than they paid for and they will lose if they sell. Therefore they do not sell. Investors who invest large amount take advantage of high interest rate; these investors have a high credit risk. So the greater flow of credit makes share prices to increase and they higher profits because of the price increase. Since profit from the acquisition and the sale of shares rises, loan capital will be further attracted to the stock market, so it increases the stock market activity. This introduces the possibility of attracting a substantial portion of the loan capital to move different parts of the economy in favour of financial assets. This evidently raises a concern about the efficiency gain by means of liberalisation. In this process them return on loans will no longer be linked with the yield from shares; rather it will be inter-locked with the return from the expected change in share prices when economic activities are falling. If bad news spread that will decrease share prices. So investors will not make profit from the change in share prices. Therefore investors will find it hard to keep their debt in order. This is where a serious problem arises, and that is, if the actual price falls short of the expected price and so borrowers wont be able to keep their word that they gave to banks. In this problem arises because the banks cannot maintain their credit standard requirements for these borrowers. In other words, banks have advanced loans which exceed the aggregate value of the borrowers assets. Thus the core problem lies with banks needing to take high level of credit risk from large loans because of liberalisation. As said before any bad news that will cause banks a lot of problem and this will lead to a financial crisis. Because of this reason the crisis happens since most of loans had high levels of credit risk. The credit crunch is what economist use it means a shortage of funds for lending, which reduce the availability of loans. The credit crunch can happen for several reasons because of a shape rise in interest rates and the government has direct money controls and also funds decreasing in the capital markets. The latest credit crunch happened because of a sudden increase in defaults on subprime mortgages. The Credit crunch started in United States and eventually spread across the world. The mortgage lenders sold lots of mortgages to customers who have low income and who are first time buyers and have not got a good credit rating these customers are the called subprime borrowers. They thought that house market would boom and mortgages still reasonable but they were lax lending of mortgages to subprime borrowers. The reason they were lax is because mortgage brokers got paid to sell mortgages. These cause for more mortgages to be sold, even though it was expensive and high risk of default. Mortgages companies wanted to make more money on the subprime mortgages and they put the debt into a package and sold it to other companies. This is how it turned globally because of package sub-prime home loans into mortgage-backed securities known as CDOs (collateralised debt obligations). [timesonlinea. 24 Feb. 2010]. They sold it to hedge funds and investment banks because they thought they would get high returns on it. They tried to spread the risk but made the situation worst. The rating agencies gave subprime mortgages a low risk rating but they are very high risk rating and this got transferred to the lenders. In the balance sheets the risk would not be shown. Many of these mortgages had an introductory period of 1-2 years of very low interest rates. At the end of this period, interest rates increased. [mortgagesguideuka, 24 Feb. 2010]. So this cause mortgages repayment to become expensive after the introductory period because interest rate increased from inflation. Also Homeowners also faced lower disposable income because of rising health care costs, rising petrol prices and rising food prices. [mortgagesguideukb, 24 Feb. 2010]. Homeowners found it difficult to hold their houses because it was getting repossess. Many Homeowners were not able to repay the mortgage payments and so this caused an increase in default on their loans. Because of the defaults it was one of the main reasons of the end of housing boom in the US. With housing prices falling this caused further problems with mortgages. For example, people with 100% mortgages now faced negative equity. It also meant that the loans were no longer secured. If people did default, the bank couldnt guarantee to recoup the initial loan. [mortgagesguideukc, 24 Feb. 2010]. Many US mortgages companies went bust because of the increase in defaults but mortgage lender were not only to suffer as banks lost money in mortgage debt because of the package they got from US mortgage companies. Now Banks had to write off big losses and made them unwilling to lend, mostly in the subprime sector. This was a domino effect and the affect the rest of the world for borrowing money and raising funds. For example, biotech companies rely on high risk investment and are now struggling to get enough funds. [mortgagesguideukd, 24 Feb. 2010]. Since the borrowing was restricted this also affected the economy with a recession very likely especially in US. But In UK mortgage lender were more controlled in lending than the US. . In the UK many problems occurred with Northern Rock who invested in subprime mortgages. Northern rock had a high % of risky loans, but, also had the highest % of loans financed through reselling in the capital markets. When the subprime crisis hit, Northern Rock could no longer raise enough funds in the usual capital market. It was left with a shortfall and eventually had to make the humiliating step to asking the Bank of England for emergency funds. Because the Bank asked for emergency funds, this caused its customers to worry and start to withdraw savings (even though savings werent directly affected). [mortgagesguideuke, 24 Feb. 2010]. Also another banks HBOS having the same situation. This shows that word and mouth can cause total panic in short amount of time. The events in the US caused the same problems in the UK with mortgages being expensive and the market drying up and with high risk mortgages taken away. This cause house prices to fall and homeowner facing negative equity so they default on loan, which makes bank lose more money. For example Bradford Bingley was nationalised because it couldnt raise enough finance. The BB had specialised in buy to let loans, which are particularly susceptible to falling house prices. [mortgagesguideukf, 24 Feb. 2010]. This credit crunch may last for a while because house price in the US as well as UK is still going down which makes mortgage loans under valued. Also interest rates are soaring especially when the homeowner finish their inductor periods. If a recession happens in US it could make more bad loans. It will be hard to get more confidence in the financial markets. In conclusion credit crunch could have been avoided if banks had a tighter restriction on access to loans, especially in the US and making sure no bad news circulates as this make people panic and making the situation worst. As for financial liberalisation it is important to introduce an interest rate ceiling on deposit rates to reduce excessive competition among lending institutions for depositors, which may minimize the possibility of financial crisis. Bibliography Books Lecture notes Basu.S. Financial Liberalisation and Intervention: A New Analysis of Credit Rationing Peter Howells and Keith Bain. (2008) The Economics of Money, Banking and finance A European text Fourth edition, Essex, Pearson limited Web Page E. Murat Ucer. Notes on Financial Liberalization, [online] Available from: https://www.econ.chula.ac.th/about/member/sothitorn/liberalization_1.pdf [Accessed 24 Feb 2010] David Budworth, The credit crunch explained, [online] Available from:https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/reader_guides/article4530072.ece [Accessed 24 Feb 2010] Credit crunch explained, [online] Available https://www.mortgageguideuk.co.uk/blog/debt/credit-crunch-explained/ [Accessed 24 Feb 2010] John Abbey, The credit crunch explained, [online] Available https://www.johnabbey.co.uk/wsb4919660101/creditcrunch.html [Accessed 24 Feb 2010]