Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation (I)

Our country has the largest Chinese population outside of Asia. This article gives the trends and history of this community. - - Donna Poisl

By Min Zhou

Outside Asia, the United States has largest ethnic Chinese population. Chinese Americans are also the oldest and largest Asian origin group in the United States. They have endured a long history of migration and settlement that dates back to the late 1840s, including more than 60 years of legal exclusion.

With the lifting of legal barriers to Chinese immigration after World War II and the enactment of a series of liberal immigration legislation since the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965 (also called the Hart-Celler Act of 1965), the Chinese American community has increased 13 times: from 237,000 in 1960, to 1.6 million in 1990, and to 3.6 million in 2006 (including nearly half a million mixed-race persons) by the official census count.
Click on the headline above to read the rest of this story! This is only a small part of it.