UCLA research focuses on crime in Asian America

UCLA research focuses on crime in Asian America

Amerasia Journal, the leading research journal on Asian Americans in the nation, announces the publication of “Deporting Our Souls and Defending Our Immigrants,” a special issue on crime in Asian America that, for the first time, gathers together the perspectives of scholars, researchers and ex-prisoners.

After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many Asian Americans including Southeast Asians and South Asians have become especially vulnerable to criminalization and have been legally, politically, economically or culturally ostracized and discriminated against.

Bill Ong Hing, professor of law and Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis, and the author of “Defining America Through Immigration Policy,” said that this Amerasia issue “gives us a picture of the level of criminal activity in many Asian American communities, the lack of re-entry programs across the country, the voices of offenders that provide troubling insight into why some individuals have turned to crime, and how racial political forces have plotted to criminalize many Asian Americans.”

A central focus of this special issue is the recent deportation of Asian non-citizens to their countries of birth. Hing investigates how alleged criminality and criminal acts can lead to the unfair deportation of Asian Americans who have grown up in the United States. High crime rates in certain Asian American communities, together with the non-citizen status of many Asian Americans, are a “recipe for disaster,” according to Hing. Common criminal acts plus aggravated felonies can lead to permanent deportation.
Young Cambodian and Vietnamese youth who had survived the trauma of the war in Southeast Asia are especially vulnerable to falling into lives of petty crime and possible deportation on criminal grounds. Many Asian American families, according to Hing, “confront poverty, school issues, role reversal, family disruption, and culture clash.”

The 200-page issue, guest-edited by Hing, features research and essays on: How after the Sept. 11 attacks Arab and Muslim communities are being targeted and criminalized by the media, the state and the courts; by Louise Cainkar and Sunaina Maira. How data on Asian and Pacific Islander youth should be analyzed; by Thao N. Le and Isami Arifuku. Re-entry issues of Asians and Pacific Islanders; by Angela E. Oh and Karen Umemoto. Asian and Pacific Islander re-entry issues in New York; by Michelle Tseching Fei and Gerald P. Lopez.

Together with the above essays, Richard Kim’s first in- depth interview of Chol Soo Lee and K.W. Lee explores the case of Chol Soo Lee in the 1970s and 80s. Chol Soo Lee’s case became a rallying point for both immigrant and American-born Asian Americans who identified with the immigrant youth’s conviction on false grounds and subsequent death row sentence. K.W. Lee, a Korean immigrant himself and award-winning journalist, first met Chol Soo Lee in 1977 and published a two-part investigative series in The Sacramento Union.In addition to this interview, Chol Soo Lee shares with Amerasia readers “A Silent Plea,” a poem written in prison.

Other articles, memoirs and essays include writing by Duc Ta, Mia F. Yamamoto, Andrew Thi and playwright Philip Kan Gotanda. Writers on war and incarceration in this issue also include E. San Juan Jr., Ramsay Liem and Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi.Individual copies of the issue and class textbook orders are available for $15 plus $5 handling, or $35 for annual individual subscriptions to Amerasia Journal, from UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 3230 Campbell Hall, Box 951546, Los Angeles, CA 90095 1546. For e- mail orders, contact the business manager at aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu. To order by telephone, call (310) 825-2968.

(PRESS RELEASE)