6/30/04 Chicago Tribune: "Set-aside program adds Asian firms; Special inclusion requests granted,
    All but one of the Asian-owned firms that applied for special inclusion in the City of Chicago's revised minority set-aside program for construction contracts, which went into effect Tuesday, were approved even though the legislation excludes Asians as a group. 
    Whether Asian companies would remain in the program was the most controversial issue city officials faced in restructuring it as a result of a lawsuit. U.S. District Judge James Moran ruled in December that the old set-aside program was illegally structured but gave the city six months to fix it. 
    A new ordinance governing the program was approved last month by the Chicago City Council. The new guidelines narrow eligibility for the program. The annual sales limit for firms, previously capped at $27.5 million, is now as low as $12.5 million for specialty contractors. Additionally, a business owner's net worth must be less than $750,000, excluding the value of his or her home and business.
    Although African-American, Hispanic and women-owned firms remain in the revised program, Asians were excluded because city officials felt Moran's decision advised against including the group because it could not be statistically shown that they face discrimination. 
    Asian business owners and community leaders argued the court ruling did not explicitly call for their exclusion and that leaving them out set a dangerous precedent. Still, city officials said Asian-owned firms could apply for disadvantaged status and indicated it would likely be granted. Asian business owners and leaders said the city has largely lived up to this pledge. 
    To apply for this "socially disadvantaged" status, business owners had to fill out affidavits that describe how they have faced discrimination and detail how they have had fewer opportunities to do business with the City of Chicago due to differences in education, hiring and business factors like access to credit. Of the 14 Asian construction firms that filled out the paperwork, 13 were OKd, according to Asian officials and a member of the city's Affirmative Action Advisory Board, which reviewed the affidavits. The one not approved was returned due to a problem in how the forms were filled out, they said. 
    Norman Dong, president of Electrical Power & Systems Inc., said his application talked about derogatory language used against Asians on job sites and how his firm lost contracts even though his company was the lowest bidder. 
    A city spokeswoman would not confirm if the Asian firms have been accepted, saying their applications have not been formally approved. 
    All of the approximately 1,000 firms in the construction set-aside program were sent forms to determine if they meet the program's new requirements. City and business officials said it is not clear how many companies will no longer be eligible for the program. Some business owners have criticized the city for setting up a system that punishes success--firms that grow quickly no longer will be eligible for the program. Paul King, owner of the construction firm UBM Inc. in Chicago, said new rules could be added that would let successful minority firms mentor smaller minority companies. "The best remedy for this program is to allow for joint ventures between those firms that exceed the size standards and those that fall within it," King said.

6/30/04 Sing Tao (largest Chinese-American daily newspaper in America): "Baseball, Fair Play and the Fourth of July," by Yvonne Lee:
    As Americans celebrate our countrys 218^th  birthday this weekend,  many will enjoy the day with  either watching a baseball game or playing in a neighborhood game.  After all, baseball is America s ultimate pastime.  And it is one American culture that  her diverse peoples, including Chinese Americans, can easily adopt to.  It is common to see Chinese American  fans  in  ball parks cheering their teams on.    And with  imported talents from Japan and Korea (can China be far behind?), some of the top baseball players today are Asians.  And one of the highest ranking women involved with baseball operations is a Chinese American.  Kim Ng is the assistant general manager for San Francisco s rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers.  Baseball has come to be part of America s identity because of what it stands for, by following the rules of fair play and team work, success will come your way.   
    So on this July Fourth celebration,  lets talk baseball.  Specifically,  the infamous whos got the ball lawsuit involving a San Francisco Giant and two fans - one White,  one Asian American.
     In 2001,   San Francisco Giants player Barry Bonds was having such a smashing season that he was on track to set an all time home run  season record.  After he broke the previous homerun record,  fans and media alike were attending  every game he was playing for the chance of witnessing this historical feat.  And when a previous home run record breaking ball hit by another player was sold for $3 million a couple of years ago,  there was certainly a brand of financial entrepreneurship on the minds of many fans. 
    On October 7, 2001,  Alex Povov and Patrick Hayashi were two strangers amongst the forty thousand plus fans attending a game at Pacific Bell ballpark hoping to be witness to history. But they got more than what they had bargained for when Barry Bonds hit his 73rd  homerun  that forever brought them together and as national notables.   As the ball left Bonds bat,  everyone in the park knew it would be for the all time home run per season record.   They all knew the immense sentimental and monetary values it would have so everyone wanted it!  As the ball was sailing toward the right field promenade, practically every fan was rushing toward it in hopes of fetching that ball.  Alex Povov reached up with his mitt and the ball touched his glove.  Then he lost it amid a mass scramble of fans.  Somehow,  amid the mad dash and human beings piling on top of each other grapping for the fallen ball,  another fan,  Patrick Hayashi round up with the ball from the pile .  As he was escorted by the security guards out of  SBC park victoriously clutching his prize , he was jubilant.  The last thing on his mind at the time would be his life being turned upside down being  embroiled  in a bitter law suit that would become the new symbol of  American greed and crass.
    Patrick Hayashi was a young Japanese American who had just started working at Cisco as a high tech engineer.   Now a owner of the  most famous  baseball,  national spotlight was shining on him.  But Hayashi was a quiet and unassuming guy who didnt thrive with the attention.  He just wanted time to contemplate his options for his now  most prized possession.   At the time,  sports memorabilia traders  were estimating the ball to be worth at least 1 million dollars. But Hayashi would have no time to consider his options  because within two weeks Povov went before the media to announce  he was the rightful owner of the ball and he was suing Hayashi to get it back. 
    While video showed Povovs mitt did touch  the ball, it also showed he never had possession of it.  Nevertheless, he traveled across the country and took to the airwaves to tell his version of the story  on every talk show or news program.  He was presenting himself as the victim of an assault that caused him to lose the ball.    He was aggressively and assertively making his case and public opinion was swaying his way. 
    Where was Hayashi?   Because of his quiet personality and  his true belief that he had gotten the ball the fair way,  he didnt feel he needed to engage in a public debate with Mr. Povov.  His reaction was a common one that many Asian Americans would agree to - that as long as one is right and  has merit,    justice would prevail without one having to flaunt or fight for it. 
    But after weeks of seeing Povov earnestly portraying himself being robbed of his baseball and not hearing or seeing Hayashis version,  the public was beginning to look at Hayashi as someone who was less than honest and  that he might have something to hide.  Otherwise,  in accordance to  the American culture,  why wont he just come out and tell us?  Finally, at the advice of his friends, Hayashi retained Don Tamaki and Michael Lee at the law offices of Minami Lew and Tamaki to represent him.  This turned out to be the best thing that happened to him and the case.
    For many years,  Ive known and respected Don  and his law partner Dale Minami as strong civil rights leaders and principled human beings.  They made history as the first Asian American legal team who successfully argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the conviction of a Japanese American who refused to report to an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II.  Their law firm, which provides a wide range of legal representation from immigration,  employment and other civil matters,  has been recognized as one of the most successful and respected practices in California.  So I was a bit leery when I read that Don would be representing Mr. Hayashi.  After all,  the case had  turned up so much of the ugly side of human kind-greed  that by now no one cared if either one of the guys should even own the ball at all.   Why would he spend his valuable legal talent on a case involving two of the most disliked people in America ?
    Typical of his and his law firms principle,  Don took the case because he believed his client,  Mr. Hayashi , should be afforded the best protection under the law .  He also felt badly that Hayashi was being painted   a villain and his reputation was being destroyed.  At the time,  the homerun ball was still worth at least $1 million.  To avoid a costly and protracted trial,  Don advised Hayashi to offer  half ownership of the ball as a proposed  settlement  with Povov.  But Povov refused.  Once the case proceeded to trial,  Hayashis legal team  presented expert witnesses and research that convinced the judge Hayashi did not mug Povov of his ball as Povov had claimed.  But as much as he agreed with the Hayashi teams defense ,  the judge made  a Solomon decision: he ordered the ball sold in auction and the proceeds split between the two.  So in a nationally televised auction,  Barry Bonds record homerun ball sold for a mere  $450,000.  Finally, an end to the ugly chapter of new  level of greed and crass in America.
    Since the ball was sold for so little,  Don Tamaki and Michael Lee knew Hayashi would wind up with nothing after he paid for the court costs and other expenses.  Don and his law firm did something that was the only honorable and noble act throughout this saga - they waived their legal fees. They wanted Hayashi to be able to walk away from his nightmare with at least something.   They were looking out for their client's interest first, even though it meant their work for the past year would not be compensated. 
    Hayashi was just relieved this whole episode was over.  He found the whole experience of having to defend his reputation and merit most unpleasant.  The only bright spot was  his attorneys, even before they waived their fees.  Hes also moved on with his life.  He quit his engineering job and attended graduate school during the trial.  Today  he is a financial analyst at a wireless company in San Diego.
    And what lesson can America come away with this?  That fair play still prevails over shortcuts.
    How about Asian Americans? In some ways Hayashi is a mirror of many of us.  We believe  fairness and hard work will earn us success. Yet we are less willing to assert  ourselves if that is threatened.  Maybe like him,  we feel  we dont need to justify what should rightfully be  entitled us.  Or like him  we may be uncomfortable  to have to defend our right to fair play and equality.  According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission,  less than 2% of the employment discrimination claims are from Asian American employees.  Yet those who are familiar with the community  know the actual discriminatory practices are higher.       
    America provides for her people legal protection against unfair treatment in most situations.  But some Americans find it easier to protect themselves than others.  In recent years,  Asian and Chinese Americans have begun to realize the importance of speaking up for the rights and protections they are entitled to.  But too many more are still unaware or too timid  to  assert for themselves when their rights are threatened.   As we wish America another birthday,  let us help our country to re- dedicate her founding promise of fairness and equality for every American.   Honor and decency will always prevail.
    And what did Popov learn from this? All we know is his attorney sued him for $473,500 in disputed legal fees.        

6/25/04 www.asianweek.com: Federal Probe Urged for Capt. James Yee,
    Four Democratic members of Congress are calling on the Pentagon to investigate the Armys treatment of Capt. James Yee, a Muslim chaplain who had been falsely accused of espionage and imprisoned for 76 days before all charges were dropped.
    Yee, 35, was investigated for alleged espionage at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba , where the military is holding suspected terrorists.
    The June 4 letter was signed by Reps. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), Adam Smith (D-Wash.) and Vic Snyder (D-Ark.). Skelton is the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, while Snyder and Smith serve on the panel.
   The letter follows an April 23 request by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts for a Pentagon investigation of the case to which there has been no response by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
   Rep. Honda believes an independent investigation is the only way to hold the Defense Department accountable for its actions.
   In this administration, who is going to inspect themselves? Honda asked. Well back up the Senate request, but I think our request with the inspector general makes a little more sense. An investigation will be the basis for an apology and reparations. We asked for an IG investigation on Rumsfelds policies on the PATRIOT Act and we got one. [The IG] came back with 26 points of concerns, and we wrote a letter to Rumsfeld asking him to respond to those points, and he as yet has failed to respond.
   If the right wing accuses me of using this as a campaign issue, I say theyre right. I want them to answer it, Honda said.
   The governments additional reprimand against Yee for adultery and pornography also has been overturned.
   Those developments raise important questions about the strength and legitimacy of initial assertions by Army officials that Capt. Yee had engaged in espionage and treasonous conduct at Guantanamo Bay , Cuba , said Smith and three other House members in a letter to the Pentagons inspector general.
   Gov. Gary Locke also pushed for an investigation into the cases of other individuals accused of having connections to terrorism, like Yee, who after a lengthy imprisonment returned to Ft. Lewis , Wash.
   Theres a lawyer in Portland , Ore. , who was accused of being connected with the Madrid , Spain train bombing. And yet the fingerprints dont even match. And they had to issue an apology, Locke said.
   Why is our government time after time ruining the reputations of people, charging them with being in concert with terrorists and then having to drop all of the charges and then releasing them? There are too many abuses that are occurring and we need to make sure that innocent Americans are not being dragged under like they have, he said.
   Joseph and Fong Yee, the parents of chaplain Yee, were heartened by the calls for an investigation.
   This will add a little more pressure so there will be an investigation. The military has left a cloud over our sons head, Joseph Yee said.
   I want Jimmys name cleared, Fong Yee added, Every bit of help is appreciated.  

6/24/04 Wall Street Journal: About Those Huddled Masses,
    by Tamar Jacoby
    The immigration reform movement dodged a bullet -- a potentially deadly bullet -- in Utah this week. Four-term Republican Rep. Chris Cannon was forced to do what incumbent congressmen almost never do anymore: defend his seat in a special primary against a former state legislator, Matt Throckmorton. In the end, Mr. Cannon won decisively, but only after an ugly standoff over immigration policy.
    Not that Utah is home to many immigrants -- at 7% of the population, it's well below the national average -- but Mr. Cannon has for some years been a Republican point man on the issue. Most notably, last summer, he was one of the original Republican sponsors of the pending Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits and Security, or AgJOBS, Act, which would make it easier to employ foreign farmhands and allow a limited number of illegal workers to earn green cards.
    Rep. Cannon's reward: Out-of-state anti-immigration groups, Numbers USA and the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), turned his sleepy district into a national battleground, pouring in an estimated $100,000 -- big money in that part of the world -- for billboards, TV, print and radio ads and other shenanigans. And if Mr. Cannon had lost -- or even if it had been a close election -- the repercussions would have echoed far beyond Utah , in the Bush White House and in every district in the country represented by a senator or congressman who favors immigration reform.
    This wasn't the first time the anti-immigrant movement has tried this tactic, and it won't be the last. In 2000, the target was Michigan Sen. Spencer Abraham, chairman of the Senate immigration subcommittee and a longtime opponent of restriction, who had led the successful 1999 effort to increase H1-B visas for IT workers. FAIR and its allies descended on Michigan , spending lavishly and claiming that the Abraham race was a "national referendum" on immigration. When the senator lost, they declared victory, although postelection polling showed he had been defeated from the left -- a brilliant get-out-the-vote effort by the Democratic Party and the UAW -- rather than the right. But the damage had been done. Others on the Hill took careful note and several were visibly intimidated: Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas , for example, abruptly backed off immigration issues and resigned as chair of the immigration subcommittee when he ran for re-election in 2004. This year, in addition to gunning for Rep. Cannon, the restrictionists are gearing up to go after Arizona Republican congressmen Jeff Flake and Jim Kolbe, also strong proponents of immigration reform.
    Why does the tactic work, even in the face of evidence like the Michigan polling? Because politicians -- even pro-immigration politicians -- believe that the public is frightened of the immigrant influx. And as a result, any threat to highlight the issue is seen as potentially fatal for liberalizers.
    Is this in fact true? Are voters inevitably and implacably hostile to immigration? There is plenty of polling data to suggest that they are: No survey in 40 years has shown anything like a majority in favor of easing quotas, as virtually all reformers believe is necessary to bring policy into line with U.S. labor needs; and the share of the public that would like to see ceilings lowered, in bad economic times as large as two-thirds, never runs below 40%.
    But a closer examination of the evidence suggests a more complicated picture. In fact, popular opinion is mixed and highly suggestible. And activists trading on the threat of voter backlash are playing with a shadow menace that doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
    The truth is, even more than on most issues, public attitudes toward immigration are fraught with contradictions. Polls consistently show that people look favorably on legal immigrants. Three-quarters feel positively about previous waves of newcomers -- the Ellis Island wave and others -- and, according to the Gallup Organization, as many as 60% believe that immigration is a "good thing for this country today." Yet voters wildly exaggerate the percentage of the current influx that is illegal: Most think most new arrivals are unauthorized, though the actual proportion is less than a third. And while three-quarters of the public recognize that foreigners do "jobs most Americans do not want," between 50% and 60% still say that immigrants "mostly hurt" the economy.
    Attitudes toward immigration policy are even harder to parse. In the wake of 9/11, polls showed large percentages -- as many as two-thirds -- demanding that we "seal" the border and vastly increase spending on enforcement. That anxiety has eased somewhat in the past three years, but voters are still all over the map on guest-worker programs and dubious about any measure that would allow illegal immigrants to earn green cards or citizenship.
    On President Bush's much publicized January proposal, which combined a guest-worker program with a carefully hedged plan to bring illegal laborers in out of the shadows, most soundings show the public against, sometimes by just a few points, in other surveys by as much as 15%. Yet as the pro-reform National Immigration Forum has demonstrated in a recent poll, those who oppose the president's plan include both people who think it goes too far and those who feel it doesn't go far enough -- and if you make that distinction and then add those who think the White House got it about right to those who would like us to go further, they outnumber restrictionist opponents by a whopping 2-to-1.
    How to make sense of this tangled skein? In fact, there is one thread that runs consistently through all the polling: In the face of widespread illegality, on the border and in the workplace, the public wants to restore the rule of law. Different soundings use different words, depending on their political orientation. Some talk about "cracking down," others about creating a pipeline that is "safe, legal and orderly" and still others about a "secure, controlled system" or "realistic limits, meaningfully enforced." But the numbers are virtually identical. As leading anti-immigration Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado puts it: "Every poll shows that over 75% of citizens support border security and strict enforcement of our immigration laws." This is what explains the apparent contradictions among other findings: The public is not anti-immigrant -- far from it. What people want, however they phrase it, is to regain a sense of control. But that hunger -- and this is the good news for reformers -- does not necessarily favor immigration opponents like Mr. Tancredo.
    On the contrary. The question -- the critical question for the future -- is whether restrictionists or reformers are more likely to deliver on a promise of control. And surely in a global economy, with the world growing ever smaller and international supply and demand driving labor markets, the restrictionist claim that we can stop or radically reduce the influx is less and less plausible. Much of the public appears to sense this. One of the most striking findings in the National Immigration Forum's recent survey is that 73% understand that deporting the 10 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. is "unrealistic." Denying the problem -- either those already here or those we will increasingly need to fill empty jobs in coming decades -- is no solution, and wishing it away won't bring control. Only a policy that recognizes the reality of the flow and seeks to manage it with a combination of credible limits and better enforcement can hope to restore the order that the public so desperately craves.
    President Bush understands this -- indeed it was the central thrust of his proposals -- and so, increasingly, do others who favor easing quotas. What applies for the restrictionists applies for reformers, too: The U.S. will never have an airtight border, and it would be a grave mistake to overpromise. The only thing worse than the status quo would be a liberalized policy, lacking improved enforcement mechanisms, that failed to restore a sense of order. That would just inflame anti-immigrant sentiment and could provoke a draconian crackdown.
    The stakes could hardly be higher, and the challenge is clear. What voters want is to get a grip on the problem: They want a solution and they want it to work. Not only are policy makers who recognize reality in a better position to find that fix than those who do not. But rather than fear the issue or duck it defensively, reformers ought to try making the case that they, and only they, can deliver what the public wants.
    Ms. Jacoby is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Her most recent book is "Reinventing the Melting Pot: The New Immigrants and What It Means To Be American" (Basic Books, 2004).  

6/18/04 San Francisco Chronicle:  First Asian named to run Berkeley lab,
    The first Asian American has been named to run a U.S. national laboratory, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the Berkeley hills. 
    The University of California regents voted Thursday to choose Steven Chu, 55, a witty, self-deprecating Stanford University professor and Nobel Prize winner in physics, to be the sixth director of the 4,000-employee lab. Chu starts his new job Aug. 1. 
    With an annual budget in excess of a half-billion dollars, the Lawrence Berkeley lab is a breeding ground for Nobelists and one of the most prestigious scientific facilities in the world. 
    The choice of Chu puts Lawrence Berkeley in a "very strong position" to compete for the next U.S. Energy Department management contract for running the lab, should the regents decide to join the competition, UC President Robert Dynes said at a news conference at the lab. 
    UC has managed the lab and two other national labs under contract to the federal government for a half-century. Recently, after managerial and financial scandals at the UC-managed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico , DOE Secretary Spencer Abraham and Congress moved to open future management contracts at the three labs to outside competitors. 
    The current Lawrence Berkeley contract expires in early 2005. The regents have not yet decided whether to compete for future contracts at any of the labs, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore , citing the great cost of such competitions at a time of state fiscal crisis. 
    However, many UC insiders have no doubt the state will at least compete for the contract to run Lawrence Berkeley. The choice of Chu -- whose salary will earn him $350,000 annually and who is the lab's first Nobel Prize-winning chief since Edward McMillan, who ran it from 1958 to 1973 -- suggests UC is serious about retaining control of Lawrence Berkeley. 
    Chu replaces outgoing director Charles Shank, who managed the lab for 15 years and was Chu's boss at AT&T Bell Laboratories in New Jersey from 1983 to 1987. 
    At the news conference, Chu demonstrated his dry wit and unflappability when his remarks were repeatedly interrupted by a speaker phone. When an automated voice on the speaker phone announced that one reporter had hung up, Chu cracked, "Gosh, already I'm losing people." 
    Chu was born in St. Louis in 1948, the scion of an unusually well- educated family. His Chinese father came to the United States in 1943 to study chemical engineering, to be followed two years later by his Chinese mother, who "joined (her husband) to study economics," according to Chu's Nobel Prize autobiography. 
    Chu's father eventually taught at Washington University and Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. After 1950, Chu grew up in Garden City, N.Y. 
    He received his doctorate in physics at UC Berkeley in 1976 and has taught and conducted research at Stanford since 1987. In 1997, he shared the Nobel Prize in physics with Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Phillips "for development of methods to cool and trap atoms with laser light."

6/11/04: Rep. Honda Demands Investigation Into Chaplain Yee Case Calls on Army to Demonstrate Due Process Washington, DC -
US Rep. Mike Honda (D-San Jose) has formally requested an investigation into the US Army's court martial of Chaplain James Yee, a commissioned officer of Islamic faith who was held in solitary confinement for 76 days on a variety of charges ranging from treason to mishandling classified documents. Ultimately, the Army dropped all criminal charges. On June 4, Rep. Honda submitted a letter to Joseph Schmitz, Inspector General of the Department of Defense, formally requesting the investigation into the Army's criminal probe and court marital of Captain Yee. Rep. Honda authored the letter in conjunction with House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Ike Skelton (D-MO), House Armed Services Total Force Subcommittee Ranking Member Vic Snyder (D-AR), and Armed Services Committee member Adam Smith (D-WA).

June 5, 2004 PR#: CO.04-22
Assembly Member Chu Statement on GOP Objection To Wen Ho Lee Ceremony
    I regretfully cancelled the Assembly Floor ceremony honoring Dr. Wen Ho Lee in order to spare him from an awkward situation arising from the Assembly Republican Caucus' objection to the presentation. The Assembly GOP Caucus informed our office of their objection to honoring Dr. Lee late Friday afternoon.
    I am outraged by the Republican Caucus objection to the ceremony and Howard Kaloogian's inflammatory remarks in Friday's Oakland Tribune.
    Dr. Lee has already been victimized by an overzealous prosecution by the government and I do not want him to be brutally victimized again by unwarranted, racially-charged, inaccurate and irresponsible accusations.
    It is my great honor to honor Dr. Lee with an award that celebrates and recognizes an Asian Pacific Islander American individual who has shown tremendous courage in the face of overwhelming odds and inconceivable injustice. Dr. Wen Ho Lee, survived nothing less than a racially charged inquisition by runaway government officials and a justice system that was asleep at the wheel.
    Dr. Lee is a 60-year-old Taiwanese American scientist who was unfairly singled out and charged with mishandling restricted nuclear data at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he had been an employee for over 20 years.
    Contrary to erroneous press accounts and the inflammatory rhetoric, Dr. Lee was never charged with "spying".
    Despite a lengthy investigation involving over 1,000 interviews and review of over one million files, the FBI did not uncover any evidence that Dr. Lee passed on classified or restricted information to any foreign agents.
    The conditions of Dr. Lee's confinement were severe for a 60-year old scientist. He was placed in solitary confinement, shackled with leg irons and chains every time he left his solitary cell, he was denied access to daily exercise and showers, and had very limited access to phone calls, visitors, or outside information.
    Nevertheless, Dr. Lee persevered and justice was eventually served. Dr. Lee walked out of court a free man on September 13, 2000 after a federal judge repeatedly apologized for incarcerating him for nine months without trial and angrily rebuked the federal government for its handling of a case that "embarrassed this entire nation."
    The government dismissed 58 counts against Dr. Lee. In a sworn statement provided as part of the deal, Dr. Lee said that he did not intend to harm the United States and that he had not passed the tapes or their contents to anyone.
    In the end, the FBI admitted that it had no evidence that Lee was a spy and he was not charged with espionage.
    Dr. Wen Ho Lee's courage in the face of such overwhelming persecution inspired Asian and Pacific Islander Americans all over the country. His perseverance and dignity during this horrendous ordeal is a beacon for all of us to follow and for that I am proud to honor him with the inaugural API Legislative Caucus "Profile In Courage" Award.


6/3/04: ASIAN AMERICANS REMEMBER D-DAY: They also ask that their contributions not be forgotten
By Sam Chu Lin
    A visitor to Kenny Gong's home in Cleveland, Mississippi will quickly notice a picture frame with World War II medals and photographs prominently displayed in the living room. They are reminders that he was among the thousands of paratroopers who dropped behind enemy lines in France on D-Day. One photograph shows him proudly cradling a machine gun in his arms, a good clue as to why his colleagues in the 101st Airborne nicknamed the 17-year-old paratrooper "Machine Gun Gong."
    In nearby Greenville, Jack Wong and his wife Fannie are thumbing through an old newspaper acknowledging him as one of the city's three honorary grand marshals in last December's Christmas parade and for his service during World War II. Wong was in the Army Signal Corp and was among the tens of thousands of soldiers who waded through the waters onto Omaha Beach only days after the initial invasion took place.
    Delbert Wong, a Los Angeles judge, is sitting in his Silver Lake home, ready to watch the Los Angeles Lakers take on the Minnesota Timberwolves in the final Western Conference championship game [Lakers' won.]. A model of a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber like the one he flew as a navigator sits on a coffee table nearby. As a Lieutenant, Wong served in the 401 Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force during World War II. He's thankful that he survived 30 missions over Germany and Berlin. Those raids, he says, helped to pave the way for D-Day.
    In Santa Barbara, Roy Fong is in the garage repairing a drawer to an old refrigerator while his wife is preparing a salmon sandwich in the kitchen for lunch. During World War II, he was a radio operator stationed at Warmwell, a P-38 Lightning and Spitfire base in Southern England and helped to guide fighter pilots home. He recently celebrated his 80th birthday. He soon plans to call a friend in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to remember D-Day.
    On that fateful day, Gong says it was about 1:30 in the morning when a C-47 dropped him and his fellow paratroopers near Saint-Mere Eglise. As the men jumped from their plane into the dark night air, they were greeted with a deadly 4th of July fireworks show. "There were plenty of ack-ack guns," Gong recounted. "I was so scared. The man ahead of me got shot through the stomach. I landed in a ditch near hedgerows with Germans running all around me. It took me a day to get back to my unit."
    The 80-year-old World War II veteran is proud of his military service. He smiles as he wishfully thinks that perhaps one day a book might be written including his wartime experiences. He notes that he has collected war souvenirs including a German Luger, but his voice becomes serious when he talks about those who made the supreme sacrifice on that fateful June 6 six decades ago.
    "When I think about that day," he related, "I get sick all over. I think about all of the dead people. I don't want to watch any television shows about D-Day. I went through the real thing."
    In contrast, 82-year-old Jack Wong vividly remembers the many bodies on Omaha Beach and his own close calls with German snipers, but he feels differently about this 60th anniversary. "This D-Day anniversary means a lot to me," Wong stated. "It brings back a lot of memories. I was drafted to protect the liberty and freedom we so cherish in this country. In boot camp, I met with men who came from all over the country. I learned a lot, and I matured a whole lot."
    Wong was with the 12th Army Group and on D- Day, he and other troops were amassed on the southern tip of England. Fate dealt them a positive hand. They were held in reserve and didn't go in on the first wave. When they arrived, fierce fighting continued.
    "We got off a transport ship into a landing craft," the Mississippi Delta veteran remembered. "Near shore we waded in knee deep water. Many bodies were floating in the water. The Germans were firing artillery and machine guns at us, and our battleships and troops fired back at them."
    "Our main job was to intercept German radio messages and to turn over that information to G2 intelligence," he continued on. "They would decode those messages and feed it to headquarters to let them know where the German armored divisions were deployed and what they were up to."
    Wong emphasizes all Americans --- especially Asian Pacific Americans --- should appreciate the sacrifices that the veterans of World War II and other conflicts have made for this country.
    He is thankful that his city, which once denied Chinese Americans the right to send their children to once segregated white schools or to use the local hospital facilities, has recognized veterans like himself for their contributions and honored them.
    "We have more liberty and freedom than any other country in the world," he commented. "Many people including Asian Americans sacrificed their lives to protect that liberty and freedom that we enjoy. The people who are new in this country should be educated about that history so they too will appreciate the sacrifices that have been made, and they'll be encouraged to do what they can to protect that liberty and freedom."
    Judge Wong, who later became the first person of Chinese descent to be appointed to the judiciary in the continental United States, says that the Allied bomb raids over Germany helped to eliminate Hitler's air power so an invasion could take place.
    "There were few (German) airplanes flying over D-Day," Judge Wong noted. "If there were more, they would have strafed our troops and we couldn't have had the invasion."
    The retired superior court judge had completed his 30 missions on June 2nd and was scheduled to go home just before the D-Day invasion, but he and his fellow crewmembers were held in reserve just in case they were needed. He says the bombers paid a heavy price to pave the way for D-Day to happen.
    "We flew the last hour to Berlin without fighter cover," he recounted. "The city was surrounded by over 400 gun batteries. We lost 60 bombers. At the same time, our division was credited with 400 enemy aircraft destroyed in one day. We didn't know what to shoot at because there were so many fighters coming through. They came so close you could see the pilots' faces as they went whizzing by."
    On another mission, German fighters raked Wong's B-17 dubbed the "Dry Run" with 17 direct hits. A waist gunner was killed and two other crewmembers were wounded. The bomber limped back to England and crashed landed at a British fighter base.
    Judge Wong feels the media and historians should make more of an effort to recognize the contributions of Asian Pacific Americans during World War II, especially with the 60th anniversary of D-Day approaching.
    "I think that the 100th Battalion / 442nd Nisei Regimental Combat Team has not gotten as much coverage or attention that they deserve," he cited as example. "They are the most decorated unit in U.S. military history. We don't really hear about them except in the Asian press, and they should get more coverage."
    Roy Fong, who was a sergeant and radio operator in the 9th Air Force of the Army Air Corps, says if anyone looked up at the sky on D-Day it was clear an invasion was under way.
    "With 10,000 planes up in the air ---- maybe more, some going in one direction and others going in another direction," the retired Los Angeles Department of Water and Power employee noted, "you couldn't count them. They were headed for Normandy and then coming back to reload. On June 6th our squadron commander didn't come back. He was shot down."
    There had been plenty of air activity going on for a solid week. The former radio operator says he couldn't hear the machine gun fire, but he knew when the pilots were in combat by listening to them on the radio. "They'd say, 'Bandit at two o'clock high! There's one coming in at four o'clock,'" he recounted. "When they finished their missions, the pilots radioed us back. We set up homing beacons to guide them in."
    Years later Fong was reminded of how important a role he played. Several attendees at a veterans' reunion nonchalantly identified him as a "cook." "I was the only Asian in my fighter group," he said.
    His wife Elizabeth quickly interjected, "Pilots that knew Roy quickly said, 'No, No, he's not a cook! He brought us home safely. That's why we're here at this reunion.'" Fong added, "It would be great if more people realized that Asian Americans contributed much to help win the war."


6/2/04 New York Times: "City To Help Curb Harassment of Asian Students at High School,"
    After a long investigation by the Justice Department into reports that Asian students at Lafayette High School in Brooklyn were verbally and physically harassed by fellow students while school authorities looked the other way, New York City has agreed to take steps to curb harassment and enhance services for non-English-speakers at the school.
    Under a consent decree filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn yesterday, the city's Department of Education agreed to improve translation services for students and start "diversity and tolerance" training for students at Lafayette, a large school in the Gravesend neighborhood with a troubled record.
    "There has been severe and pervasive peer-on-peer harassment of Asian students at Lafayette High School that is based on the Asian students' race and national origin," according to the government's complaint, which was also filed yesterday. "The persistent harassment has created an objectively hostile environment."
    The Justice Department said that students regularly threw food, drink cans and even metal locks at Asian-American students while shouting ethnic slurs, and that school authorities "have been deliberately indifferent to the harassment of Asian students." The complaint also charged that Lafayette's English as a Second Language program was "deficient in a number of areas," including class placement and communication with non-English-speaking parents.
    Other problems included violent assaults against Asian students on and off school property. An investigator said school safety agents sometimes told Asian students who had been attacked or harassed that they could not help them unless the students could identify their assailants.
    Some students who finished their requirements for graduation early said they were forced to leave school after three years and did not feel prepared for college.
    Under the consent decree, the Department of Education agreed that Lafayette students who do not speak English well would be placed in appropriate classes within 10 days of enrolling. It agreed to improve translation services and promised that, for example, Mandarin-speaking students who do not understand Cantonese would not be placed in bilingual classes taught in Cantonese.
    The department also promised that Lafayette would develop a policy clarifying school officials' obligations to report cases of harassment based on race, color and national origin, and designate a staff member to handle such complaints.
    The Justice Department will monitor Lafayette's progress over the next three years.
    According to the Department of Education, Lafayette's more than 2,000 students speak at least 30 different languages. Michael Best, the general counsel for the school system, said in a statement, "Lafayette recognizes the diversity of its population and, in order to minimize harassment, has taken steps to heighten awareness among students."

6/1/04: President George W. Bush announced today his intent to appoint fourteen individuals to serve on the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The Commission was established by Executive Order 13339 to advise the President, through the Secretary of Commerce (DOC), on ways to provide equal economic opportunities for full participation of Asian American and Pacific Islander businesses in our free market economy where they may be underserved, and thus improving the quality of life for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). Eddy Badrina, Executive Director of the White House Initiative on AAPIs said that he is proud of the President's continued commitment to addressing the needs of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders. "The President has selected a diverse and talented group of individuals to provide him with recommendations," said Badrina. "I look forward to working with this group of business leaders, entrepreneurs, and community advocates to understand issues facing AAPI businesses and to develop creative solutions leading to growth." The Commission will be chaired by Betty B. Wu (NY) and composed of the following members: William Afeaki (UT), Nina Nguyen Collier (WA), Akshay Desai (FL), Vellie Dietrich-Hall (VA), William Kil (CA), John Kim (CA), Jimmy D. Lee (IL), Joseph Melookaran (KS), Derrick Nguyen (CA), Rudy Pamintuan (IL), Martha Cruz Ruth (Guam), Jeffrey B. Sakaguchi (CA), and Kenneth Wong (PA). The President's Advisory Commission is housed under the Department of Commerce and supported by the Office of the White House Initiative on AAPIs.


5/28/04: Kerry meets with Asian Pacific Islander American leaders, Highlights his agenda for educational opportunity to build a stronger America 
    Washington, DC - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry met with members of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) and other Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) leaders to discuss educational opportunity and other issues of importance to the community. 
    Kerry outlined his strategy to mobilize APIA voters and criticized George Bush for ignoring the concerns of the APIA community. 
    He also praised the many contributions of the APIA community in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. "Since the earliest days of our country, Asian Pacific Islander Americans have made a positive impact on our country and have been a beacon of the American dream. However, too many Asian Pacific Islander Americans have been forgotten by the Bush Administration," said John Kerry. "Today's meeting with Members of Congress, state and local elected officials and APIA leaders was a great opportunity to share our common vision for an America that celebrates diversity, embraces inclusion and opens doors of opportunity. I look forward to our continued dialogue as we work together to build a stronger America. 
    During the one-hour meeting, John Kerry noted that while higher education has been a ladder to success for many in the APIA community, under George Bush's administration, access to college has become unaffordable. Average tuition and fees at public four-year colleges increased from $3,487 in 2000-2001 to $4,694 in 2003-2004, a 28 percent increase after inflation. This jump in tuition has resulted in an estimated 222,000 students unable to attend college due to cost.
    While George Bush has turned a blind eye to the risings costs of higher education, John Kerry has proposed a comprehensive approach to tackling this issue by creating a college opportunity tax credit and simplifying the financial aid process. 
    Kerry also criticized the Bush Administration's failure to address critical immigration issues and the unfair treatment that many minorities of Asian Pacific Islander descent endured under Bush's immigration registration program. 
    Kerry pledged to make immigration fairer, ensure family reunification as a priority and implement policies that respected civil rights while maintaining security. He also stressed his support for reinstating benefits to legal immigrants, many of whom are Asian Pacific Islander American seniors. 
    "This meeting reinforced our belief that John Kerry is the best presidential candidate for the APIA community, and indeed, for all Americans. He has demonstrated that he understands the needs and concerns of this community," said Congressman Michael Honda, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. "I know everyone at the meeting and in the APIA community at large is committed to doing everything in their power to make John Kerry our next president." 
    In addition, John Kerry voiced his alarm over the recent Executive Order that drastically reframes and restricts the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. The original Executive Order issued by President Clinton had a broad mandate to "improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where they may be underserved (e.g., health, human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, and economic and community development)." 
    The Executive Order signed by George Bush on May 13, 2004 narrows the mandate to focus principally on business and forgoes previous collaboration between government agencies. Kerry stated his support to reinstate the mandate laid out in the original Executive Order and indicated the need for data collection and cross-agency collaboration on numerous Asian Pacific Islander American issues. Kerry also praised the efforts of the many APIA organizations that worked together to produce the report, Call to Action: Platform for Asian Pacific Americans National Policy Priorities, and expressed his agreement with many of the principles and policies outlined in the report. 


5/27/04: National AAPI Leaders Denounce Bush Executive Order Community Leaders Call on President Bush to Retain Focus on Improving the Quality of Life of Underserved Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders 
    Washington, D.C.---Today national leaders in the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community criticized the Increasing Economic Opportunity and Business Participation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Executive Order issued by President Bush on Thursday, May 13th. 
    Fully one year late, the Executive Order renews the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, but drastically reframes and restricts the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, both originally established under Executive Order 13125, issued in 1999. 
    The original Executive Order issued by President Clinton and renewed for two years at the beginning of President Bush's term, had a broad mandate to improve the quality of life of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through increased participation in Federal programs where they may be underserved (e.g., health, human services, education, housing, labor, transportation, and economic and community development). 
    The White House let that Executive Order expire a year ago, terminating the Commission then chaired by Dr. John Tsu, a well respected educator from California. The May 13th Executive Order moves the Initiative from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Commerce and drastically narrows the mission of the Initiative and the Commission from broadly helping underserved AAPI communities to solely focusing on the development of AAPI small businesses. Specifically the new Executive Order instructs the Commission to improve the economic and community development of Asian American and Pacific Islander businesses through ensuring equal opportunity to participate in Federal programs, and public-sector, private-sector partnerships, and through the collection of data related to Asian American and Pacific Islander businesses and increase the business diversification of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, including ways to foster research and data on Asian American and Pacific Islander businesses including their level of participation in the national economy and their economic and community development. 
    The quality of life of the AAPI community cannot be adequately improved by limiting the improvements of one facet of AAPI policy priorities, said Christine Chen, Executive Director of the Organization of Chinese Americans. Limiting the purpose of the Executive Order ends any advances in education policy, for example. 
    The Initiative has been seriously under-funded over the past few years, said Karen K. Narasaki, President and Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. The changes make it likely that even fewer resources will be made available. Narrowing the focus of the Initiative signals a lack of commitment to support important efforts to ensure the federal government is adequately addressing the needs of the most vulnerable and underserved in the AAPI community. 
    The National Council of Asian Pacific Americans (NCAPA) sent a letter to the President in march raising concerns about the direction the White House was taking the Initiative but received no response before the new Executive Order was issued. 
    After the new Order was issued and the new White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Director, Eddy Badrina, was announced, AAPI leaders spoke to him and he offered to set up a meeting. 
    "The severe economic disparity in the AAPI community is in peril of being overlooked," said Gloria T. Caoile, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. "To truly empower AAPI communities, the White House must commit to health care, children, community development, and civil rights protections, not just small businesses." 
    "The White House Initiative must continue coordinating outreach and education efforts to the AAPI community," said Jeff Caballero, Executive Director of Association of Community Health Organizations. "Productive solutions can only be found when addressing all the issues facing the AAPI community." 
    EunSook Lee, Executive Director of the National Korean American Service & Education Consortium said, "We are disappointed that President Bush has chosen to reintroduce an executive order that does not appropriately reflect the specific and critical needs of the diverse AAPI community. Korean Americans for example, have one of the highest rates of uninsured in the nation at 54% and a recent HUD study showed they suffer from the highest rate of housing discrimination among all ethnic groups in Los Angeles." 
    "While we appreciate the focus on economic and community development, efforts to improve the quality of life for AAPIs needs to involve all sectors, not only businesses and will require policy and programmatic changes in multiple federal agencies such as HHS and HUD," said Lisa Hasegawa, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. "National CAPACD urges the administration to maintain an equal focus on increasing participation of non-profit community based organizations serving underserved AAPI communities." 
    "Within our community, there are APA women and children who struggle in poverty, whether on welfare, working in garment factories or as domestic workers, or limited by lack of language access or limited English skills. The original intent of the Initiative was to bring to light the various social welfare and economic well-being issues that affect the APA community and to address those issues in a comprehensive manner. The reintroduction of this Initiative falls far short of addressing the real needs in our community and how they impact APA women and children," said Kiran Ahuja, Executive Director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum. 
    "The move to Commerce seems to be motivated by the belief that health needs have been addressed," stated Gem P. Daus, Director of Policy for the Asian Pacific Islander American Health Forum. "The previous commission wrote a health report that barely skimmed the surface. Now is not the time to lose momentum in the effort to address disparities in health in AAPI communities."

5/21/04 The Phillipian: Tang to Serve as Board President,
    When he first arrived in Vermont as an 11-year-old Chinese immigrant who spoke little English, Oscar Tang 56 hardly seemed positioned to become President of the Board of Trustees at one of the nations most prestigious boarding schools. But last Friday, he did just that.
    In their third meeting of the school year, the Phillips Academy Board of Trustees elected Oscar L. Tang 56 to serve as board president. He will succeed David M. Underwood 54, who will retire in June after 15 years as president.
    Mr. Tang, a corporate executive, New York financier, and generous philanthropist, enrolled in Andover during his Lower year before earning an engineering degree from Yale and a masters degree in business administration from Harvard Business School .
    His drive for success, according to Mr. Tang, arose partially from his childhood experiences fleeing Communist China.
    When I left China , I knew that the country had been taken over by Communists and was not a place that I could go back to, so my focus was on succeeding in a new country.  Andover became a critical opportunity to be able to do that, he said.
    After studying at a public middle school in Vermont and the private Rectory School in Connecticut , Mr. Tang matriculated at Phillips Academy when he was 15 years old.
    From the moment I saw Andover , I knew that it was the place I aspired to go.  Once I was able to get on top of the situation at Andover , I really felt that I could deal with whatever challenges life might bring, he explained.
    Mr. Tang began his career at the Wall Street brokerage firm Donaldson, Lufkin , and Jenrette. Only a few years later, he co-founded his own financial firm, Reich and Tang, now a subsidiary of CDC IXIS Asset Management North America.
    Throughout his career, Tang earned a reputation as a generous philanthropist.
    Having donated over $15 million to the Academy, Tang remains Andover s largest single benefactor. In addition, he is a major donor to the Metropolitan Museum of New York, where he serves as a trustee. In 2002, he was elected trustee of Skidmore University , another beneficiary of his financial support.
    Its very rewarding to see my investments in Andover and other institutions bear fruit, allowing youth the opportunity to succeed.  Its very important that we continue to invest for the good of future generations, Tang remarked.
    As president, Mr. Tang will evaluate the findings of the strategic planning committee before determining what areas of the schools life are in need of the most attention.
    He does not anticipate any drastic changes and hopes to proceed along a path very similar to that of retiring president David Underwood.
    David Underwood has done a remarkable job to bring the school to where it is now. The school is in very good shape, Tang explained.
    Affirming his dedication to the principles of the Academy and speaking about his predecessor, David Underwood, with deference, Mr. Tang commented, Ill approach the position with great humility.  I, like Underwood, aspire to the ideals and mission of the school. Youth from every quarter that attitude gave me the opportunity to succeed, and these ideals continue to drive my interest in Andover.

5/14/04 www.AsianWeek.com: James Yees Family Calls for Congressional Investigation,
By Sam Chu Lin
   Revelations of Americas controversial treatment of Iraqi prisoners could vindicate U.S. Army Muslim Chaplain James Yee if a congressional hearing is held, said his family.
   So far, the Yee case has generated congressional interest, but the military has not responded to appeals to investigate the Army captains case. The West Point graduate was recently released and returned to active duty after being detained for 76 days on suspicion of helping suspected terrorist detainees at a Guantanamo Bay prison.
   A letter co-signed by Senators Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was sent to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to encourage the military to finally apologize and assume responsibility for its actions against Yee.
   Joseph Yee, father of James, is hoping for an investigation into his sons case. The original charges were dismissed out of concern for national security, and a letter of reprimand for possessing pornography and adultery was later pulled from the captains personnel services file.
   Im happy [the senators] wrote the letter, but Im a little disappointed because I havent heard anything yet, he said.  It looks like the military or the Defense Department isnt responding. Our senator [Jon Corzine] has also written to Gen. James Hill [head of the U.S. Southern Command who oversees the prison], and I still havent heard anything yet.
   The Yee family patriarch said that Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) last week queried Rumsfeld and the Army brass in a recent congressional hearing about the case.
   Yee recalled that Clinton asked why the military had leaked the stories about his son, ruining his career, while keeping the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners under wraps.
   But he said that Sen. Clinton also pointed out that the military dropped all of the charges against him.
   Joseph Yee believes a hearing would help divulge any connection between his sons case and controversies surrounding U.S. military prisons.
   There were probably things going on at Guantanamo Bay that James was disturbed about. I believe he was trying to do his job as a chaplain. They couldnt back him up and make it hard on the detainees at the same time. They should have never sent him down there. A congressional hearing would put Jim in a better light and reveal why he had all of these problems. I want to know who set him up.
   One military officer may have some answers, said Eugene Fidell, Yees civilian attorney.
   Brigadier General Geoffrey Miller, the man now in charge of the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad , was responsible for Chaplain Yees long incarceration, said Fidell.
   It looks like [Millers] going to be on the hot seat for a while. Jim has been muzzled by the Army, and cards and letters to the president and to Congress calling for a congressional hearing into his case will help.
   Joseph Yee said his son has returned to Fort Lewis , Wash. , with his family after an extended leave. But Yees military career as a chaplain is at a crossroads with his tour of duty ending in January 2005. In civilian life, Yee had worked as a pharmaceutical sales representative for about two years before he rejoined the Army as a Muslim chaplain.
   Now he is setting up a social project, his father said. It has nothing to do with being a chaplain.
   He added,  The letter of reprimand has been removed, but the Army has made him a marked man with the way theyve treated him. They havent even cleared his name from the original charges.
   Although Captain Yee has attracted congressional interest, community help hasnt been strong. Captain Yees legal fees now total nearly $200,000. While the elder Yee recognizes a slumping economy has dampened financial support, he feels the Asian Pacific American community in particular should mobilize around his sons fight.
   Community indifference only leaves the door wide open for a James Yee case to repeat itself.
   Its tough, the elder Yee said. Its probably going to discourage many APAs and Muslims from considering working for the government or [joining] the military in the future.
   Yee, a retired mechanical engineer, has sent a letter to Dr. Wen Ho Lee, the former Los Alamos scientist who was once incarcerated on suspicion of giving nuclear weapons secrets to China but never convicted. He has sent letters to Lees supporters, attorney and family and noted the similarities between his sons case and Dr. Lees.
   I think it would be very important for Dr. Wen Ho Lee to support my sons case, Joseph Yee said.  Dr. Lee was railroaded and really never got a true apology from the government. We need to know what really happened to Jimmy and hear an apology from those responsible.
   Yee is hoping that Lees daughter, Alberta , a law student at UC Davis, will encourage her father to voice his support when he appears June 7 at the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus Policy Summit.

5/10/04 Asian Pacific Islander American Heritage Month Celebrated at State
Capitol - Honoring Past Asian American Legislators
    Sacramento - The California State Assembly observed May as Asian Pacific
Islander American (APIA) Heritage Month today with the unanimous passage of Assembly Concurrent Resolution (ACR) 227 and a special Floor ceremony.
    ACR 227 commends California's Asian and Pacific Islanders for their notable accomplishments and outstanding service to the State. It is authored by the seven
Asian American Members of the Assembly: Assemblymembers Judy Chu
(D-Monterey Park), Wilma Chan (D-Oakland), Shirley Horton (R- Chula Vista),
Carol Liu (D- La Canada Flintridge), George Nakano (D- Torrance), Alan Nakanishi (R-Lodi), and Leland Yee (D-San Francisco).
    "This is truly a historic day for the API community. Ten of the fourteen Asian
Americans that have served in the Legislature are here today to mark the significant progress we have made in California politics." said Assemblywoman Judy Chu, Chair of the Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, "Today's ceremony reminds us of the challenges that faced the legislators who came before us."
    The annual commemoration of APIA Heritage Month at the State Capitol has
taken on increased significance as the number of Asian American Legislators has dramatically increased in the last few years. When George Nakano, the most senior of the current Asian American Members, was elected to the Assembly in 1998, there was only one other Asian American serving at the time, then Assemblymember Mike Honda.
    There are now seven Asian Americans serving and two more likely to join them
after the Fall elections. There is also an Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus
for the first time in history. Before this, it was not difficult to keep track of the API Members. At any given time, there were perhaps one, two or none serving in the Legislature.
    In 1962, Al Song became the first Asian American elected to the State Assembly.  Four years later, March Fong Eu became the first Asian American woman and Chinese American elected to the Assembly in 1966, the same year Al Song was elected to the Senate. In 1968, Tom Hom became the first Chinese American man to serve in the Assembly. Paul Bannai, the first Japanese American to serve, was elected in 1972, followed two years later by Floyd Mori. A decade then passed before another Asian American was elected to the Legislature, Nao Takasugi in 1992.
    Four of these past Asian American Legislators participated in Monday's festivities at the Capitol. March Fong Eu, Paul Bannai, Floyd Mori, and Nao Takasugi were honored with Resolutions from the seven current Asian American Members as pioneers who have helped to pave the way for today's Asian Pacific Islander leaders.  The Floor ceremony also featured a sword demonstration by Assemblymember George Nakano, who is a fifth degree black belt in Kendo.

5/6/04 San Gabriel Valley Tribune: House resolution in imprisoned Chinese activist welcomed by family,
    The U.S. House of Representatives passed a unanimous resolution Thursday urging China to release jailed pro-democracy activist Dr. Wang Bingzhang, a former La Puente resident.
   "We're really happy,' said Wang's daughter, Christine Wang, who still lives
in La Puente . "Right now, we're really urging China to release my dad.'
   Rep. Grace Napolitano, D-Santa Fe Springs, sponsored the resolution denouncing China for the December 2002 arrest of Wang by Chinese agents in Vietnam .
   A spokesman for a human rights group tracking Wang said the vote was the first step toward getting him released.
    "This is part of a global plan to exert significant pressure on China to release Dr. Wang,' said Timothy Cooper, executive director of Washington, D.C.- based World Rights.
   Wu Fan, a longtime friend of Wang and a pro-democracy supporter from Alhambra , said the House decision would not likely have much impact on
Chinese officials.
   "I'm afraid,' Wu said. "The Chinese government can do whatever they want. They don't obey international law.'
    Wang supporters call the arrest a "kidnapping' and allege he was beaten by soldiers. Wang was given a life sentence after a half-day closed trial. He is now held in Shaoguan Prison in Guangdong Province , according to Amanda Molk, a Napolitano spokeswoman.
   A spokesman for the Consulate General of The People's Republic of China in Los Angeles had no comment Thursday.
    Christine Wang said the family has been forbidden to visit him for a very long time.
    Wang's family believes he is in desperate need of medical treatment for gastritis and phlebitis, as well as depression.
   "He's a political activist, not a terrorist,' Christine Wang said.
    Wang promoted the violent overthrow of the Chinese government in a pamphlet he wrote, Wu said.
    "I can say he had violent thinking, no action,' Wu said. "He wants to take down the Chinese government because they oppress the people. You have to do it through revolution.'
   Cooper said Wang only advocated violence in self-defense.
    The United Nations Arbitrary Working Group declared in 2002 that Wang's arrest was a violation of international law. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, chairman of the Congressional Executive Committee on China , recommended in 2003 that President Bush step up diplomatic efforts to free political prisoners in China .
   The Wang family is originally from Beijing and moved to La Puente about five years ago. Wang lived with the family in La Puente for about two years before he moved to the East Coast to continue political activism.
   World Right's next step is to lobby the U.S. Senate to sign a similar resolution, Cooper said.
    "We will leave no stone unturned in our efforts to free Dr. Wang,' Cooper said.

5/6/04: From Wilson Loo... Capt. Frank Choy, 101st Airborne Division, "Screaming Eagles", D-Day Surgeon, 1st Battalion, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment Captain Frank Choy, an Asian American served as a surgeon in the 101st Airborne during World War II. I found him in two photographs by Doc Lage (c/o the Mitchells), from Mark Bando's "101st Airborne, the Screaming Eagles at Normandy", 2001, MBI Publishing Company, ISBN 0-7603-0855-1. It stated that Captain Choy came from the 1st Battalion, 502nd PIR. I also found some text about Captain Frank Choy from the web (http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/documents/wwii/cassidy/cassidy.htm), which stated how he attended to men wounded in the fighting in the areas in & around St. Martin de Varreville and Foucarville in Normandy. By the way, in my research, I also discovered another Chinese American in the 101st Airborne Division - Sergeant Kenneth "Machine Gun" Gong, who saw action in both Normandy and Holland. I found out about him from Bel Leong-Hong's web article "We Served With Pride".

5/5/04 Los Angeles Times: "Diversity Opened Doors for U.S. General,"
    Washington Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, author of the searing report on U.S. mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners near Baghdad , grew up in racially diverse Hawaii , where he learned early in life that ethnicity need not be a barrier to success.
    " Hawaii opened my mind to the capabilities and opportunity in America ," Taguba told the publication AsianWeek in 1997, when he became the second Filipino American to attain the rank of brigadier general.
    Now one of the Army's top Asian Americans, the 53-year-old Taguba was serving in the low-profile post of deputy commanding general of the 3rd Army when allegations of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison began working their way up the military chain of command. The 3rd Army's area of responsibility extends from East Africa through the Middle East and into south-central Asia and includes Iraq and Afghanistan , countries in which prisoner abuse is being investigated.
    Within about 10 days, Taguba found himself directing an administrative review that eventually set off a political firestorm in Washington and condemnation of the U.S. in much of the Islamic world.
    Taguba's classified report, leaked to the media, documented widespread "systemic and illegal" abuse of prisoners, such as forcing them to assume degrading positions, photographing them in the nude and subjecting them to illegal interrogation methods. Congress is also investigating.
    Taguba's career in the Army spans more than three decades. A native of the Philippines , he is the son of a U.S. Army sergeant, a recipient of the Bronze Star for bravery who was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and escaped from the notorious Bataan Death March.
    Taguba and his siblings two brothers and five sisters were raised mostly by their mother and grandmother while their father was serving in Germany , Okinawa and South Korea .
    "I had an absentee father who was in the Army. But I had an enjoyable childhood," Taguba told AsianWeek, recalling an upbringing that emphasized regard for others.
    "It's part of our culture to respect elders, give thanks to the Lord, to be forgiving, and be supportive of your family," he said in that interview.
    At age 11, Taguba moved to Hawaii with his family. " Hawaii opened my mind to the capabilities and opportunities in America ," he recalled. "The diversity gave me a wide range to seek opportunities and to relate to other people."
    Taguba, who was in Kuwait and could not be reached Tuesday, is an ROTC graduate of Idaho State University and received a history degree in 1972. He holds graduate degrees in public administration, international relations, and national security and strategic studies.
    His postings have included Germany , where he commanded a tank company of a mechanized infantry division, and South Korea , where he served as executive officer of joint South Korean and U.S. forces.
    Before his current assignment, Taguba was acting director of Army staff at the Pentagon. Before that he ran the Army's Community and Family Support Center , which provides social services to soldiers and their families around the globe.

5/5/04: NAPALC Supports Comprehensive Immigration Reform Legislation
    Washington D.C. - Today Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA), Rep. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-IL) introduced a comprehensive immigration reform bill, the Safe, Orderly, Legal Visas and Enforcement Act of 2004 (SOLVE). 
    The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and its affiliates, the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, thank Sen. Kennedy and Reps. Menendez and Gutierrez for introducing this important legislation. 
    "The SOLVE Act is the most comprehensive of the various immigration reform proposals introduced to date," stated Karen K. Narasaki, President and Executive Director of NAPALC. The bill includes the necessary elements of comprehensive immigration reform, including: 
    Family reunification. Currently, lawful permanent residents must wait five or more years before their spouses and/or minor children can join them in the United States. U.S. citizens must wait three and a half years before they can be reunited with their sons and daughters. The waiting period can be as long as 22 years for citizens of certain countries such as the Philippines. The SOLVE Act will reunite families in a humane and timely manner by reducing the tremendous backlog in the family immigration system. It would reclassify spouses and minor children of lawful permanent residents as "Immediate Relatives," allowing them to immigrate to the United States without having to wait five years or more, as they are forced to under the current system. The bill would also allow those who have been waiting for more than five years to immigrate to the United States, regardless of any numerical restrictions. "Over 1.5 million Asians are currently caught in the family immigration backlog," noted Traci Hong, Immigration Staff Attorney for NAPALC. "This bill, if enacted, will allow many Asian Pacific American families to be reunited after years, sometimes even decades, of waiting for their family members." 
    Path to citizenship. The SOLVE Act will also offer hard-working, tax-paying undocumented immigrants an opportunity to come out of the shadows and become fully integrated members of our society. Under this bill, undocumented immigrants must meet the following criteria in order to be eligible for legal permanent residence: 1) lived in the United States for five or more years on the date of the bill's introduction; 2) show they have worked for at least two years; 3) pass a thorough background check; 4) have paid taxes, and 5) know or be willing to learn English. Undocumented immigrants who have been in the United States for less than five years will be eligible for a transitional status. The bill will permit them to apply for permanent residence after they have met the work and physical presence requirements. "According to the Urban Institute, there are approximately one million undocumented immigrants from Asia living in the United States," observed Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director of APALC. "They work hard, pay taxes, and contribute to the community but are forced to live in fear and are vulnerable to criminals and unscrupulous employers because they lack immigration status. This bill, if enacted, will give them the chance to come out of the shadows and become fully integrated members of our society." 
    Safe, orderly and legal work visa program. Immigrant workers often work at hard and difficult jobs that would otherwise go unfilled. The SOLVE Act will create new work visa programs for these essential workers that will prevent exploitation of immigrant workers and protect wages and working conditions of U.S. and immigrant workers alike through strong wage and labor protections. 
    The SOLVE Act builds on immigration reform legislations already introduced by Sen. McCain and Reps Kolbe and Flake, Sen. Cornyn, and Sens. Hagel and Daschle, as well as President Bush's immigration reform proposal. 
    "There is a clear bipartisan consensus that our immigration system is broken and must be fixed," stated Phil Y. Ting, Executive Director of ALC. "We hope that members of Congress from both parties will work with the Administration to pass a truly comprehensive immigration reform bill in the future. In the meantime, we ask Congress and the President to act immediately on two immigration reform legislations that already have bipartisan support - DREAM Act and AgJOBS."
    DREAM Act would allow undocumented immigrant children who grew up in the United States to earn permanent residence through college attendance or service in the military. 
    AgJOBS would reform the H-2A agricultural worker program and offer a path to permanent residence to undocumented agricultural workers who meet certain criteria.

4/30/04 press release
Contact: Janelle Hu, 202-223-5500
OCA CALLS FOR FULL GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION INTO HANDLING OF CHAPLAIN JAMES YEE'S HOLLOW ESPIONAGE CHARGES
   Washington, DC - The Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA), a national Asian Pacific American (APA) civil rights advocacy and educational organization with over 80 chapters and affiliates nationwide, objects to the unfounded charges brought against Army Chaplain Captain James Yee.  
   Chaplain James Yee is a captain in the U.S. Army who served honorably at Guantanomo Bay, where his primary duty was in ministering to detainees and suspected terrorists of Islamic faith. After the U.S. military initially linked him to a possible espionage ring, Chaplain Yee spent 76 days in custody on suspicion of espionage and treason.  When the military brought formal charges against Chaplain Yee, none of these accusations appeared.  As a result, government prosecutors failed to establish any credible espionage case against him.
   Chaplain Yee's vanishing resembles those of the thousands of immigrants of Arab, Islamic, and South Asian decent who disappeared through secret arrests, detention, and deportations, and became forcibly separated from their wives and children.
   Joining Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, OCA supports a full exoneration and justice for Chaplain James Yee and calls upon the U.S. Government to initiate an immediate investigation into the handling of this case.  Furthermore, OCA demands an apology and compensation from the government for creating this unjust and prolonged ordeal suffered by Yee and his family, and also destroying Chaplain Yee's career as a military chaplain through false accusations, arrest, detention, and reprimand.  Finally, OCA advocates that the war on terrorism cannot become an excuse for any government to trump basic rights or to profile on the basis of race, ethnicity, or religion.
   "Although all charges against Chaplain Yee were dropped, this case must not be overlooked without a full investigation into the inadequate handling of his case," stated OCA National President, Raymond Wong. "After suffering 76 days in solitary confinement in vain, Chaplain Yee deserves a thorough investigation into whether the U.S. Government had any substantial evidence to support the charges brought against him." 
   "Chaplain Yee endured the invasion of his privacy, infringement of his civil liberties, and violation of his basic civil rights of human dignity.  Including the case of Dr. Wen Ho Lee, there are too many examples where APAs have been deemed guilty without evidentiary support," said Christine Chen, OCA Executive Director.  "The U.S. Government must prevent similar, unsubstantiated arrests from afflicting innocent APAs in the future." 

4/29/04: Pelosi Statement on Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Washington, D.C. -- This Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we salute such pioneers as Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole, who in 1903 became the first Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander to serve in Congress; Dilip Singh Saund, who in 1956 became the first Asian American elected to Congress; Hiram Leong Fong, who in 1959 became the first Asian American Senator; and my dear friend Patsy Mink, who in 1964 became the first Asian American woman elected to Congress. 


4/24/04 San Francisco Chronicle: "Parents protest desegregation system,"
    A group of parents and students staged a protest in front of the San Francisco Unified School District headquarters Friday afternoon, calling for the district to scrap its desegregation plan.
    Currently, the district assigns some students to schools across town to make classrooms more diverse and to give all students a chance of attending the highest-performing schools.
    But parents living on the west side of the city, including many Chinese Americans families, say the policy unfairly sends some of their children to poor-performing schools on the east side of the city. Ed Jew, a community activist in the Sunset District, helped stage Friday's protest on Franklin Street.
    Jew and the parents are also planning to present petitions to the school board Tuesday night calling for an end to the current system. They say they have already collected several thousand signatures.

4/24/04 Associated Press: "Museum holds memories of Japanese internment: U.S. forced about 110,000 to live in camps during WWII
    Manzanar National Historic Site, Calif. Like many Japanese-Americans interned in the wind-swept Owens Valley during World War II, Towru Nagano remembered the harsh desert sun, swirling dust and glare of searchlights that kept prisoners awake at night in cramped barracks behind barbed wire.
    Mostly, though, Mr. Nagano recalls the painful realization that his country didn't want him.
    "The worst part of camp was the psychological effect of being rejected by the public as an American citizen, as an equal," he said Saturday while visiting his former internment camp.
    Mr. Nagano, 78 and living in Simi Valley , was among hundreds of former detainees and their descendants who traveled to the Manzanar National Historic Site for the official opening of a National Park Service museum that preserves a bitter memory for many Japanese-Americans.
Manzanar is the best preserved of the camps where thousands of Japanese-Americans and citizens of Japan were held during World War II.
    The center features a collection of photos, films and documents that record the roundup of men, women and children amid racial prejudice and fears of sabotage and espionage after the attack on Pearl Harbor .
    The $5.1 million museum is set amid the dramatic backdrop of the towering peaks of the eastern High Sierra about 220 miles northeast of Los Angeles . Its entrance features a wall-size photo of the Manzanar prison camp an American flag whipping in the desert wind.
    The exhibits take visitors through the background behind the government order to detain about 110,000 people. It details life at the detention centers and tells of the gradual release and the official apology signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1988.
    Saturday's opening coincided with the 35th annual pilgrimage to the site by Manzanar inmates and their families. Many visitors searched for their names and those of their parents and grandparents on a list of internees that stretches nearly to the 17-foot high ceiling of the museum or interpretive center, as the National Park Service prefers to call it.
    Louis Watanabe, a business instructor at a community college in Bellevue , Wash. , found the name of his grandfather, who worked as a stonemason and general handyman while detained in Manzanar.
    "I think it's important to talk about history so maybe we don't repeat mistakes of the past," Mr. Watanabe, 47, said as visitors milled about before an opening ceremony that sought to blend patriotism and an embrace of Japanese culture. Featured were a Taiko drum group and the presentation of the colors by the Veterans of Foreign Wars from the nearby town of Lone Pine .
    "For years to come, Manzanar will stand as a constant reminder of the grave hardships many of you so bravely endured," Rose Ochi, a Los Angeles lawyer who was interned at a camp in Arkansas , said at the dedication ceremony. She helped develop the museum.
    At its peak, Manzanar, a Spanish word meaning apple orchard, held more than 10,000 people. About two-thirds of all those interned there from 1942 to 1945 were American citizens by birth.
    The camp had many aspects of a city, with schools, churches, temples and even a newspaper. Many younger detainees have fonder memories than their elders.
    "We used to sneak under the fence and go out to the hills as far as we could go," said Itsu Iwasaki, 70, of Orange . "We used to rabble-rouse, see what we could get away with."
    Mr. Nagano said he has no ill will toward the United States , even though he was pulled from his high school and lost his chance to become captain of the football team. He went on to attend the University of Minnesota and to become vice president of an electronics company in Minneapolis .
    "We went through a period of history and we were involved in a war, and it was just our tough luck," he said.

4/21/04 San Jose Mercury News: San Jose State hires chief: Paul Yu Is `Scholar President,' CSU Chancellor Says,
    Paul Yu was named San Jose State University's 25th president Tuesday after convincing his prospective bosses that he can make the campus a flagship of the state university system.
    Born in mainland China , Yu, 62, in July will become the first Asian-American and the first ethnic minority-group member to lead the 147-year-old university. He was selected after a yearlong search to succeed Robert Caret, who resigned for another presidency.
    He leaves the presidency at the State University System of New York's College at Brockport, where he is credited with raising academic standards and leading a strategic planning effort that turned the campus around. His bosses were trying to get him to apply for the presidency of a larger campus, said CSU Chancellor Charles Reed, but Yu and his wife, Ellen, felt the pull of California , where one of their sons had decided to stay after graduating from law school at UCLA.
    Yu's background should help him open new doors for the university of 28,000 students and dovetails well with a highly diverse student body.
    Ko Nishimura, former president and CEO of Solectron and a member of the local presidential advisory committee, said Yu became a finalist strictly on the strength of his record of success. ``I picked the people based on the needs of the business community,'' Nishimura said. ``But I think it's a real bonus to have someone with cultural diversity coming along with it. If you look at the diversity of student body at San Jose State, I think it does help to have someone who is bicultural at this point in time, who understands both East and West.''
    Aware of budget woes
    In his interview with trustees Monday, Yu talked about the importance of a strategic plan and how he wanted to help the university ``bring more pride to itself,'' Reed said. He talked about the importance of community and industry relationships and fundraising. ``He talked about athletics and how complicated the problem is and how there needed to be a collegial governance system in place that is very transparent.
    Yu will arrive at a campus that faces the worst budget cuts in decades, a controversy over the cost of the football program, and a need to set longer-term goals and find financing.
    Yu has the chance to follow in the footsteps of the late University of California-Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien , a highly visible and respected academic leader who in 1990 became the first Asian-American president of a major U.S. university.
    ``Chancellor Tien tapped a lot of South Bay donations, and I think there is a similar opportunity for Dr. Yu to go after some of the tech support we have in the valley,'' said San Jose City College President Chui Tsang.
    ``The bottom line is that he is well-qualified,'' said Belle Wei, dean of San Jose State 's College of Engineering . ``People will respect him because he has a very strong track record, and they also can see his intellectual depth.''
    Silicon Valley entrepreneur David Tsang said Yu will bring a global perspective that will help connect the campus to other cultures and parts of the world. Tsang was among those who criticized an initial search process for failing to include an Asian-American on the local election advisory committee. That search failed when trustees decided none of the three finalists was the right fit.
    Academic family
    Yu, a philosophy professor, grew up in a highly educated academic family that fled China when he was a boy. His father had been a university president and his mother was a chemistry professor when the family moved to Massachusetts so an older brother could attend Harvard.
    Students also gave Yu good marks, even though some disagreed with one of his comments during a campus visit that seemed to suggest a lack of support on his part for remedial education for students whose first language isn't English.
    ``Dr. Yu has a very inspirational story,'' said senior Huy Tran, who serves in the student government. ``The students were impressed with his professionalism and ability to communicate.'' Students made the case to Yu for remedial education.
    Yu's salary will be set in May. Current CSU presidential salaries range from $188,000 to $253,000 a year.  At Brockport, Yu was making $170,000 a year from SUNY, and earned $30,000 a year from the Brockport College foundation.

4/20/04 Associated Press: "Study: Nonwhites not as involved in politics,"
    San Francisco -- It's not just Election Day. Nonwhite Californians are underrepresented in nearly every phase of the daily civic-political process, from attending rallies to writing campaign checks, a sweeping new study reports.
    As a result, the disproportionate political influence white Californians wield in a state where they are no longer a majority is unlikely to change for a generation, according to researchers at the San Francisco-based Public Policy Institute of California.
    Historically, whites have been more likely to vote than nonwhites. That has held in recent years, when about 60 percent of white adult Californians say they vote, while it's closer to 50 percent of blacks and 40 percent of Hispanics or Asians, according to the study.
    But the disparities went beyond voting. The study used a survey of more than 5,000 Californians to highlight stark differences by race in a range of grass-roots activities.
    Whites were up to twice as likely as Hispanics, blacks or Asians to sign petitions, write elected officials, contribute to a campaign, attend a rally or volunteer for a political party. Whites also were almost twice as likely to volunteer for nonpolitical organizations as Asians or Latinos -- though their rate was only 30 percent.
    Though whites make up less than 50 percent of the state population, they represented 63 percent of California 's total adult citizens in 2002. Even so, they accounted for roughly 70 percent of all the political activity the study measured.
    The consequences go beyond egalitarian ideals. Whites often set the political table in California and may decide "what are legitimate issues, and what are not legitimate issues," said Harry Pachon, president of the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.  


4/15/04 USA TODAY: Boards seat few Asian-Pacific Americans,
    San Francisco - Despite their stellar business feats and growing numbers in the U.S. population, only a handful of Asian-Pacific Americans wield power in the boardrooms of large companies.
    Barely 1% of Fortune 500 companies have Asian-Pacific American directors, according to a recent report by the Committee of 100, a group of Chinese-American leaders in business, academics and the arts.
    The committee calls it "a dramatic under-representation of Asian-Pacific Americans," given that the nation's 11 million Asian-Pacific Americans make up 4% of the U.S. population. Asian-Pacific American numbers are projected to grow to 33.4 million by 2050, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
    "We're not here to browbeat people," says Wilson Chu, chairman of a committee taskforce on Asian-Pacific American directors and a partner at the Haynes and Boone law firm in Dallas . "We're here to build awareness and show Corporate America that it has missed opportunities by not considering Asian-Pacific Americans as directors."
    Overlooked talent
    Like old-time baseball teams that failed to sign black athletes until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947, companies aren't using all the talent in the workforce, says Raymond Ocampo, former Oracle general counsel and a director at five midsize companies, including Internet firm Keynote Systems in Silicon Valley.
    Ocampo left Oracle several years ago and has never been asked to join a large corporate board. He says public companies need "to examine whether they have blind spots that are preventing them from tapping resources readily available to them."
    Asian-Pacific Americans have launched many small businesses and also played leading roles in large corporations.
    Well-known entrepreneurs include Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang; Bill Mow, the founder of Bugle Boy Industries; John Tu and David Sun, the co-founders of Kingston Technology; Henry Yuen, the co-founder of Gemstar International; and many others.
    Others have climbed the corporate and academic ranks in various industries. Business watchers point to Andrea Jung, the CEO and chairwoman of Avon Products who sits on General Electric's board; Susan Wang, former Solectron chief financial officer and a director at Altera and three other firms; and Carolyn Woo, business dean at the University of Notre Dame and a director at Circuit City and two other companies.
    Many Asian-Pacific Americans also are founders or top executives at young computer and software firms listed on Nasdaq. According to the Committee of 100 report, 31% of Nasdaq 100 firms have at least one Asian-Pacific American director.
    Why the dearth of Asian-Pacific American directors at big firms? Recruiters and Asian-Pacific American executives cite several reasons:
    * Low visibility. Large corporations haven't looked hard enough for strong candidates in their own ranks or at rival companies. Some traditional, low-key Asian-Pacific Americans - hoping their hard work will be recognized - might not sell themselves or lobby for directors' positions. Other well-qualified candidates simply aren't visible enough.
    Dipak Jain, the dean of Northwestern University 's Kellogg Graduate School of Management, said he received no invitations to join corporate boards when he was an associate dean.
    But after he was named dean of a prestigious business school in 2001, the offers poured in. Now, he's a director with United Airlines' parent UAL, agricultural equipment maker Deere and three other firms.
    "You really need people in high, visible positions," says Jain, whose marketing expertise and knowledge of India didn't hurt, either.
    * The good old boys' network. The high-powered network of executives and directors is opening for women and ethnic minorities, but it's still mostly closed to Asian-Pacific Americans, according to the Committee of 100 report and recruiting firm Korn/Ferry.
    Two years ago, 79% of Fortune 1000 companies had at least one woman on their board of directors. About 44% had at least one African-American director, and 17% had at least one Latino director. But only 10% had an Asian-Pacific American director.
    Many who work in large corporations hit the "glass ceiling" of discrimination and leave to start their own companies, according to the Committee of 100 and earlier reports by the Conference Board, a global organization of executives.
    * Racial stereotyping. Asian-Pacific American executives say that some white higher-ups stereotype them as quiet worker bees who lack "leadership" skills. One joke making the rounds: It takes an act of God for Asian-Pacific Americans to get out of engineering and accounting.
    "There may be a veneer of acceptance, but deep down, there are these closely held stereotypes of Asians," says Deborah Soon, vice president of executive leadership at research firm Catalyst, recalling her earlier career as a high-tech manager.
    Experts say the climate is slowly changing.
    In the post-Enron era, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other new rules and regulations require companies to hire more independent directors with financial, legal and operational backgrounds. Boards are less likely to be the exclusive clubs of old that demanded little work from directors.
    That means higher turnover of directors and more openings for the plum jobs, which pay annual retainers of $30,000 to $180,000 and can require 200 hours a year of work for each company.
    "A significant amount of reshuffling is going on in boardrooms and among directors," says Kyung Yoon, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles in Menlo Park , Calif. "The candidate pool is wide open."
    Every company wants marquee names and high-profile CEOs such as Avon 's Jung. But they're busy with their firms, or they already serve on too many boards.
    Beyond the big stars, recruiters say corporations are looking more closely at the next tier of candidates, including executives who run divisions. Companies also hope to find more directors with cultural and business ties to Asia .
    To identify strong contenders, the Committee of 100 has teamed with international recruiting firms Heidrick & Struggles, Korn/Ferry and Spencer Stuart.
    "With the demand for directors going up so quickly, it makes sense to look in non-traditional places," says Joe Griesedieck, vice chairman at Korn/Ferry in San Francisco . "There's a tremendous pool of Asian-Pacific American candidates with strong business and community backgrounds."

4/8/04: Rep. Honda: Minority Health Care Disparities Continue.  National Public Health Week Underlines Obstacles to Care 
    Washington, DC - U.S. Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), today used the occasion of National Public Health Week to point out the continued health care disparities faced by Asian Pacific American communities throughout the nation. 
    Congressman Honda also called for congressional action on the "Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act of 2003," a bill introduced last year that seeks to eliminate health disparities by the end of the decade. 
    "Racial and ethnic minorities too often are denied the high-quality health care that most Americans receive, with members of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community facing significant health disparities," Honda said. "Concerned members of the US Congress have recognized this serious problem and introduced legislation to address it. Now we must spread the word about the importance of moving the Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act." 
    In coordination with House and Senate Democratic leadership, CAPAC joined with their colleagues in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Native American Caucus to introduce HR 3459, the healthcare equality legislation that improves cultural and linguistic services; increases the diversity of the healthcare workforce; reduces the occurrence of diseases suffered disproportionately by minorities; and strengthens institutions that provide care to minority populations. 
    Among the examples of disparities in quality of care faced by the APA community, Congressman Honda cited the following: 16.9 percent of AAPI women had no prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy in 1998, compared to 12.1 percent for non-Hispanic whites; 61 percent of APA women aged 40 years and older have received a mammogram in the past two years, compared to 67 percent for non-Hispanic white women; 30 percent of APAs with diabetes perform a self-blood-glucose-monitoring at least once a day, compared to 53 percent for American Indians/Alaska Natives; 56 percent of elderly APAs with Medicare received the flu vaccine in 1996, compared to 65 percent for whites; and APAs are less likely to receive physician counseling about smoking cessation, healthy diet and weight, exercise, and mental health. 
    "The minority community in this country faces significant obstacles to obtaining quality healthcare in the United States," Rep. Honda said. "I urge my House colleagues to address this problem by supporting the 'Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act' so we can achieve the goal of eliminating health disparities." Currently, the 'Healthcare Equality and Accountability Act' is awaiting action in committee.

4/2/04 Associated Press: "SEGA Settles Filipino-American Bias Suit,"
    Video game maker SEGA Corp. of America Inc. and Spherion Corp., a temporary worker agency, agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a lawsuit alleging the companies fired some Filipino American workers because of their race, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said Mar. 25.
    Under the settlement, the two companies did not admit liability but agreed to conduct employee training to prevent future discrimination, EEOC officials said. In addition, Spherion agreed to update its anti-discrimination policies.
    The federal commission had charged in a lawsuit that San Francisco-based SEGA directed Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Spherion to fire 13 Filipino temporary workers placed in SEGAs game testing department. The commission also alleged five other game testers were fired in retaliation for befriending a co-worker who threatened to complain about preferential treatment of Filipino employees.
    SEGA will pay $456,000, and Spherion, $144,000, to the 18 employees involved, the EEOC said.
    Spherion spokesman Kip Havel would not discuss details of the case, but said the settlement does not assume any liability on Spherions part.

3/25/04 Los Angeles Times: "City to Pay Officer $4 Million in Bias Case,"
    In February, the council approved a $1.2-million settlement with former Officer Mark Tico for alleged discrimination and harassment.
    The case raises many questions not about Captain Yee, but about his accusers. Did Captain Yee's position as a Muslim chaplain make him suspect in the eyes of the military, even in the absence of significant evidence? Why did prosecutors begin their case before determining whether the information at issue was classified? Why were embarrassing sexual allegations included, and emphasized, in a case that claimed to be about national security?
    The damage this case did to Captain Yee is incalculable, but the military has also hurt itself. It has cast further doubt on its detention policies in Guantnamo. It has diminished public confidence in military justice. And it has weakened its own credibility for future cases when it tries to invoke national security. For Captain Yee's sake and its own, the military should apologize for its misguided prosecution and put in place procedures to prevent a case like this from happening again.

"Chinese and American Cultures Clash in Custody Battle for Girl,"
    Memphis Armed with baby pictures and tearful indignation, the two couples come to court each day with their lawyers and supporters aligned on either side of the cherry-paneled chambers. For five years, Jack and Casey He and Jerry and Louise Baker have been tussling over a child who was born to the Hes, but who ended up with the Bakers for what both sides initially agreed was a temporary arrangement.
    The Hes say their daughter was "kidnapped by white Christians" who have been using their wealth and the courts to their advantage. The Bakers say the birth parents are unstable and abdicated their parental rights by failing to provide child support or to visit their daughter for months on end.
    Although the couples signed papers describing the setup as temporary, the Bakers say there was a separate verbal agreement giving them permanent custody of the child, a contention the birth parents deny. "Why would we visit our daughter every week if we wanted to give her away?" Mrs. He asked tearfully.
    The Hes are facing a deportation order for unrelated reasons, but have been allowed to stay in the country until the custody dispute is resolved.
    The Bakers' lawyers say that what ultimately matters is the welfare of 5-year-old Anna Mae He, who has seen her biological parents only once in more than three years as a result of a court order. "What kind of quality of life is the child going to have in China?" asked Larry Parrish, a lawyer for the Bakers. "Common sense dictates that to take a child out of an environment where she's firmly attached and settled is the ultimate devastation."
    But in this case, common sense is a matter of debate. The trial, in its second week, has exposed a chasm between American and Chinese cultures, conflicting notions about what defines a good parent and the extent to which the legal system can become a wedge between parents and their children.
    Each day dozens of Chinese from the Memphis area flock to the Shelby County Courthouse wearing yellow ribbons and buttons demanding the family's reunification. Although the case has received little notice outside Tennessee, it has been closely followed in the Chinese-language press, inflaming passions among Chinese-Americans and drawing concern from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, which has sent a representative to the trial.
    Cecilia Lin, who comes to court each day and helps serve Chinese food to spectators during breaks, said Asians could not understand how the Bakers' material wealth would trump blood ties between mother and child.
    "Some Americans think they can provide better environment for children because of money, but Chinese think love and enduring care is more important," said Ms. Lin, 62, a Taiwanese-born painter in Memphis.
    The Hes' troubles began in 1998, soon after the pregnant Mrs. He arrived in this country. A doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Memphis, Mr. He had only recently met Mrs. He in China through an arranged marriage. Mrs. He, 35, a store manager in China, spoke no English and still struggles with the language.
    Soon after her arrival, Mr. He was accused of sexual assault by a fellow student. University officials suspended his scholarship and student stipend, the couple's primary means of support. Mr. He's student visa was revoked, and immigration officials began deportation proceedings against the couple. Mr. He was eventually acquitted of the assault charges.
    As their financial and legal problems deepened and Mrs. He's pregnancy advanced, a friend suggested that they contact Mid-South Christian Services, a private adoption agency in Memphis. In their testimony this week, agency employees said the couple, who had no health insurance, were seeking a foster family of means to take care of the child while they sorted out their finances. Legal documents they later signed spelled out the arrangement as temporary.
    What the couple says they did not understand was that the word "temporary" was not what it seemed: regaining custody required the blessing of the Bakers and the consent of a judge. Agency and court employees and a Chinese language translator have testified that no one explained the complex nature of the agreement. The couple, they said, was not advised to hire a lawyer.
    Until the child's second birthday, they made weekly visits to the Baker home. Tensions increased after Anna Mae's first birthday, when the Hes asked a judge for custody. Though they had found work at Chinese restaurants, the request was denied because they lacked financial stability.
    Both sides agree that the discord surrounding the visits reached a peak on Anna Mae's second birthday, when the Bakers refused to allow the Hes to take her out of the house for a family portrait. The Bakers called the police, who, Mr. He said, warned them to stay away from the Baker home or face arrest. Fearful of further trouble with the law, Mr. He says he complied. What Mr. He says he did not know was that under Tennessee law, a four-month lapse in visits can be construed as abandonment, part of the legal argument for terminating parental rights.
    David Siegel and Richard Gordon, lawyers for the Hes, argue that the Bakers planned all along to keep Anna Mae. They cite their foster parent application to the agency, which mentions their desire to adopt a child and raise him or her in a Christian home.
    Mrs. Baker also kept a secret journal titled "Visits from Jack and Casey," which Mr. Siegel contends shows the Bakers' true intentions. The entries document Mrs. Baker's distress over the bonding of mother and child and growing frustration as the birth parents demanded more time with their daughter. "We would like to get visits to every other week," she wrote when Anna Mae was 8 months old. "We feel like they would wean away, but the last two visits we could see Casey is wanting to come more." The Bakers have four children of their own.
    The legal fight has nearly bankrupted the Bakers, who recently sold their house to pay their lawyers. Mr. Baker, 45, is a mortgage banker and his wife, 42, is a part-time Bible teacher. The Hes, who have subsequently had two children, are being represented without charge.
    In seeking to terminate the Hes' parental rights, the Bakers depict Mr. He as untrustworthy and his wife as prone to hysterics. Mrs. He once picketed the Bakers' home, and on another occasion, they say, tried to wrest Anna Mae away during a chance encounter at a Wal-Mart. "To me, if Casey truly loved her daughter, she would leave her with us," Mrs. Baker said. She added that a life in China, where female babies are sometimes deemed inferior to males, would be a hardship.
    A Circuit Court judge, Robert Childers, who has been hearing the custody case for 12 hours each day, weekends included, is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks. The Hes fear that even if they win, a drawn-out appeals process will further prolong the separation between child and parents. A court order has kept the Hes from having contact with their daughter since 2002.
    Chris Zawisza, director of the Child Advocacy Clinic at the University of Memphis Law School, said the convoluted and drawn-out legal fight partly obscured what in many ways was a struggle over cultural values. Much like the impassioned tug of war over Elin Gonzlez, the child who was ultimately returned to his father in Cuba, the clash over Anna Mae pits the perceived superiority of American culture over that of another country. "The case shows we still don't have consensus in our country about a parent's freedom to choose how and where they raise their children," Ms. Zawisza said.
    Mr. He says that in China, Anna Mae would benefit from an adoring extended family, many of whom are well educated. Mr. He also says that he has been offered a job in China, and that he will make enough money to provide his daughter a comfortable life. "If we do not have a reunification, I'm afraid our daughter will grow up thinking we abandoned her," he said. "I think that is worse than anything else."


2/13/04 New York Times: "Asian-Americans Note Issues Central to Them for Elections,"
    Washington - Contending that the growing influence of Asian- Americans, as well as issues that concern them, are being overlooked in an election year, a coalition of organizations that represent Asian- Americans announced on Thursday a unified platform intended to increase politicians' involvement with the ethnic group.
    The platform, dealing with issues like poverty, hate crimes and immigration changes, is intended to educate the parties and help Asian- Americans judge candidates.
    "Our issues are being ignored because the candidates are not focused on our communities as voters," Karen K. Narasaki, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium in Washington, said. "Our population has grown so rapidly that a lot of politicians don't have a sense that there are sizable Asian-American communities outside of California and New York."
    The Asian-American population grew 72 percent from 1990 to 2000, to nearly 12 million, the Census Bureau says. Although the number is 4.2 percent of the total population, the concentrations in pivotal states like California and the rapid growth of the population in battleground states like Nevada and Florida signal growing power, organizers said.
    Some Asian-American leaders have lamented the attention paid to other groups, saying the diversity among Asian-Americans - a mix that includes an array of languages, religions, cultures and partisan leanings - might make them harder to focus on than other groups. The unified platform, organizers said, should help bridge that gap.
    "We don't care if the candidates are politically correct, if they can say hello to a crowd of voters in a dozen Asian languages," Christine Chen, executive director of the Organization of Chinese Americans, said. "That's superficial. We want them to familiarize themselves with our communities and with our issues."
    The coalition of 18 groups delivered copies of its agenda to the Democratic and Republican National Committees on Wednesday. At a news conference on Thursday, organizers said few presidential campaigns had Asian-Americans in senior positions. The organizers called for party leaders and candidates to meet Asian-American groups, attend voter forums and commit money to register, educate and collect information on Asian-American voters.
    Neither party nor any presidential hopefuls responded to the requests, the organizers said, although minority-outreach coordinators from each party were at the news conference.
    Some issues in the policy paper counter a longstanding perception of Asian-Americans as a "model minority" with little need for social assistance. Though Asian-Americans have high median incomes overall, not all segments are economically secure. In 2000, the report said, the poverty rate among the Hmong ethnic group, primarily from Laos, was 38 percent. The rate among Cambodian-Americans was 29 percent, and it was 16 percent for Vietnamese-Americans. The report noted that more than two-thirds of Asian-Americans where born overseas. Limited English proficiency and a lack of bilingual providers, Ms. Narasaki and others said, block a significant segment of the group from equal access to education, health care, housing and other services.
    Although much of the discussion on immigration has recently focused on Hispanics, Asian-American leaders said comparatively little attention had been paid to the many people in their communities who had been detained, deported or delayed in applying for permanent residency as a result of stricter procedures. New restrictions also have hampered family reunification for immigrants with family members threatened by ethnic, political and religious persecution in Asia. Civil rights issues also weighed heavily in the report, which advocated strengthening hate crimes laws and modifying the new antiterrorism law to protect privacy and civil liberties.
    "There is a growing realization among Asian Pacific-Americans that equal justice issues affect us all," said Preetmohan Singh, national director of Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force.
    The participating organizations said they had planned large-scale voter education and registration programs to improve civic involvement in Asian-American communities.

2/8/04 Sacramento Bee: Hmong prepare for new refugees: Their numbers in capital soon may rise by 4,000,
    By summer's end, some 14,000 Hmong who have been stuck in fetid Thai refugee camps for decades finally will get the green light to come to America.
    Most are the families of veterans of the CIA's secret war against the Lao and Vietnamese communists, guerrilla fighters who risked their lives for American soldiers and pilots. When the communists conquered Laos in 1975, the Hmong were driven from their mountain villages.
    Since the mid-1990s, they have been living in a compound next to Wat Tham Krabok, a Buddhist temple several hours north of Bangkok .
    As many as 4,000 will come to Sacramento, which has the third-largest concentration of Hmong in the United States behind Fresno and St. Paul, Minn.         Nearly all the 22,000 Hmong in the Sacramento area have cousins, siblings, children or parents in Wat Tham Krabok. The compound has no running water. Food is scarce. So is education. About 4,000 Hmong children have been turned away from Thai schools, according to one Thai newspaper account.
    The joy and excitement that American Hmong feel over the prospect of being reunited with their long-lost relatives is mixed with anxiety over the fate of 45,000 Hmong living outside the temple. Many of them left in search of food, jobs and schools for their children. Now, they can't get back in - and it's doubtful whether they, too, will be permitted to come to the United States .
    Among those on the outside is Ly's aunt, whose husband, a gunner in Vang Pao's CIA-financed army, was crippled by a bullet lodged in his leg. He and many other Hmong veterans refused to come to the United States in the 1980s because they believed Vang Pao one day would rally them to retake Laos so they could go home.
    It never happened. The husband of May Ying's aunt died several years ago, and the aunt got Thai documentation so she could escape the mind-numbing confines of the camp to work outside. Now, she is among those who can't get back in.
    Many of those in and around the camp are afraid to come to America . Most fled other Thai refugee camps that were closing in the 1990s - giving up their official refugee status - to avoid being resettled here.
    But the Lao government doesn't want them, and attempts to resettle them throughout Thailand have been vigorously opposed by local citizens.
    Tsia Xiong, a Hmong activist in Sacramento , said he's been to Wat Tham Krabok four times.
    "Many of the people were children and elderly. A lot of teenagers and people in their 20s and 30s, including two of my cousins, had to go outside to survive," he said. They were gone last summer when the Thai military registered the 14,000 Hmong at the temple for resettlement to the United States .
    The State Department has said that only those on the Thai list and their spouses and minor children qualify for immediate resettlement. The rest can be sponsored separately by their American relatives, or apply for refugee status at the Bangkok office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees, routes to America that likely will take years.
    As bad as life is in Thailand , it does have some advantages, Xiong said.
"One of the fears is that Hmong in America are losing their culture," he said. "(Those in Thailand ) are not losing their kids to violence or gangs or drugs. Their family units are intact. There's no educational outlet for the kids, but the majority of people my parents' age are living there happily."
    When they get here, he asked, "Who's going to pick them up and go through all the paperwork? Who's going to take them to the hospital when they get sick? Who's going to report a crime?"
    Many of the Hmong in Sacramento live in depressed neighborhoods and attend schools where fights are common, Xiong said. Even those who have avoided violence are struggling, he said: "There are 7,000 Hmong in the Sacramento Unified School District and only 4 percent are reading at grade level."
    Patrick Vang, a Hmong teacher at Burbank High School , recalled the hardships of the Hmong who arrived here in the 1970s and 1980s.
    "The first wave took about 10 years to adjust to this society," he said. "Many committed suicide. No matter how much we help them (the newcomers), they're going to have emotional problems. I'm glad that people are coming, but I'm worried. ... Our kids aren't doing good in school because nobody teaches them or their parents how to survive in this country."
    Ly and other advocates laid out a game plan for the newcomers:
    American Hmong who want their relatives to come here must fill out an official statement-of-interest form.
    The Hmong at the temple will have up to a year to request an interview with the State Department, which will begin screening applicants in mid-March.
    When the new Hmong begin arriving, the refugee agencies that have sponsored them will provide housing, food, clothing, health care and job training for 30 days, Ly said.
    Then, state and local agencies will take over, and able-bodied Hmong can qualify for CalWorks, a five-year program that offers financial help, MediCal, child care and English classes while they're trained for jobs. A variety of other programs are available for disabled, blind and elderly Hmong, and Hmong adults without families.
    But there are problems that must be solved in Thailand . One Sacramento Hmong man tearfully related how his sister wants to come to the United States , but her husband doesn't. "He beat her so black and blue she fainted," he said. "I want her to come to this country because I know there are laws here to protect her."
    Joy Dorman, district director of World Relief, said women in similar situations can ask the State Department to interview them without their husbands. They also can appeal to the Thai guards and international refugee officials at the camp.
    Meanwhile, at the Lao Family Community Center , Gen. Vang Pao stoked the dream that the Hmong someday will return to Laos .
    After the crowd sang the American and Lao national anthems, the general said that when Indochina fell to the communists in 1975, "we left some of our families and comrades in Thailand , and worse, our comrades who have been trapped in the jungles of Laos for 28 years."
    He estimated that more than 20,000 Hmong resistance fighters and their families are still in the jungles, while an unknown number are in Lao prisons.
    "We should save them any way we can. We have to put our differences aside and negotiate with the communists to bring peace and harmony to Laos ."
    He said he is working with Norm Coleman, a U.S. senator from Minnesota , to find a way to bring the 45,000 Hmong outside the temple to America , too. If they can't come immediately, he urged the United States and its allies to give them money to buy land for farming and schools.
    Vang Pao said all 18 Hmong clans are his family and that all 60,000 Hmong in Thailand deserve to come to the United States .
    "It doesn't matter what their status is," he said. "They put their lives on the line to save American lives. They at least deserve a future for their children."


2/3/04 National Asian Pacific American Attorneys Again Denounce Law Firms Racial Mockery
    Washington, D.C. The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), representing the interests of over 40,000 Asian Pacific American attorneys, today announced its censure of New York-based Dewey Ballantine, a multinational law firm, over another racially insensitive incident. 
    Less than a year ago, Dewey associates performed a song at the firms annual dinner that portrayed Asian Pacific Americans in offensive stereotype. This time, a Dewey partner distributed a distasteful e-mail to all of the firms New York employees. 
    The New York Law Journal, a legal daily, again broke the story. According to sources, last Monday, an employee sent a firmwide e-mail soliciting homes for puppies available for adoption.  In response, an American partner based in Deweys London office sent a firmwide reply: Please dont let these puppies go to a Chinese restaurant!  That partners comments on a stereotype of Asian diets drew immediate criticism from others at the firm and the partner sent out an apology. 
    The firms co-chairs, Sanford Morhouse and Morton Pierce also issued a response. This afternoon an offensive e-mail was circulated by a partner, wrote Messrs. Morhouse and Pierce. Comments of this nature are inconsistent with the values of this firm and will not be tolerated. We extend our immediate apologies to the entire Dewey Ballantine community. 
    The partner who sent the e-mail did not further comment but Morhouse said that the firms executive committee would be meeting shortly to determine what further action should be taken. 
    Last March, the firm apologized for a song that ridiculed the closing of the firms Hong Kong office titled The Dirge of Long Duck Dong and sung to the tune of Hello Dolly. The song, performed by Dewey associates at an annual dinner on January 31, 2003 at the Plaza Hotel, was an apparent reference to the stereotyped Chinese exchange student in the movie Sixteen Candles and included racially stereotyped accents. At the time, a Dewey associate who attended the dinner said the parody was very distasteful and very crude, and derogatory to the firms Asian lawyers. She also noted, however, that given the economic downturn, many offended associates were afraid to raise the issue.  A Japanese American partner walked out of the dinner. 
    NAPABA is again appalled. Nearly 40 years following passage of the U.S. Civil Rights Act, well-educated lawyers should know to refrain from the very conduct that they would advise their own clients to avoid. 
    Although we appreciate Dewey Ballantines rapid response this time, the incident nevertheless raises concerns about cultural sensitivity, especially in light of last years events, said NAPABA President John Yang. Moreover, such remarks by a partner send a very bad message to associates and staff members at the firm. Asian American associates cannot help but feel uncomfortable upon receiving such an e-mail, yet they may not feel as if they are in a position to speak out. 
    After last years incident, NAPABA representatives joined NAPABAs New York affiliate, the Asian American Bar Association of New York (AABANY), to meet with then-Dewey Chairman Everett Jassy to discuss the conditions at the firm that gave rise to the incident and to work together on improving the racial sensitivity of its lawyers. The firm has eliminated the annual dinner and its anonymously penned parodies since Morhouse and Pierce became co-chairs in October. 
    This latest incident makes NAPABA wonder if Dewey took last years incident seriously and what corrective steps were actually taken at Dewey, other than elimination of the firms annual parody dinner, said NAPABA Executive Director Grace Yoo. Certainly, partners are held to a higher standard than associates. There needs to be a culture change at Dewey so that everyone at the firm understands that xenophobic comments will not be tolerated. 
    NAPABA is hopeful that its continued efforts to educate offenders will send a strong message to those who still feel at liberty to disparage Asian Pacific Americans and will lead to cultural sensitivity and elimination of bias. The Asian Pacific American community will not continue to accept silently what some may minimize as social gaffes or jokes, emphasized Yang. Apologies are becoming hollow gestures to suppress bad publicity. Thats unacceptable.


2/1/04 Los Angeles Times.com: "Chinese Americans Emerge as a Political Power in S.F.,"
    San Francisco The day after Gavin Newsom squeaked to victory in a runoff election here, the mayor-elect scheduled only one stop: the narrow streets of Chinatown.
    Shortly before his swearing in last month, Newsom went to thank the community that had helped hoist him into the city's power seat.
    "There is one reason I won a very close election," Newsom told 600 supporters in one of Chinatown's oldest banquet halls, after lion dancers and cymbals welcomed him. "And that is the support of the Asian community, and the Chinese community in particular. I could not have done it without you."
    San Francisco's Chinese population has long been large in number. But now, as voter participation increases, it is also gaining political clout.
    Newsom's campaign concedes that he probably lost the white vote which tends to be liberal here to Board of Supervisors President and Green Party member Matt Gonzalez and says he prevailed largely because of support from Asian and African Americans. He also lost to Gonzalez among voters who went to the polls Dec. 9, pulling off his narrow victory with a solid lead from early absentee voters.
    About 22% of those who voted by mail were Chinese American, according to an analysis of surnames by the nonprofit Chinese American Voters Education Committee. That is striking, considering that only 18% of the city's registered voters are Asian American up from 13% a decade ago, said David Lee, the group's executive director. Overall, Newsom carried precincts with large Chinese American populations with a consistently higher margin of victory than in the city as a whole.
    "It can't be understated," Newsom said of the community's importance. "I think what we're seeing is the future of San Francisco."
    The first political candidate to pay attention to San Francisco's Chinese community was the late Phillip Burton, in 1956. Although their voting numbers were small, Burton brother of state Sen. President Pro Tem John Burton (D-San Francisco) needed them to beat Republican Assemblyman Tom Maloney, said Lee, who recently completed a master's thesis on the Chinese American electorate.
    Burton spoke out against mass subpoenas that had been served on the city's Chinese family associations in a heavy-handed crackdown on immigration fraud, and he earned the community's backing. But by the 1960s, a new movement was afoot as younger Chinese American liberals, empowered by the civil rights movement and financed by government grant money, formed nonprofits.
    Finding a Voice
    The birth of the advocacy movement in Chinatown gave voice to poor tenants and the elderly who lacked decent housing, and they allied closely with Democratic Party leaders affiliated with the Burtons.
    At the helm was Rose Pak, who has worked tirelessly from the offices of Chinatown organizations for 35 years, securing a master plan for the neighborhood and working to preserve low-income housing. Pak had the ear of many politicians, including Willie Brown. When he swept into office eight years ago, she was at his side.
    Brown appointed more Chinese Americans to commissions and city staff positions than any other mayor, bringing them ahead of parity with their population for the first time in city history.
    Brown also campaigned heavily in Chinatown and visited often for events and ribbon-cuttings. Newsom's election, however, saw a larger percentage of Chinese American voters turn out. Further, his narrow margin of victory gives his Chinese American supporters even greater significance.
    As with many minority groups flexing new political muscle, San Francisco's Chinese are emerging not as one community, but many rife with infighting and varied political agendas. Still, even archenemies here agree that the surge in voter participation can only be healthy for a community relegated to the political sidelines for decades.
    The implications are striking. In a city where Asians comprise 32% of the population most of them Chinese a surge in participation could tilt the political scales away from San Francisco's notorious liberalism.
    Progressive Generation
    A younger generation of Chinese Americans is eager to promote a progressive agenda, but, overall, a more moderate ethos prevails. Chinese here are more likely to own homes and small businesses and have children in city schools than residents as a whole.
    While 60% of San Franciscans approved a November ballot initiative that outlaws aggressive panhandling and was decried by liberals as anti-poor fully 72% of Chinese Americans supported it, according to exit polls conducted for the Chinese American Voters Education Committee.
    "Who's having more kids? Asians," Lee said. "Who's got kids in public schools? Asians. Who owns their own homes? Asians. These are the things that define middle class and they make for more moderate voters."
    Newsom's moderate politics aligned well with the values of many of San Francisco's Chinese Americans. But in a first for this city, even Newsom's more progressive opponent catered to the Chinese American vote in the December election, opening a Chinatown office, campaigning aggressively with literature in Mandarin and Cantonese.
    Between 1970 and 2000, San Francisco's Chinese population more than doubled from 8% to nearly 20%, U.S. census figures show. Many of those arrivals settled in a relatively conservative geographical area that curls around the city's more liberal core of the Mission, Tenderloin, Haight and Noe Valley neighborhoods. Chinese students now account for 31% of the San Francisco Unified School District's enrollment.
    A demographic shift in the community opened the door to new participation, forcing Pak to share the stage with Julie Lee. She arrived from Hong Kong 35 years ago with her husband, raised four children and established a Sunset District real estate business before co-founding the San Francisco Neighbors Assn. In the late 1980s, she recalled, her group rallied 3,000 mostly Chinese homeowners to a Planning Commission hearing to fight zoning restrictions. But politicians didn't listen.
    A friend bluntly explained why: "Because you don't vote."
    The breakthrough came in 1997, when Julie Lee's group fought for reconstruction of a freeway destroyed in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. City leaders opposed the rebuilding. To their surprise, the Neighbors' Assn. gathered 30,000 signatures within three weeks to place the issue on the ballot. Then they mobilized the votes and won.
    That startling victory was later overturned by a different ballot initiative, but the Chinese community had been seen and heard.
    Lee said her group turned dry-cleaning proprietors across the city into block captains who gathered signatures from a stream of customers. And Lee took to the airwaves on her Cantonese-language radio program to urge participation.
    "Every night I start the show by telling people, 'If you don't come out to vote, the politicians are not going to care about your community,' " Lee said.
    Lee had lashed out at Brown for years, offended in part by his close relationship with Pak. (Lee called Pak "evil," while Pak dismissed Lee and her allies as "morons.") But Lee supported Brown in 1999. In exchange, Brown appointed her to the city's Housing Authority Commission, where she is now president.
    Lee's affiliation with Brown caused her own group to fracture, but the organization remains important. Today, it claims 4,000 members, mostly Chinese homeowners on the city's wealthier Westside.
    As San Francisco's Chinese population has blossomed, so has parent activism: Last fall, a group of Westside parents kept their children out of school for six weeks to protest a school district integration policy that compels many Chinese children near high-performing schools to travel great distances by public bus to inferior schools with fewer Asians. The protest ended when the superintendent offered charter school slots to the kids.
    Meanwhile, the city's three Chinese language newspapers have boosted their coverage of local politics. And in recent years the city's big businesses, eager for a moderate swing vote, began financing voter registration efforts, said David Lee, whose organization has benefited from the investment.
    His group registered 10,000 new Asian absentee voters last fall, he said, and it paid off: December voter participation in predominantly Chinese precincts was about double that of the 1999 runoff, he said.
    When Newsom entered the mayor's race, Julie Lee was quick to back him, organizing phone banks and precinct walks and advocating for him nightly on her radio show. She hosted the second of the dual Chinatown celebrations Newsom attended shortly before his inauguration.
    On a recent morning, her cellphone rang in her Sunset District office the sixth call she had received from a Chinese American interested in running for election to the Board of Supervisors this November. The candidates were seeking her organization's backing, she said.
    Whether she can deliver votes remains to be seen. She was unable to do so for her son, who lost a 2002 bid for a seat on the Board of Supervisors. But in four of the seven districts where seats on the 11-member board are up for grabs in November, Asians make up more than 45% of the population.
    With strong voter turnout, political analysts say, Chinese candidates stand a good chance in those districts, as will any candidate who shares Newsom's centrist views.
    Rose Pak, meanwhile, opted not to endorse anyone in the recent election. She scoffs at the notion that the Chinese community should somehow unite as one. "We have redneck Republicans just like the community at large," she said, "We have very liberal people. We have pro-business and anti-business. I look at it as a very healthy sign."
    But regardless of ideology, most observers agree that a new chapter of Chinese political history is unfolding in the city.
    "Here you have a new mayor who's 36 years old. You look at his constituency and the Chinese are front and center as a key part of his partnership," said David Lee.
    "The Chinese basically built this city. All the sewer tunnels were dug by the Chinese. Now you're seeing a new political house being built, and the Chinese are at the ground floor. The question now is whether they get to live in the house. But they're in the door."

Dewey Partner's E-Mail Causes Upset Over Racial Insensitivity
by Anthony Lin
1/29/04 New York Law Journal
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1075219819760
    Nearly one year after lawyers at Dewey Ballantine infuriated members of
the Asian-American community by performing a stereotype-laden parody
song at their annual dinner, the law firm is again dealing with
allegations of racial insensitivity, this time stemming from a partner's
joke that was e-mailed to all of the firm's New York employees.
    On Monday, an employee sent a firmwide e-mail advertising the
availability of some puppies for adoption. Douglas Getter, a
London-based American who heads Dewey Ballantine's European mergers and
acquisitions practice then sent a firmwide reply.
    "Please don't let these puppies go to a Chinese restaurant!" Getter
wrote in his e-mail.
    His joke, derived from stereotypes about Asian predilections for
consuming animals Westerners consider pets, drew immediate criticism
from others at the firm, and Getter sent out an apology. The firm's
co-chairs, Sanford Morhouse and Morton Pierce, also issued a response.
    "This afternoon an offensive e-mail was circulated by a partner,"
Morhouse and Pierce wrote. "Comments of this nature are inconsistent
with the values of this firm and will not be tolerated. We extend our
immediate apologies to the entire Dewey Ballantine community."
    Dewey has 582 lawyers worldwide, with almost 350 in New York.
    In an interview Tuesday, Morhouse said the firm's executive committee
would be meeting shortly to determine what further action should be
taken. Getter could not be reached for comment.
    Last March, the firm issued an apology after the Law Journal reported
that at a Jan. 31, 2003, annual dinner, the firm had parodied the
closing of its Hong Kong office with a version of "Hello Dolly" retitled
"The Dirge of Long Duck Dong," an apparent reference to the stereotyped
Chinese exchange student in the movie "Sixteen Candles."
    The song said the seven-lawyer office, which closed at the end of March
2003, was "chow mein" and was getting "the gong."
    "You were the firm's folly," the song continued, "and now we so solly to
be cutting off your source of livelihood."
    The black-tie annual dinner and its anonymously penned parodies were a
longstanding tradition at the firm. Morhouse and Pierce discontinued the
dinner shortly after becoming the firm's co-chairs in October.
    "It was a party culture that had outlived its usefulness," Morhouse said
Tuesday.
    But he stressed that neither the dinner nor Monday's incident should be
taken as representative of the firm's character. He said Asian and
Asian-American lawyers were "tremendously well-regarded" and "highly
valued" at the firm.
    "For us to be tagged with this kind of prejudice is truly unfortunate
and ironic," said Morhouse.
    Grace Yoo, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Bar
Association, applauded Monday's swift response by Dewey, but said she
was troubled that a partner felt comfortable enough to send such an
e-mail.
    The sentiment expressed in Getter's joke, she said, reinforced notions
that Asians were "perpetual foreigners" and "were not within the norm of
acceptability in American society."
    Monday's incident also provides yet another example of a workplace gaffe
magnified by an e-mail "reply all" command.
    Last year, a summer associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom
garnered media attention when he mistakenly sent an e-mail describing
his sushi lunch and light workload to several partners at the firm.
    But Morhouse said Getter's e-mail would have been offensive even if it
had not been so widely circulated.
    "It's not who we are," he said. "We apologize and we are sincere in
that."

1/28/04 New York Times: "9-11 flight attendant's calm revealed on tape,"
    Washington - Betty Ann Ong, a veteran flight attendant for American Airlines, could not have sounded much calmer on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, as she tried to describe the mayhem aboard Flight 11.
    "The cockpit is not answering the phone," she said from a jump seat at the back of the Boeing 767, calling to the ground from one of the crew phones that she would normally use to communicate with other crew members on the plane. "There is somebody stabbed in business class. They can't breathe in business class. They've got Mace or something."
    A tape of a four-minute portion of the 20-minute phone call, received at the airline's reservation center in Cary, N.C., at 8:20 a.m., was played on Tuesday at a hearing of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. It was the first time the recording was heard in public.
    The panel's chairman, Thomas Kean, said the commission decided to allow the public to hear the tape as a demonstration of the "heroism" of Ong and the "duty, courage, selflessness and love" that was evident in the midst of the chaos.
    Although the tape was hard to understand at times, it made clear the situation of Ong and most of the passengers and other crew members who were forced to the back of the plane. At least two flight attendants and a passenger were stabbed and dying, and some sort of chemical had been released into the air in the front of the plane.
    "My name is Betty Ong," she said after reaching the reservations office in North Carolina, speaking quickly but calmly. "I'm on Flight 11." She explained that she had been forced to the back of the jet, which was hijacked shortly after leaving Boston on a flight to Los Angeles. The plane later crashed into the World Trade Center.
    She described the stabbing of her co-workers and said the cockpit door was locked, with at least some of the hijackers inside. "Our first-class galley attendant and our purser are stabbed," she said. "We can't get into the cockpit. The door won't open."
    There were a few moments of silence. "Is anybody there?" Ong asked.
    "Yes we're here," said a reservations agent, who was not identified at Tuesday's hearing.
    "I'm staying on the line as well," said Ong, of Andover, Mass., a 14-year veteran of American Airlines and known to her friends as "Bee."
    A second tape was played of a conversation between an American Airlines supervisor, Nydia Gonzalez, who was speaking separately with Ong, and the airline's central operations center in Fort Worth.
    "You're doing a great job, just stay calm," Gonzalez said to Ong, whose voice could not be heard in the second recording.

1/26/04 National Asian Pacific American Attorneys Urge Pennsylvania Eatery To Remove Asian Slur From its Name
    Washington, D.C. - The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association (NAPABA), representing the interests of over 40,000 Asian Pacific American attorneys, has joined with members of Asian American civil rights groups to urge a Wissinoming, Pennsylvania eatery to remove a hurtful Asian slur from its name. Asian Americans, the Anti-Defamation League, and other community groups are finding the name Chink's Steaks - a purveyor of Philly cheesesteaks - hard to swallow. 
    West Philadelphia resident Susannah Park, who discovered the offensive name through a friend, contacted the owner and has since begun a campaign for a name change. Owner George Groh has refused a name change and sadly, City Councilwoman Joan Krajewski has criticized Park for being too "touchy." 
    "It's appalling in today's society that anyone, let alone an elected official, could call someone overly sensitive for bringing to light the commercial use of a serious derogatory and offensive term," said NAPABA Executive Director Grace Yoo. "This term evokes racism. For Asian Americans, the term 'chink' is as offensive as the n-word to the African American community, and cannot simply be dismissed. You don't have to be the target of slur to be offended." 
    According to a recent Philadelphia Daily News report on the controversy, the eatery opened in 1949 and was named after the original owner Samuel "Chink" Sherman. His widow, Mildred, offered that her late husband acquired the nickname at age 6 because of his "slanty eyes." She calls the controversy "ridiculous," citing the sensitivities of the family's Jewish background: "We are Jewish. We're far from racist. We have Chinese customers..." 
    To be sure, NAPABA would not be as dismissive over any racial slur used as a nickname. The crux here is the widespread use for commercial purposes of a term that has been acknowledged as a racial slur. "We recognize that there are economic implications here and that change can be difficult," said NAPABA President John Yang. "But I hope that Mr. Groh and the greater Wissinoming community understand that in today's diverse climate and a global economy, we all must be sensitive to racial and cultural differences, and that certain words are inherently hurtful. This is an opportunity for Mr. Groh to capitalize on an educational opportunity and a good will opportunity. Mr. Groh must realize that this issue will not just disappear." 
    Yang noted that the Sambo's restaurant chain changed its name after the African American community cited harmful and offensive references to the children's book "Little Black Sambo." A popular Berkeley, California restaurant called "Fat Albert's," evoking the rotund black cartoon character, was changed for similar reasons and still thrives after nearly three decades on Martin Luther King, Jr. Way.


1/23/04 San Francisco Chronicle: Prostitution raids in 4 S.F. homes
Undocumented women smuggled from Asia for sex trade, feds say,
    Federal immigration and customs agents have broken up a San Francisco prostitution ring, with ties to international smuggling operations, that used undocumented Asian women as sex workers, according to federal court documents unsealed Thursday.
    The ring provided sexual services to scores of men each week at four brothels in residential neighborhoods in the western half of the city, the documents said.
    The court papers, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco , indicate that the prostitutes were part of a smuggling circuit that operates between Canada and such U.S. cities as Los Angeles , Houston , Chicago and New York . After they had worked in at least one of four brothels, they were sent elsewhere on the circuit.
    It was unclear Thursday exactly how many women worked for the alleged operation, but court affidavits said that from two to four prostitutes were on duty at each of the brothels on any given night. The prostitutes were reassigned every few weeks, papers said.
    Agents of the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, armed with federal search warrants, raided four locations in neighborhoods south of Golden Gate Park on Jan. 14. Two days later, they arrested a woman who authorities say is one of the leaders of the operation. They identified her as Yuen Ling Poon, 36, of 48 Chancery Lane in San Francisco .
    Poon is charged with conspiracy, trafficking of humans for sexual purposes across state and international lines, and harboring illegal immigrants, according to court records.
    The licensed haircutter, who owns the Chancery Lane house with her husband, Kwok Wai So, 38, posted $75,000 bail and was released from custody.
    Affidavits say Poon and unnamed associates smuggled undocumented women from such countries as Thailand , China , Korea and Malaysia to be sex workers in her brothels.
    Customers typically paid $120 each for sex with the women, the documents said. The prostitutes were ordered to give $40 from each transaction to the brothel operators while keeping $80 for themselves.
    Calls to Poon's home went unanswered Thursday, but her attorney, Lawrence Wong, said he saw the federal government's case as flawed because it alleges state crimes, not federal.
    The government's evidence outlined in the affidavits, Wong said, is that his client engaged in running houses of prostitution, not smuggling or harboring illegal immigrants.
    "They say my client was involved in a conspiracy, but they don't talk about meetings with anybody else where this was discussed," he said. "They say she was smuggling people across international and state lines, but they show no management, control or custody of the people she was supposedly smuggling. They say she was harboring illegal aliens, but there is no evidence she was harboring them. She was using them in prostitution. ... Well, that is a state action, not a federal action.
    "The government is being overzealous in this case. They are overcharging it," he said. "The facts here are defective as far as I am concerned, and I am going to attack them."
    Another woman, Bo Song, who allegedly was working at one of the brothels, was arrested for investigation of immigration violations and remains in custody. Federal court documents say Song has prior prostitution arrests in San Francisco and Sunnyvale .
    Several of the illegal immigrant women who were found working in the alleged brothels are being detained, but their status was unclear Thursday.
    Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven Gruel, who is handling the case, declined to discuss details. But Gruel, who has won convictions in several other human smuggling operations since the early 1990s, opined that trafficking in human beings "is a big-money business and too lucrative for organized crime to ignore and walk away from."
    The investigation began in May when an informant tipped agents "regarding the proliferation of underground prostitution houses in the San Francisco Sunset District," said one of the documents, a 50-page affidavit filed by Senior Special Agent Michael Desmond of the immigration bureau.
    Linette Peralta Haynes, the project director for an anti-human-smuggling project of the social service organization SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation), said such operations "are a form of modern-day slavery. Typically what happens is that people who are living in poverty, under the strife of war or undergoing political persecution, are looking for a new life in the U.S. (But) they end up working long hours, their documents are taken from them, and they are forced into prostitution, sexual exploitation and slavery."
    

1/21/04: NAPALC Applauds Daschle-Hagel Bipartisan Immigration Reform Bill,
    Washington D.C. -- Today Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle and
Republican Senator Chuck Hagel introduced bipartisan immigration reform
legislation, The Immigration Reform Act of 2004.
    The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and its affiliates, the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center , commend Sens. Daschle and Hagel for taking the first step in tackling the difficult issue of immigration reform by introducing bipartisan legislation that addresses all the issues involved in comprehensive immigration reform.
    First, the Daschle-Hagel bill contains provisions to reduce the massive backlog in family immigration.  Millions of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been waiting for years, sometimes over a decade, to be reunited with their family members in the United States , observed Karen K. Narasaki, President and Executive Director of NAPALC.  Over 1.5 million of 3.5 million people caught in the family immigration backlog are from Asian countries.  By proposing concrete measures to reduce this unconscionable backlog in family immigration, Senators Daschle and Hagel have recognized that reuniting families in a timely manner is a  crucial component in reforming our immigration system.
    Second, the Daschle-Hagel legislation provides a mechanism for undocumented immigrants to earn their way to lawful permanent residence if they can show that they have worked hard, have paid or are willing to pay taxes, and are willing to fulfill English and Civics requirements.  Currently, approximately one million undocumented immigrants from Asian countries live in the United States .
    We would like to thank Senators Daschle and Hagel for acknowledging that hard-working immigrants with roots in United States must be given meaningful opportunity to come out of the shadows and earn their way towards becoming permanent, fully integrated members of our society,  said Traci Hong, Immigration Staff Attorney for NAPALC.  We look forward to working with the senators to ensure that all hard-working undocumented immigrants who have contributed to our economy can participate in either the earned legalization or the temporary worker provisions of this bill.
    Finally, the Daschle-Hagel bill creates a new temporary worker program to facilitate a legal and orderly future flow of workers in and out of the United States .  While the temporary worker programs in the Daschle-Hagel legislation provides greater wage and labor protections for both U.S. workers and immigrant workers than the Presidents proposal or other guest worker legislations currently pending in Congress, we would welcome the opportunity to work with Senators Daschle and Hagel and other members of Congress to further strengthen protections for U.S. and immigrant workers alike, stated Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director of APALC.
    Senators Daschle and Hagel have shown that Congress can tackle immigration reform in a comprehensive and bipartisan manner, continued Kwoh.  There is now a widespread consensus that the current immigration system is broken.  We hope that the President will work with Senators Daschle and Hagel as well as other members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who want to fix the broken system.

1/7/04: NAPALC Disappointed in the Administrations Immigration Reform Proposal 
    Washington D.C. -- Today President George W. Bush announced his proposal to reform the immigration system. The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and its affiliates, the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center, are pleased that the President is showing renewed interest in immigration reform. However, the measures outlined in his proposal are inadequate and will not fix the restrictive patchwork of laws that make up our broken immigration system. 
    NAPALC and its affiliates support a comprehensive reform of our immigration system. Any meaningful immigration reform must include the following elements: Reduction of the massive backlogs in family immigration; Reasonable opportunity for people already living and working in the United States to become lawful permanent residents; and Any temporary worker program must be accompanied by an opportunity for lawful permanent residence and full labor protections for U.S. and immigrant workers alike.  The Presidents proposal for immigration reform does not appear to contain any of these critical components. 
    While the Presidents proposal calls for a reasonable annual increase of legal immigrants, it is unclear whether such an increase will include visas to alleviate the lengthy backlogs in family immigration. As of 1997, approximately over 1.5 million of the 3.5 million people caught in the family immigration backlog were from Asian countries. 
    We are disappointed that the Presidents proposal does not explicitly call for a reduction in the family immigration backlog, said Traci Hong, Immigration Staff Attorney for NAPALC. Millions of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents have been waiting for years, sometimes even decades, to be reunited with their family members. It doesnt look like the Presidents proposal will help these families at all. If the President is serious about achieving immigration reform, he must recognize that a reduction in the family immigration backlog must be a part of the solution. 
    The Presidents proposal also fails to provide a reasonable and timely path to lawful permanent residence, either for immigrants who are already living and working in the United States, or for future participants in the temporary worker program created under this proposal. Workers who participate in this program will only receive a temporary work visa for three years, which may be renewed for some undefined finite period. There are approximately one million undocumented immigrants of Asian descent in the United States. 
    The failure to provide a path to lawful permanent residence ignores the reality that some of these workers already have or will develop close family ties in our community and have strong reasons to live in the United States permanently, said Phil Y. Ting, Executive Director of ALC. It is unrealistic to expect people to come out of the shadows and become fully integrated members of our community and economy, if they know that they will be forced to leave everything behind when their period of stay under the program ends. 
    The Presidents assertion that workers can obtain green cards through the existing process is unrealistic, at best, observed Stewart Kwoh, Executive Director of APALC. The current process only allows 10,000 workers without specialized skills to become lawful permanent residents each year. Given that there are an estimated 8 to 10 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States, these hard-working immigrants who have established roots in the United States and contributed to our economy and community will not have a realistic chance at getting a green card, much less becoming U.S. citizens, in their lifetime under this proposal unless it results a substantial increase in immigrant visas.