Latest news with #ChineseExclusionActof1882
Time Out
5 days ago
- General
- Time Out
This NYC food tour shares the real stories of Chinatown
Chinatown has a special place in Chloe Chan's heart. Born and raised in New Jersey, Chan and her family would make regular visits to Manhattan's Chinatown, picking up goods from local marts and eating at local restaurants—Chan even took piano lessons from a teacher in the area. After graduating from New York University with a degree in public health, she sought ways to stay involved in her community. So she signed up to be a volunteer tour guide at the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA). Around the same time she started, Anna Huang also began, having previously worked as a tour guide in Boston's Chinatown. The two became friends while working as docents at the museum, giving tours to corporate clients and participating in special events. Eight months in, they began training to give tours outside of the museum and to host historical walking tours around Chinatown. But just as they got certified, the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the city, effectively turning the area into a ghost town. 'Everything is always open, especially Chinatown,' said Chan as she recalled the early days of the pandemic, mentioning that whispers of the virus had reached the area in January. 'It was such a hub for nightlife, and people always go after a night of drinking. It was really jarring to see.' Overnight, restaurants, bars and small businesses closed in the area, many for good. Alongside concerns for public health, the Asian-American community faced a rise in AAPI-hate due to racial stereotyping and misinformation. In light of this, Chan and Huang decided they could use their shared historical knowledge to combat racism and bring about a positive change in their community. 'We thought this was a teaching moment where we could draw parallels against history because this is not the first time we've gone through something like this,' said Chan, citing the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that restricted immigration into the United States, which particularly impacted Chinese immigrants. 'That's what the museum really prepared us for—this moment where we could be of use to the community.' And so at the height of the pandemic, the two formed the Mott Street Girls (MSG). The name holds a double meaning—one that alludes to one of the most popular streets in Chinatown, while the acronym of the business, MSG, nods to the umami flavor compound commonly used in Asian cuisine. Their mission? To make Chinese American history and culture more accessible through public tours, education via social media and working with local community organizations. Differentiating themselves from other tour guides, particularly those led by outsiders with questionable sourcing, Chan and Huang leveraged their shared heritages and skill sets to create tours for the community, by the community. 'Being second-generation Chinese Americans, we've experienced what it's like to be a marginalized group in the community, faced certain barriers and we lived through COVID," said Chan. "We [are] the best candidates to tell the stories of our community.' Currently, the volunteer-based tour company hosts two types of tours with slots available every other week. Putting what they learned from the museum into practice is the Relive Life Under the Chinese Exclusion Act tour. Their most popular option, the tour guides attendees through what life was like for Chinese Americans when they first arrived in the United States, from the barriers they endured to the eventual creation of Chinatowns across the country. Meanwhile, Flavors of Old Chinatown Food Tour tells the story of the community through its food. While other tours focus on what's buzzing, be it famous restaurants or where to get the best bubble tea, MSG's food tour focuses on small, mom-and-pop stores. Stops include the area's oldest tofu shop and businesses that opened up post-pandemic. Yet, both Chan and Huang are careful to center the people behind the food. 'During COVID, a lot of people heard statistics about Chinatown—the revenue that people lost and how many businesses closed. But you don't develop that deeper relationship with the community until you hear their stories, right?" said Chan. "Actually, step inside their stories, engage with the owners and taste a bite of their most famous dish. That's what we wanted to do with our tours: tell authentic stories of the people that have lived, worked and made a life for themselves in Chinatown.' Five years later, MSG's mission has expanded to fortifying Chinatown for years to come. Incorporating social justice into their business, each tour highlights current issues affecting the community, from lingering effects of COVID-19 to the construction of the world's tallest mega jail in the area. MSG's website acts as a resource with interactive guides that map shops, bakeries and tea shops in both Manhattan's Chinatown and Flushing, plus a backlog of over 60 articles that tell the stories of businesses in the area. The company has collaborated with other nonprofits and community boards, including Send Chinatown Love and Run for Chinatown. They also began working with local institutions, including Poster House, with a coming tour with The Met on the horizon. On their social media, Chan and Huang highlight Chinatowns found around the world, showcasing communities in Calgary, Canada, and Incheon, South Korea. And while Chan is regularly asked if MSG plans on hosting tours outside of Manhattan's Chinatown (New York has nine Chinatowns in total), Chan knows that her mission is here.
Axios
12-03-2025
- General
- Axios
China Beach renovations to begin after three-year delay
Renovations to China Beach will kick off this spring after a three-year wait. Why it matters: The $20 million project, which will upgrade restrooms , picnic areas and the retaining wall that protects the beach, was originally supposed to finish in 2025, according to the Richmond Review and Sunset Beacon. Catch up quick: China Beach, tucked into the Sea Cliff neighborhood, is a local favorite for swimming, sunbathing and play. The project was set to break ground in October 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (GGNRA), which was established in 1972. The project received $10 million in federal funding, which the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy matched in fundraising. When done, the beach area would include bathrooms with indoor plumbing and rinse-off stations, a redone sun deck and a restored bathhouse exterior. The bathhouse was built in 1957 and officials are applying for it to join the National Register of Historic Places. Reality check: The project was delayed in part because the contract was administered by separate federal agencies, Claire Mooney, vice president for park projects and conservation at the conservancy, told the San Francisco Chronicle. The bathhouse will return to its original role as the GGNRA Ocean Rescue Patrol's headquarters once renovations are complete. The big picture: China Beach is said to have served as a campground for Chinese fishermen in the 1800s after the Foreign Miners Tax forced Chinese people to leave the goldfields and join fishing crews to make a living. The Chow Chong family has also said they used the cove to return exhumed remains to their home village in China as part of funeral rites between 1868 and 1890. The beach became a state park in 1934 and was named the James D. Phelan State Beach to pay tribute to the former San Francisco mayor and U.S. senator who helped finance the purchase. Yes, but: Phelan was a proponent of anti-Asian policies, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. When ownership passed to the federal government in 1974, NPS changed its name to China Beach to honor the Chinese American community and their contributions.
Yahoo
29-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Deportations Will Hit American Workers, Too
From the Capitolism on The Dispatch Readers of Capitolism surely know by now that I'm a fan of immigration and believe the United States' illegal immigration problem starts with its legal immigration problem (i.e., that our broken system makes it too darn difficult to move, work, and stay here). Nevertheless, it's also objectively correct that illegal immigration is, well, illegal, and not even a bleeding-heart squish like me would vigorously object to the federal government deporting violent criminals who snuck into the country. It's a more open question, however, as to whether the widescale deportations promised (and seemingly begun) by the new Trump administration are worth the massive amount of government and private resources—years of work, billions of dollars, thousands of people, etc. —needed to deport even a fraction of the 11 million illegal immigrants, most of whom are not violent criminals, that the Trump administration has promised to remove. (And that's even leaving aside the moral, civil liberties, and efficacy concerns that the government's efforts raise.) Many who vigorously shout 'YES IT IS' to that question often point to not just 'the law' but the economic benefits that deportations would supposedly bring to the U.S. economy, particularly for U.S. workers (native-born and legal immigrants) that would—again, supposedly—get better jobs and higher wages if they didn't have to compete with undocumented workers in the U.S. labor market. Yet decades of research on several different periods of U.S. history—both distant and recent—show that the overall labor market effects of the Trump administration's deportation promises should be counted as another cost, not benefit, to any such actions—for not just illegal immigrants and their families but most American workers, too. Indeed, the history of large-scale U.S. government immigration actions gives us plenty to worry about when it comes to the economic effects of the new Trump deportations. Let's start in the 19th century, when concerns about immigrants stealing Americans' jobs in Western states resulted in the first big crackdown on immigration in U.S. history—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which banned Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States and pushed out many Chinese laborers already here. According to a recent paper examining the Act's effects on eight Western states, the law unsurprisingly reduced the Chinese labor supply—both skilled and unskilled workers—by 64 percent in the region. More surprisingly, however, was that the act: Reduced the white male labor supply by 28 percent and reduced these workers' lifetime earnings, too. Reduced total manufacturing output in the region by 62 percent, the number of manufacturing establishments in the region 54 to 69 percent, and manufacturing labor productivity by an imprecise amount. (The damage was so substantial because Western factories back then 'were small and mostly relied on labor-intensive production.') Generally acted as a drag on economic growth in the Western U.S. (which was otherwise growing rapidly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries). The authors thus conclude that 'the Chinese Exclusion Act led to negative economic effects for most non-Chinese workers and likely slowed the economic development of the western United States for many decades.' Their main lesson: 'productive immigrant labor may be hard to replace.' Indeed. Of course, the Chinese Exclusion Act's damage back then was likely greater than it'd be today because we've (thankfully!) improved on 19th-century mobility, technology, amenities (AC, especially), and social integration—things that would've amplified the act's economic shock by limiting labor adjustment and something the study's authors readily acknowledge. Fortunately, there's plenty of research on subsequent periods of U.S. history that show similar (though smaller) effects—during economic downturns as well as booms—for similar reasons. Between 1929 and 1934, the United States government deported—some by force and others by persuasion—at least 400,000 Mexicans (many of whom were U.S.-born!) to boost native-born employment during the Great Depression. As a result of this policy, the Mexican population in the United States declined dramatically in the 1930s, but, as economists Jongkwan Lee and colleagues have found, American workers didn't benefit. Instead, 'Mexican repatriations resulted in reduced employment and occupational downgrading for U.S. natives,' particularly for low-skilled workers and workers in urban areas. They cite three likely reasons for the disappointing results: 1) companies in immigrant-dependent industries like agriculture and construction suffered, reducing their demand for native workers; 2) Mexicans' departures reduced urban populations and, in turn, demand for local goods and services, as well as overall economic growth in these areas; and 3) firms that survived the policy's initial economic shocks restructured to utilize more labor-saving technologies instead of hiring native-born workers. In the mid-1960s, the United States ceased its successful Bracero Program that provided Mexican nationals with expanded access to guest worker visas (thus dramatically reducing illegal immigration, by the way). The goal of the program's cancellation—which 'caused the exclusion of roughly half a million seasonally-employed Mexican farm workers from the labor force'—was to increase the wages and employment of American farm workers. Yet, in reviewing novel state-level employment and migration data, economist Michael Clemens and his co-authors found no such effects in the most exposed states. Instead, wages in states with high or moderate levels of Mexican migrant workers (and thus higher levels of bracero effects) 'rose more slowly after bracero exclusion than wages in states with no exposure to exclusion.' Employment levels, meanwhile, showed no significant effects across states. The authors conclude that 'bracero exclusion failed as active labor market policy,' theorizing that—instead of raising wages and hiring more American workers—U.S. farmers turned to harvesting machines or, where rapid mechanization wasn't possible (e.g., for delicate fruits), simply produced less. Most recently, the United States during the Obama years ramped up immigration enforcement and deportations via the 'Secure Communities' (SC) program, which sought to detect and remove illegal immigrants by increasing information-sharing between the federal government and local law enforcement agencies and was revived during the first Trump term. As economist Chloe East recently documented for the Brookings Institution, SC between 2008 and 2014 resulted in the deportation of about 400,000 people, mostly men, and had a broader 'chilling effect' on illegal and legal migrants' willingness to engage in the formal economy. As she documents, 'even people not targeted for deportation became fearful of leaving their house to do routine things like go to work…' because the program—like what Trump's promising today—didn't just target serious, violent criminals but instead deported lots of migrants with minor, nonviolent convictions (or none at all). Once again, however, the removal of several hundred thousand workers from the U.S. labor market was not a boon for the U.S. economy or most native-born workers. Instead, East and her colleagues found that, while SC 'decreased the employment of likely undocumented immigrants' via deportations and the aforementioned chilling effects, the program also slightly decreased U.S.-born workers' employment and hourly wages on average. They posit that these negative effects were driven by two factors: First, firms with increased labor costs decreased their overall output and job creation, meaning that the modest gains experienced by low-wage native workers were more than offset by losses among everyone else; second, fewer people meant less local consumption, which in turn meant less economic activity (and demand for labor) in the localities at issue. Other studies of SC have expanded on these findings in specific industries. In a separate paper, East and others found that SC 'reduced the labor supply of college-educated U.S.-born mothers with young children,' with many working moms unemployed or underemployed for years after their kids were born, because the policy made household services more expensive (by reducing the available workforce) and thus discouraged educated moms from working outside of the home. Relatedly, research shows that SC reduced the wages at formal childcare centers for immigrants and native workers (both low- and high-education), as well as the overall number of childcare facilities, due to a lack of workers and fewer people seeking childcare. SC has also been found to have disproportionately harmed the U.S. construction workforce (immigrant and U.S.-born, across all wage- and skill-levels), thus decreasing residential homebuilding and increasing home prices, with minimal offsetting downward price pressures due to reduced demand for housing. Finally, SC has been found to have harmed entrepreneurship, modestly deterring individuals from undertaking self-employment and significantly reducing the earnings of those who still took the plunge, especially for white, male, U.S.-born entrepreneurs. (And, to top it all off, SC might not have even reduced crime!) In case after case and regardless of period, past U.S. efforts to remove illegal immigrants have proven economically costly—for immigrants, certain industries and localities, and even native-born workers and the economy overall. This raises the obvious question of why, and East provides much of the answer in her piece for Brookings: The prevailing view used to be that foreign-born and U.S.-born workers are substitutes, meaning that when one foreign-born worker takes a job, there is one less job for a U.S.-born worker. But economists have now shown several reasons why the economy is not a zero-sum game: because unauthorized immigrants work in different occupations from the U.S.-born, because they create demand for goods and services, and because they contribute to the long-run fiscal health of the country. We see the first two dynamics repeatedly in the research outlined above. In general, government reductions in illegal immigrants' labor supply didn't draw many American workers into the occupations in which the immigrants mainly worked—occupations that often supported other American workers—but did reduce overall local demand for goods and services. And the relatively few American workers who did fill some of these new vacancies ended up in jobs that were worse than what these workers otherwise would've done. As a result, deportations and related restrictions caused local economic activity to be depressed, while harming many U.S. businesses and workers along the way. (These dynamics also explain why various studies have found new immigrant labor supply, legal or illegal, to have little to no negative wage effects on native U.S. workers, including other immigrants, even though most illegal immigrants are likely coming here for work.) We should expect similar effects this time around—if not more so. For starters, East shows that today illegal immigrants generally work in 'low-paying, dangerous and otherwise less attractive jobs' that U.S.-born workers and legal immigrants tend to shy away from: As we've discussed, moreover, the U.S. labor market—now and likely in the future—remains tight (thanks to demographics and other factors), and there are simply not millions and millions of idle American workers sitting on the sidelines just itching to take these newly open jobs. To the extent Trump's broad deportation promises come to fruition, we can expect many immigrant-dependent industries to suffer, few American workers to gain, many other Americans to lose, and plenty of headlines like this along the way: Maybe you think these costs and others are worth the price, and that no amount of illegal immigrant labor is acceptable in today's United States. Being a devoted cost-benefit guy obsessed with scarcity and opportunity cost and fearful of a big, intrusive state (and being a soft-hearted lib, to boot), I disagree. Regardless, we should all have our eyes wide open about the trade-offs that any big, broad deportation policy entails, beyond simply the ample resources required to (maybe) pull it off. In this particular case, the tradeoffs are real and significant, and they include costs borne by the very people that the policy is supposedly intended to help. Massive (190 percent!) 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