Influence of U.S. immigration laws on Chinese immigration, United States, 1980 to 2002

摘要

Historically, Chinese immigrants to the United States are a special group. They wereor almost were banned from 1882 to 1968. Since in 1968 the United States abolishednational origin quotas and eliminated national, race, or ancestry as a basis forimmigration, thousands of Chinese immigrants came to the United States. The totalpopulation of Chinese immigrants to the US between 1980 and 2002 was 911,220,whereas it was 136,843 between 1891 and 1979. Not only did the population of Chineseimmigrants have great change, the quality of Chinese immigrants also had substantialdifference from those immigrated in the last century. However, there are very limitedliteratures focusing on the dynamics of Chinese immigration in these twenty years, whichis the most important time period for Chinese immigration.The following study tries to describe the dynamics of Chinese immigration to theUnited States between 1980 and 2002; and analyze the influence of the Americanimmigration laws on Chinese immigration. The dynamics of Chinese immigrants aredescribed and analyzed by different migration categories. Other social and economicfactors are added to comprehensively understand the change of Chinese immigration.