Immigrants in the workforce and short stories

I found the latest reading “Asian Immigrant Women and Global Restructuring, 1970s – 1990s” by Rhacel Salazar Parreῆas to be one of the more interesting readings thus far. The article seemed to outline the job situation of Asian immigrants to the United States in a rather unbiased manner. Unlike a number of the other articles that we have read where Asian women travelled across the ocean to the United States as a bride, this article focuses on the jobs that these women took on, and how they were of benefit to the economy. I guess what I liked about this article was that the author gave credit to the abilities these women had. He mentions that “Asian immigrant women have a high rate of labor market participation and a diverse range of levels of educational attainment” (Parreῆas 276). This article, unlike many of the others talked about the capabilities of the Asian American women in a generally positive light, emphasizing how they managed to find jobs by practicing skills that no one else wanted to do. While it is sad that the jobs these Asian women were capable of were at the lower end of the job spectrum, and had to make do with lower tier jobs and pay, this was great for businesses in industries such as fabric and packing which were labor intensive but also penalized the local people who were in those fields. This is because language barriers prevented immigrants from demanding higher salaries and benefits and were the cheaper option for such companies.

Unfortunate as this is, I found this article intriguing as it mentioned Singapore and Malaysia as “newly industrialized nations” which experienced labor migration from export-orientated developing countries. (273); perhaps this was a similar situation as that in America, except occurring in the East. In Singapore, foreign labor is largely used in the domestic sector as well as in construction businesses. The main cause for this is the low pay and physical work associated with these jobs. In Parreῆas article, he suggests that immigrants were competition for the locals for these low paying jobs. In the case of Singapore, this was significantly different. Because of our small population and educational qualifications, such jobs were not being filled and hence we required immigrants to fill these jobs. In fact, it is thanks to these immigrant workers that Singapore has managed to develop to the way it is today.

Moving on, looking at all the short stories we have read, it seems to be that most of these stories are based on the same beginnings and tell largely the same story. They center on Asian immigrants in the United States who came in hope of a better life, but end up struggling to identify and fit in with this new community. I am not complaining, I really enjoy these readings, but maybe we should look more at why these stories were written? Were they just personal diary entries expressing the feelings of these people, or were they meant to be cries of help, not that anything we do would be of direct benefit to them, but perhaps for the youth of today and for the future. Also, with all these stories and immigrants being in the United States for quite some time now, one would have thought that the Asian community would be comfortable with their identities already, but are they? Are these literature pieces and published papers benefitting the youth today, or only making them more confused with who they really are?