Shortly after the end of the Vietnam War, the Indochina Migration and Refugee Assistance Act was passed on May 23, 1975. President Gerald Ford allowed refugees from South Vietnam and Cambodia to enter the United States under a special status. The first wave of refugees consisted of about one hundred and thirty thousand. They were first airlifted to the Philippines and Guam and then to one of the refugee centers in the United States. The second batch of refugees began during 1978 and lasted through the mid-1980s. These were people who took to sea in overcrowded boats. The ones who escaped death at sea ended up in Southeast Asia and later on admitted into the U.S. This group included many ethnic Chinese who were persecuted by the Vietnamese government.
The children of these immigrants began moving up through the schools and a new class of academic achievers emerged. Asian Americans began to carry the image of being the “model minority”. This is because despite what they were faced with, many Asian American Immigrants excelled in schools across America. A good number of the immigrant families were stuck in poverty, especially the refugees in the year’s following the fall of Saigon in 1975.
There were children that were scarred from war trying to start a new life in America. Many of them had a hard time learning the new language, causing them to drop out of school. Regardless, during this time Asian Americans were scoring very high above average on the math section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test. In addition, they had higher grade point averages than their peers. Asian Americans had taken many places in prestigious colleges to the point where the country’s best universities were accused of setting admission quotas to restrict the number of Asian Americans on campus.
The reasons for this academic success have been attributed to many different things. One of the reasons is that Asian American parents tend to make their children work harder because they believe education is the key to success. Another reason is the theory that they average higher I.Q. points through genetic differences. These explanations worry Asian Americans because it would only increase racial stereotyping and it has.
These events have led Time Magazine to acknowledge and publish an article on this subject of “Asian American Whiz Kids”. This sounds like a success story for the American dream but the title of “model minority” throws you in a pool where you lose individuality and are discriminated against.