The Good Immigrants

"'America is a land of immigrants'--so true. But the state determines who it wants and doesn't want in decidedly unsentimental ways. Hsu's deeply researched and empathetically narrated history reveals how racial thinking, economic need, and international politics transformed the Chinese from being mostly undesirable to selectively welcomed and celebrated. This is an important study of personal experiences and policy in Cold War America."--Gordon H. Chang, Stanford University "How did the 'yellow peril' become the 'model minority'? Hsu's compelling book demonstrates that the admission of Asian scholars and businessmen to the United States set a pattern of valuing Asian newcomers with economically advantageous skills--a pattern that still shapes immigration and assimilation today. Bringing together legal and social history and biography to explore racial categorization, discrimination, and global economics, this meticulously researched book is essential to scholars and students of American policy debates."--Alan M. Kraut, American University ""The Good Immigrants" is an impeccably researched and poignant history of Chinese students and intellectuals in the United States. Exceptional in their legal status, they were nonetheless buffeted by the overarching politics of U.S.-China relations. Hsu places into historical context such figures as Madame Chiang Kai-shek, I. M. Pei, Chen-Ning Yang, and many others who, as a group, constituted the bridge between the 'yellow peril' and 'model minority.'"--Mae Ngai, Columbia University ""The Good Immigrants" is a critically important book that analyzes U.S. immigration policy from a wider and deeper perspective. While other works have studied why the United States enacted exclusionary race-based immigration laws, Hsu focuses on the exceptions--the relatively well-to-do Chinese who entered the United States under an exempt status as merchants, diplomats, and students. Hsu looks at the opening of American society, rather than the closing of it."--Naoko Shibusawa, Brown University "In "The Good Immigrants," Hsu's exhaustive research and incisive scholarship break new ground. Probing American political narratives from the nineteenth century to the Cold War period and modern times, Hsu uncovers how certain machinations engineered immigration policy and in the process reconfigured the image of Chinese migrants into today's 'model minority.'"--Helen Zia, author of "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People"