Migration and Immigration

“In a country where possessions counted for everything, we had no belongings except our stories.”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Refugees

Life in North America began with migrations many thousands of years ago. The stories of migration and immigration include themes of conquest, violence, exploration, and growth. Asian American and Pacific Islanders are part of the American migration story, from Chinese laborers in the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the Caribbean to the revolving doors of Asian migration to the Hawaiian sugar plantations.

For Pacific Islanders, stories of migration predate the founding of the United States and speak to legacies of ship faring in the Pacific Ocean and beyond. For more recent migrants and refugees, American involvement in the War in Vietnam led to Southeast Asian, primarily Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong, and Cambodian refugees to settle across the Midwest and the American South.

Every day there are immigrants from Asia, like Filipino nurses and South Asian international students, who come to the United States to seek work and education for a new life.

This movement changed the fabric of the country as America is a mosaic of the migration stories of the people here today.