History Analytical essay

Princeton University Press

Chapter Title: Symbiotic Brain Drains Immigration Reform and the Knowledge Worker Recruitment Act of 1965

Book Title: The Good Immigrants Book Subtitle: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority Book Author(s): Madeline Y. Hsu Published by: Princeton University Press. (2015) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1h4mhst.14

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide

range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and

facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

https://about.jstor.org/terms

Princeton University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Good Immigrants

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

C H A P T E R 8

Symbiotic Brain Drains ImmiGration Reform and the KnoWledGe

Worker ReCruitment ACt of 1965

In 1951 Yi- fu Tuan (B. 1930) arrived in America to study for a PhD degree in geography at UC Berkeley. He would graduate to an illustrious academic career, moving inland to teach at several prominent universities before retir- ing from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 1998.1 Timing and poli- tics were to his advantage, for the Cold War and America’s alliance with Nationalist Taiwan— for which Tuan’s father had worked as a diplomat— ensured that he enjoyed once unthinkable opportunities newly available with the dismantling of Chinese exclusion as an intellectual from the right side of the global political divide. Tuan’s success derives only in part from his individual brilliance, for changing conditions in American society opened previously closed doors that allowed him to attain his full professional po- tential, as had I. M. Pei, Li Zhengdao, Yang Zhenning, and Wang An. Dur- ing the 1950s, instead of having to return to China to work, Tuan could le- gally find a job in the United States while enjoying a broader array of intellectual and professional choices.2

At first Tuan had to assert his standing as an academic unburdened by his ethnic heritage. In contradiction to prevailing trends in the field, an influential graduate adviser suggested that he research Chinatown as a suit- able dissertation topic. Appalled, Tuan elected instead to measure pedi- ments in the Arizona desert, an unraced project comparable to those of his non- Asian classmates.3 From quantitative geographer he evolved to found the field of humanistic geography and become celebrated around the world for his imagination and insights regarding the emotional interphase of humans with their physical worlds. Such a career trajectory had not ex- isted for Chinese in America before World War II— those who managed to escape laundry and restaurant work to enter white- collar and professional employment were often bound to projects associated with their ethnic heritage. Tuan’s many publications— monographs such as Topophilia: A Study of Environmental Perception, Attitudes, and Values, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, Landscapes of Fear, and Cosmos and Hearth: A Cos-

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  199

mopolite’s Viewpoint— tackle ambitious terrains.4 Tuan’s pioneering body of work has expanded “concepts of geography beyond the physical towards the metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic,” exploring how “the meanings and pro- cesses of place— their material and symbolic qualities— as well as the range of peoples and social relations that continuously define and create social and spatial contexts” might be considered in humanities and social science fields as disparate as history, cultural studies, anthropology, and poststruc- turalism.5 Tuan scrutinized the broad intersection of nature and culture in topics such as “environmental perception, symbolic landscapes, geographic aesthetics, environmental ethics, and cultural fantasy”6 to produce revelations

Figure 8.1. Yi- fu Tuan conquers the American West, 1954. Tuan in the Little Colorado Canyon researching his PhD dissertation, “Pediments in Southeast- ern Arizona” (1959). His younger brother, San- fu Tuan, took the picture. Cour- tesy of Yi- fu Tuan.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

200  •  Chapter 8

concerning “humans’ emotional ties to place” that are now so pervasive, yet uncited, that a Chronicle of Higher Education article described his influence as follows: “The most flattering way of putting this might be to say that Mr. Tuan enjoys a rare kind of acknowledgement: He is so present that he is invisible, informing others at a deeper- than- footnote level.”7 Tuan’s intellec- tual legacy speaks to the breadth of human experiences in ways that tran- scend race and ethnicity.

Nor does Tuan regard himself as participating in Asian American his- tory. In Who Am I? An Autobiography of Emotion, Mind, and Spirit, he self- deprecatingly notes that the unlikely combination of being a “middle- class Chinese” and a “geographer” does not fit traditional narratives of ethnic biographical writing.

A middle- class Chinese such as myself cannot offer the attractive and highly mar- ketable theme of struggle and heroic climb from Chinatown poverty to subur- ban affluence. For I had no such struggle and climb. Chinese immigrants who were middle- class professionals have always been accepted and successful in the United States. And what is more boring than a story of unqualified success— from good student to well- paid engineer?8

Unmentioned in Tuan’s account is the reality that Chinese Americans had only recently gained ready access to middle- class standing, much less main- stream acceptance. It is precisely because Tuan did not experience this my- thologized ascent through ethnic immigrant struggle that his life and ca- reer illuminate how discourses of race and immigration had shifted in the mid- twentieth century. Tuan’s path to success reveals how the Cold War, changing laws regarding citizenship and immigration, and shifting terms of racial inequality and international politics made it both possible and desir- able for nonwhites such as Chinese to transition effortlessly into the middle- class mainstream.

Tuan was an early example of a migration flow that gained the label of “brain drain” by the mid- 1960s. He was one of thousands of Chinese that arrived after World War II for purportedly temporary study in the United States who found legal employment and means to resettle permanently in what became a widely debated transfer of valuable, educated human re- sources from developing to industrialized nations. The student “side door” provided a reasonably reliable pathway to immigrate into the United States through the initially temporary, but numerically unlimited, route of enter- ing legally as a student, finding employment, and remaining.9 The most difficult step, sharply restricted until 1962 by quota restrictions, was conver- sion to permanent status. On behalf of such economically useful individu- als, however, the Immigration Bureau, Congress, and the State Department made legal and administrative accommodations that permitted extensions

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  201

of legal residency. This immigration flow built on the foundations laid by the roughly twelve thousand “stranded students” transformed by World War II and the Cold War into refugees who settled in America and the influxes of refugees admitted directly from Asia who had undergone efforts to screen for their educational, political, and employment qualifications. The interna- tional student immigration side door tapped even more directly into these economic preferences by admitting only those Chinese who could gain ad- mission and means to finance education in the United States and find jobs with employers who could apply for their permanent status.

After World War II the Department of State, with congressional backing, expanded international education programs along with other forms of cul- tural and technical exchange. Student admissions were unrestricted by im- migration quotas, providing a legal means of entry for far greater numbers of Chinese. As detailed in figure A.2, total student numbers increased from 7,542 in 1944– 1945, to 25,464 in 1948– 1949, 34,232 in 1954– 1955, and 48,486 in 1959– 1960. The number of Chinese students increased from about 1,300 to 10,000 across these years, while those from decolonizing nations such as India grew even more dramatically, leaping from only 73 in 1944– 1945 to 6,813 in 1964– 1965. International students began their journey to becoming American by earning graduate degrees, often in scientific, medical, or engi- neering fields, which enabled them to seek jobs legally, often with employ- ers who could apply for them to gain citizenship. In this way, long- standing American investments in educating future leaders to enhance U.S. influence in China turned toward cultivating a valuable and skilled workforce to feed domestic economic development.

As with the stranded students, restrictive and inegalitarian U.S. immigra- tion laws severely limited the abilities of even the most strategically special- ized and educated workers from Asia to gain legal permanent residency. Alongside the politics of the international refugee crisis, economic and mili- tary competition against the communist bloc demanded capacities for tech- nological innovation that exerted additional reasons to reform immigration laws. In the two decades after World War II, a succession of presidents work- ing with congressional reformers and lobbying by a widening array of eth- nic and religious organizations sought ways to modify America’s discrimi- natory quota system and citizenship and employment practices to privilege the migration of economically useful, value- added elites. The Hart- Celler Act of 1965 enacted many of these priorities, accelerating and magnifying the brain- drain phenomenon even as it enabled unprecedented diversification of the American population through immigration.

Internationally, considerable consternation and alarm greeted this dra- matic turn in the flow and settlement of international students in the United States. By the 1960s and 1970s, perceptions of a brain drain spurred global criticism for the loss of such precious human resources from developing

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

202  •  Chapter 8

nations and particularly to the United States. Those on the sending end re- garded America’s long- term acquisition of their most educated elites as a cynical form of theft by the world’s most powerful and wealthiest nation from the poorest and most aspirational. International education programs that had once provided training and experience for a leadership class to bring back modernity and progress to struggling homelands had turned into a system for the steady loss of such talented and cultivated individuals. From the perspective of the United States, accusations of brain drain im- peded its efforts to foster stronger international relations by training leaders of emerging nations and expanding capitalist partnerships overseas. How- ever, in the long term for economies that nonetheless managed to advance economically, a so- called brain drain was but one stage of an exchange of knowledge workers, part of a long- term circulation of technological innova- tions and economic formations that over time furthered the integration of the American capitalist powerhouse with the developing economies from which the knowledge workers originated. Starting in the 1970s Chinese knowledge workers returned in growing numbers, bearing not only their advanced degrees but additional training, experience, connections, access to capital, and industrial and entrepreneurial savvy that advanced the global- ization and sophistication of their homeland’s economy in collaboration with that of the United States.

Nationalist Taiwan could be considered the chief sufferer of brain drain as a primary partner in the interchange of knowledge workers with the United States. Tracing back to the long- established international education infrastructure that emerged alongside the Boxer Indemnity Fellowship pro- grams (1908) and the Chinese Educational Mission (1872– 1881), this com- plexly layered relationship channeled the migration circuits of educated Chinese who brought networks, cultural capital, and knowledge but also desperation to gain footholds in the United States. Although not an engi- neer or scientist as were so many of the brain- drain Chinese, Yi- fu Tuan em- bodied many representative qualities. Prior generations in his family had studied in the United States. In Tuan’s case, this training helped his father gain connections and prestigious, if poorly paid, employment in the Na- tionalist foreign service. The Tuans prioritized study abroad, and during World War II his father’s work in the diplomatic corps allowed Yi- fu to study first in Australia and then attend Oxford before coming to the United States for graduate study. Like other Chinese of his generation, however, Tuan faced limited options for a Chinese homeland, with neither Taiwan nor the PRC presenting attractive options for fulfilling employment or safe residence during the 1950s. As did thousands of other Chinese able to mus- ter the access and resources to do so, Tuan made his way to America, where he carved out a new life and a new home under increasingly favorable legal, institutional, and ideological circumstances.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  203

Within the broader picture of domestic race relations and Cold War di- vides, the successes of educated Chinese provided proof of America’s func- tioning democracy while contributing vital scientific and technical skills to its competition against the Soviet Union as well as vindicating the appeal and generative capacities of capitalist enterprises. “Free world” partners de- ployed exchanges of students, cultural representatives, technical and mili- tary experts, and other kinds of leaders as ways of affirming shared beliefs and convictions regarding political and economic ideologies. Despite wide- spread critiques of a brain drain as depriving developing nations of their most valuable human capital, the bodies, connections, technologies, and knowledge so circulated served to strengthen ties between the United States and Nationalist Taiwan. The mutual sharing of businesses and enterprises, along with the accompanying organizational and political practices and be- liefs, furthered the integration of economic and political systems in both states, vividly illustrating how immigration laws and practices served to fur- ther foreign relations even as they fostered the greater numbers, acceptance, and visibility of educated Chinese as welcome immigrants in the United States.

The Strategic Foundations of Brain Exchange

As described in chapter 5, the Department of State had begun facilitating international education programs as an effective form of diplomatic out- reach in the mid- 1930s, particularly with Latin American neighbors and China. Even in the thick of World War II, it had expanded educational, cultural, and technical exchange projects in the belief that personal encoun- ters and collaborations fostered stronger alliances while usefully training Chinese scientists, bureaucrats, and technicians who provided cheap, skilled labor in key industries. In particular the technical trainee program paired the needs of the Nationalists for greater technical expertise and experience with the hunger of American industries for skilled and inexpensive workers.

With the end of World War II, the number of students and trainees in- creased as educational exchange gained importance as a tool of foreign rela- tions. The U.S. Technical Assistance Program continued to bring in Nation- alist scientists and technicians despite the rapid onset of the Chinese Civil War and reached a peak of enrollment in 1949 with 3,916 participants, fol- lowed by 3,637 in 1950 and 3,549 in 1951. National Resource Commission application records suggest that approvals were facilitated during 1948 and 1949 to promote escape from China in the final stages of the Civil War.10

Despite their troubled alliance during World War II and the China White Paper in 1949 in which President Truman blamed Nationalist fail- ings for their loss in the Civil War, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

204  •  Chapter 8

saved Chiang Kai- shek on his last foothold of Taiwan. The island became an invaluable, unsinkable aircraft carrier holding the line against an expan- sionary People’s Republic of China. As the U.S. Seventh Fleet began patrol- ling the Formosa Strait to ensure the survival of “Free” China, the mael- strom of recriminations concerning how the United States had “lost” China destroyed the careers of many of the foreign service officers and scholars most knowledgeable about the country, producing a severely limited ca- pacity for the United States to deal realistically with the PRC.11 During an era infested by Senator Joseph McCarthy and anticommunist paranoia, this purging of the ranks of the “China hands” allowed the China Lobby to emerge as an influential, yet minority, interest group that effectively lever- aged Chiang Kai- shek’s survival as a critical strategic issue for the United States.

Although the White House and Department of State held different pri- orities from the Nationalists, with the United States emphasizing contain- ment of the PRC and Chiang Kai- shek claiming ambitions to retake the mainland, they collaborated amicably in the sending of Taiwanese students to America.12 Along with other anticommunist allies, Taiwan benefited from programs funded by the Fulbright Act of 1946 and its successors such as the Act for International Development of 1950, which aimed “to aid the efforts of the peoples of economically underdeveloped areas to develop their re- sources and improve their working and living conditions by encouraging the exchange of technical knowledge and skills.” More broadly, such pro- grams sought to promote global capitalism and to guide economic develop- ment in developing nations to become more closely integrated into the capitalist free world and within the U.S. realm of leadership.13 As early as 1952 and 1953 the State Department’s Committee on Foreign Relations de- termined that “the exchange of persons programs were the most effective and, at the same time, among the lowest in cost” of programs for developing influence abroad.14

The Nationalists reciprocated American interests in the exchange of tech- nical knowledge and skills and actively maintained pre– World War II pro- grams to prepare and select students and government workers to acquire additional education and training in the United States. Beginning in the 1950s, a steady outflow of Taiwan’s best- prepared and well- connected stu- dents came to an America with emerging capacities to provide them not only with education but also with jobs and chances to resettle permanently. Although they arrived with student visas mandating their return to Tai- wan, most of those applying to study in the United States viewed it as a step toward remaining, with the knowledge that despite the restrictive terms of immigration laws, such relocations were quite feasible and in fact facili- tated. The great numbers that accomplished this transformation, approxi- mately 90 to 95 percent of Taiwanese students through the 1970s, reflects

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  205

their desper ation to escape from bleak conditions on Taiwan, the resource- fulness of migrants in expanding their available options, and the complic- ity of both the U.S. and Taiwan governments in enabling their resettle- ment despite official policies stipulating the temporary nature of student statuses.

Exile on Taiwan

The greater opportunities available to the stranded students and their brain- drain successors and the comparative ease with which they entered white- collar and professional employment have tended to mask the duress and losses sustained in their migration to America. Despite their student status and better access, they were nonetheless refugees unexpectedly cut off from China who struggled with the unresolved turmoil of lost homes and family members, the violent security regime imposed by the Nationalists, the on- going instability and threat of communist invasion to Taiwan, and the limbo of legal but not yet permanent residency and employment in the United States. Nationalist- affiliated Chinese, here labeled the mainland Chinese, had fled to Taiwan in the late 1940s only to find themselves at odds with the already resident Taiwanese, some of whom had settled on the island centu- ries earlier but all of whom had experienced the relative stability and pros- perity of Japanese colonial rule (1895– 1945). The February 28 Incident of 1947 (Er’erba shibian), in which Taiwanese protested the corruption and disarray of Nationalist rule and demanded sovereignty, was followed by a military crackdown resulting in an estimated twenty thousand deaths and the impo- sition of martial law until 1987.15 Such conditions provided powerful moti- vations for both mainland Chinese and Taiwanese to seek an alternative home, even as the United States offered greater possibilities for entry and settlement.

During the 1950s Taiwan’s primarily agricultural economy held few pros- pects for the newly arrived mainlanders, many of whom were accustomed to living in China’s most industrialized and developed cities. In 1954 the entire island had but one stoplight, in the capital city of Taipei, which was only for show and unneeded for the scant motorized traffic. Taipei had just one elevator— in the tallest, four- story building.16 Although he stayed for less than a year before departing to study in the United States, Winberg Chai recalled his dismay at living conditions: “the constant humid heat, the hunger, the terrible pineapples, the fear that the People’s Liberation Army would arrive any day and take over the island too.”17 Facilities for higher education were equally limiting. In 1949 there were only six institutions, with a total enrollment of 6,573— one university, two colleges, one teacher’s college, and two polytechnic institutes, mostly left over from the Japanese

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

206  •  Chapter 8

colonial period.18 After 1949 choice positions in government and industry were occupied by well- connected mainland Chinese, with few openings for Taiwanese or even the offspring of Nationalist officials.

These limited employment options augmented fears and anxieties about Chiang Kai- shek’s brutal authoritarianism, which had also thwarted ARCI agendas in sharply constricting new refugee arrivals. Although most atten- tion has focused on the White Terror crackdown against Taiwanese, Domi- nic Yang and Mau- kuei Chang argue that the Nationalists disciplined “not only . . . native Taiwanese political activists, but also . . . a large number of mainlander dissidents and alleged ‘Communist spies’ . . . all in the name of the sacred mission of mainland recovery.”19 They cite statistics that during the 1950s mainland Chinese were 40 percent of known White Terror victims while accounting for only 10 to 15 percent of the total population. Accord- ingly, they argue that “in early post- war Taiwan, the KMT may have purged and disciplined the migrant community with more rigor and intensity than it applied to native Taiwanese.” Chiang Kai- shek fiercely sought out and crushed possible rivals for power. Yang and Chang argue that

dissident intellectuals, influential provincial leaders, and rival forces within the KMT needed to be brought under tighter control and (re)indoctrinated with KMT ideology and the personal cult of Chiang Kai- shek. Therefore the hunt for “Communist spies” and suppression of political dissidents had a greater overall impact on civil war migrants than on the local population during the early post- war years.20

Chiang’s ruthlessness in destroying potential challengers quashed U.S. State Department hopes of promoting a “Third Force” alternative for his leader- ship of overseas Chinese.

Yang and Chang underscore that the mainland Chinese were refugees who suffered the attending traumas and dislocations. In the early 1950s main- land Chinese displayed statistically significant, higher rates of crime, suicide, and mental illness. Anecdotal evidence depicts “the communal dislocation experienced by civil war migrants” with vivid accounts of personal losses emerging from the profusion of newspaper advertisements searching for lost relatives and friends (sunren qishi), underscoring the many incidents of fam- ily fragmentation and displacement in exile.21 Taiwan’s current prosperity and material affluence have obscured the fact that so many mainland Chi- nese “left China in such an intense and dramatic fashion that they were deeply traumatized by the brutality of warfare as well as vivid memories of Communist persecution. Many arrived in Taiwan literally with only the clothes on their backs.”22 As depicted with such clear- eyed tenderness in Bai Xianyong’s short story collection Taibeiren (Taipei People) (1971), they re- mained deeply and dysfunctionally immersed in their own misery, nostalgia,

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  207

and the black shadow of Chiang Kai- shek’s implacable crusade for main- land recovery. And they became preoccupied with finding an escape.

Although now touted for its economic “tiger” miracle, Taiwan’s first years under Nationalist rule emphasized a military and security buildup to the exclusion of developing economic and civic infrastructure on the island, despite copious resources channeled from the United States. Between 1951 and 1965 congressional appropriations for Taiwan totaled $2.5 billion, an average of $167 million each year. With U.S. aid, “profliga[te] Nationalist military spenders” presided over a military budget equaling 15 percent of GNP, with 85 percent of the government’s total expenditures going to the military. One- seventh of able- bodied men entered the military rather than working in farms and factories, to the detriment of economic development.23 By 1954, however, the Sino- American Mutual Defense Treaty and the tenac- ity of the Communist government led many mainlanders outside the gov- ernment and military establishment to accept the permanence of the PRC and the indefinite loss of their Chinese homeland.24 Chiang Kai- shek and his followers were slower to acknowledge these new realities but turned more systematically to economic development in the late 1950s.

With no roots in island society, and under American pressure not to re- peat their record on the mainland, the Nationalists eventually put through sweeping agrarian reforms that had been beyond their capacities on the mainland. Inheriting a huge cache of confiscated Japanese properties, the government implemented a highly centralized plan of industrialization and development across the island under advisement from American experts. Some 40 percent of all capital formation on the island derived from U.S. aid and contributions of material goods. Rapid economic growth ensued based on export- oriented small local businesses and educational progress.25 Under such conditions the Nationalist government maintained its policies of ac- tively encouraging study overseas as a crucial strategy to acquire more tech- nical and economic expertise. From the relatively undeveloped base of Tai- wan, study abroad also served to funnel intellectuals into meaningful pursuits until the island’s economy advanced enough to provide appropri- ate employment. In 1971 a Ministry of Education officer explained: “The Kuomintang rule could not contain such potential intellectual elements, particularly those dissident ones, in this small island, not only socially and economically but also militarily and politically.”26 Until Taiwan’s economy could develop sufficient industrial and technical sophistication, unemploy- able college- educated workers were potentially more of a security threat than a resource and better sent away to gather more skills and training elsewhere.

As they had during the 1930s, the Nationalists imposed rigorous condi- tions on students seeking to study overseas, requiring political indoctrina- tion, demonstrated English- language abilities, proof of admission, and abil- ity to fund tuition and living costs. Starting in 1955 applicants had to pass

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

208  •  Chapter 8

screenings by the Security Bureau and extensive testing imposed by the Ministry of Education. The selection criteria included graduation from a four- year or junior college, completion of a year of military service for male students, and passage of tests held annually by the Ministry of Education, with automatic denial of visas in cases of failing the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exam. Students had to demonstrate either full scholarships from American institutions or evidence of possessing the US$3,000– 4,000 needed to cover tuition, room and board, and other ex- penses. According to Charles Kao, this screening process meant that “the Chinese government, paradoxically, has sent the cream of its college gradu- ates abroad. Precisely because of the high quality and good background, these students can easily adapt themselves to the new environment and con- sequently have less inclination to return.” Such circumstances led one fa- mous scholar to joke that the Nationalists should only send students who failed in the exams and keep those who passed.27 Building on older patterns of emphasizing sciences and engineering, students in the 1950s clustered in these fields, but as the areas of expertise most likely to provide scholarships and employment after graduation in the United States.

The Student Side Door into America

The impressive career of Chang- lin Tien (1935– 2002) illustrates the fierce de- termination and established methods that mainland Chinese deployed to gain entry to and settlement in America. His once affluent family had lived first in Wuhan and Shanghai but lost their fortune in the flight to Taiwan in 1949. Tien’s father died a broken man, leaving behind a family of twelve liv- ing in a one- room home. Tien worked his way through high school and studied at the prestigious National Taiwan University. He applied to 240 schools in the United States and received a full fellowship from the Univer- sity of Kentucky. Although he had to borrow money to fly to Seattle in 1956 and endured a seventy- two- hour bus ride to Louisville, Tien received his MA degree within one year and continued on to earn his doctorate in mechani- cal engineering at Princeton and become a professor at Berkeley— rising through the ranks to become full professor, department chair, vice chancel- lor of research, and eventually the first Asian American chancellor of a Uni- versity of California campus.28 His outstanding professional achievements exemplify the parameters of brain- drain immigration even as they mask the considerable obstacles he overcame as a refugee. His ability to transcend fam- ily poverty and displacement to study in the United States illustrates how international education pathways relocated from China to Taiwan and ex- panded so that many less talented students, both mainland and Taiwanese Chinese alike, could also immigrate by claiming student status.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  209

Jack Peng also used the student side door to resettle in the United States. Peng first entered the United States in 1949 as a teenage dependent accompa- nying his father, who worked for the United Nations. On turning eighteen, however, Peng lost his dependent status, whereupon he “realized that going to school was the only way to stay in America.” During the 1950s and early 1960s, he attended college and graduate school in electrical engineering and physics in order to maintain the right to remain in the United States, al- though quota restrictions prevented him from acquiring citizenship.29

In the quadruple biography Beyond the Narrow Gate, Leslie Chang traced the paths of her mother, Mary, and three of her classmates from Taiwan’s most elite girl’s high school, Beiyinu (Taipei First Girl’s School), class of 1955, who came to America to study, marry, have children, and make new lives. All four came from well- connected families and had parents and even grandparents who had studied in America. Of the four, however, only one, Margaret, followed the path of attending college, studying science, and coming to the United States for graduate school.30 The others arrived through less prestigious methods. Dolores arrived with her mother on a temporary visa as a dependent of a diplomatic representative but then was able to gain permanent residency status. Another classmate, Suzanne, had poor grades but transferred to a small Catholic school that her father, the minister of overseas Chinese affairs, arranged to have accredited. From there Suzanne won a scholarship to another Catholic school, this time in America (77– 78).31

Chang’s mother, Mary, was an orphan who arrived through a scholarship arranged by Archbishop Yu Bin, formerly of Nanjing, who had testified in support of repeal in 1943. Although a student at Beiyinu, she had poor grades and used family contacts to gain entry as a student. A great- aunt, the wife of a Nationalist general being held captive on the mainland, knew Yu Bin, who was stationed in New York, where he used his networks to arrange scholarships and admission to Catholic schools for Chinese to study in the United States. According to Chang, “On one of his trips to Taiwan, my mother and a younger cousin spent a day with his entourage, following him from function to function. By the end of the day, my mother had her schol- arship” (77). Mary received an associate’s degree from Marymount Junior College in Virginia in 1958, married another Chinese from Taiwan who worked in insurance, and had a successful career as a realtor in Hartford, Connecticut (81– 83). Lilly Levin was another indifferent student who came to America with the help of Yu Bin.32 Strikingly, none of Chang’s Beiyinu quartet admit agency in making the choices and taking the actions that led them to come to America. Arrangements were made, and they ended up in the land of opportunity almost as if by happenstance, tumbleweeds blown haphazardly across the Pacific and taking root in the United States. The routinized systems funneling such unmotivated migrants emerged out of

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

210  •  Chapter 8

long- standing traditions of cooperation between Chinese Nationalists and Americans on behalf of Chinese students.

Starting as early as 1947, Yu Bin facilitated the immigration of about four thousand students from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao through the 1960s. Chang interviewed Father Chan, the staff member chiefly responsible for student affairs. Chan not only arranged scholarships and admissions, he also greeted students when they arrived in San Francisco, helped send them to their various schools, taught them about American foods and slang, and organized summer employment in the Catskills. Decisions about where to send students depended on the availability of scholarships. Because Mary Chang requested help late, she ended up at a less desirable two- year institu- tion. Many other women studied nursing because such scholarships were more readily available. Yu Bin’s office worked with over three hundred Catholic colleges, including St. John’s, Fordham, and St. Francis in New York; Seton Hall in South Orange, New Jersey; the Manhattan Boy’s School; and St. Vincent Girls’ School (92– 95, 99).33

Government exchange programs also provided passage to America. For example, the U.S. Embassy created a Taiwan Youth Committee intended to supplement its economic and military programs by funding about nine hundred university youth to visit America each year, of whom 90 percent did not return. This situation created a quandary, for the pro- gram was intended to cultivate goodwill, but embassy staff worried that denial of visas might produce “antagonisms of varying degrees toward the United States.”34 The United States also made considerable investments in educational infrastructure in Taiwan, an estimated $55 million on school buildings and equipment and on instruction techniques. This invest- ment was considered fruitful because the Aid for International Develop- ment program helped 2,400 Chinese, most of whom were young students, teachers and professionals who came to hold “important positions.”35 As a well- known friend to the Nationalists, Representative Walter Judd was contacted by many Chinese in Taiwan and Hong Kong about scholar- ships at American universities and access to Economic and Cultural Affairs funds.36

Between 1950 and 1965 an annual average of about 2,000 students, many in the sciences and engineering, arrived as nonquota entries to the United States to attend institutions throughout the country.37 During the 1954– 55 academic year, there were 2,553 students, a number that had increased to 20,770 in 1982– 1983.38 High percentages of Taiwanese college graduates trav- eled abroad for graduate study, with a high of 47.8 percent in 1955 down to a low of 9.4 percent in 1975. Most of those arriving as students ended up remaining during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Between 1950 and 1969, 22,319 students left Taiwan to study but only 1,346 returned, or 6.5 percent.39 Accord- ing to U.S. government statistics of Chinese students arriving and leaving

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  211

between 1962 and 1969, 15,959 arrived and only 486 went back, for an ap- proximate overall return rate of just 3 percent (see table 8.1).40

Many of the Taiwanese students who had legally entered, studied, found jobs, and established families resided in the United States in a state of legal limbo until reforms in immigration laws in 1962. A succession of stopgap laws and procedural measures helped them extend their stays, although often through stays of deportation that provided only temporary permission to remain. Some of the stranded students, such as C. Y. Lee, were able to con- vert their status with the Displaced Persons Act of 1948 and its amendment in 1950 as already resident displaced persons. The next available option oc- curred with the McCarran- Walter Act (1952), which gave first preference to those applying for citizenship through their employers. Although the minis- cule annual quota produced a wait of about three decades, one- time mea- sures such as PL 85– 316 (1957) and PL 85– 700 (1958) responded to the launch- ing of Sputnik to help first- preference applicants to remain. The 1957 law enabled Chinese stymied by the oversubscribed quota to gain permanent residency through the attorney general’s power to adjust the statuses of a “limited number” of skilled aliens present on July 1, 1957, who possessed ap- proved first- preference petitions filed before September 11, 1957. PL 85– 700 continued to help first- preference immigrants by providing them with non- quota status if they possessed petitions approved by the attorney general before July 1, 1958.41 The Act of August 8, 1958, advanced a registry or amnesty provision for those who had entered prior to June 28, 1940.42 The necessity for such stopgap measures to admit highly qualified, educated, and techni- cally trained workers applied pressure for immigration reforms, as did the increasingly unmanageable increase in private bills sponsored by congres- sional representatives on behalf of thousands of deserving individual immi- grants.43 Finally, in October 1962, PL 87– 885, “An Act: To facilitate the entry of alien skilled specialists and certain relatives of United States citizens, and for other purposes,” opened the gates in granting nonquota entry for all those that had applied to regularize their status before January 1, 1962, as first- preference immigrants under the McCarran- Walter Act.44 Although barely noted elsewhere, this law pointed to major shifts toward economic priorities that would become permanent with the Hart- Celler Act of 1965.

These routes to citizenship privileged those with strategically useful skills. The chemical engineer Edward Huang recalled obtaining his citizen- ship status through an established back door in the late 1950s. The process involved getting his employer to send a letter to a particular official in the State Department describing Huang’s work as “vital to national security,” whereupon his application would be approved.45 C. C. Tien, a civil engineer and brother of Chang- lin Tien, planned to return to Taiwan when his tem- porary visa expired, although his employers wished him to remain. Ameri- ca’s competition with the Soviet Union facilitated his resettlement. “You

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Ta bl

e 8.

1. N

um be

r of

C ol

le ge

G ra

du at

es fr

om T

ai w

an G

oi ng

A br

oa d

fo r

St ud

y an

d R

et ur

ni ng

fr om

A br

oa d

in S

el ec

te d

Ye ar

s

Ye ar

19 51

19 55

19 60

19 65

19 70

19 75

19 80

19 85

19 88

N um

be r

of c

ol le

ge g

ra du

at es

1, 01

3 1,

59 1

4, 62

8 7,

11 8

16 ,9

59 24

,5 64

32 ,3

60 36

,8 85

40 ,2

05 N

um be

r go

in g

ab ro

ad to

st ud

y 34

0 76

0 64

3 2,

33 9

2, 05

6 2,

30 1

5, 93

3 5,

97 9

7, 12

2 N

um be

r re

tu rn

in g

17 34

47 12

0 40

7 56

9 64

0 1,

35 0

2, 29

6 Pe

rc en

t g oi

ng a

br oa

d 33

.6 47

.8 13

.9 32

.9 12

.1 9.

4 18

.3 16

.2 17

.7 Pe

rc en

t r et

ur ni

ng 5.

0 4.

5 7.

3 5.

1 19

.8 24

.7 10

.8 22

.6 32

.2

So ur

ce : S

un C

he n,

“I nv

es tm

en t i

n Ed

uc at

io n

an d

H um

an R

es ou

rc e

D ev

el op

m en

t i n

Po st

w ar

T ai

w an

,” in

C ul

tu ra

l C ha

ng e

in P

os tw

ar T

ai w

an , e

d. S

te va

n H

ar re

ll an

d H

ua ng

C

hu n-

ch ie

h (B

ou ld

er , C

O : W

es tv

ie w

P re

ss , 1

99 4)

, 1 03

. T he

fi gu

re s a

re fr

om M

in is

tr y

of

Ed uc

at io

n, E

du ca

tio na

l S ta

tis tic

s o f t

he R

ep ub

lic o

f C hi

na , 1

98 9.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  213

know what happened? Sputnik. The Russians shot Sputnik up into space, and Congress was panicking. They passed a bill called ‘First Preference.’ Any- one with an advanced degree in engineering or science could apply for per- manent residence.” The laws passed in 1957 and 1958 directly benefited skilled workers such as Tien, who was among the first to apply for this op- portunity with his company’s sponsorship.46 Others would have to wait for general legislation to account for their legal residency and employment in the United States, which did not confer permanent status. For example, Jack Peng had just passed his PhD orals in physics while attending the University of Georgia when Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Hart- Celler Act into law. Suddenly Peng’s life became much simpler, although he had managed to remain in the United States for over fifteen years with only temporary resi- dency rights.

President Johnson’s immigration act stipulated that if you have special skills, you could get a higher preference level. So the physics department head wrote a letter of recommendation for me, stating that I did have the special skills to qualify. Because of that, I could move up to first preference instead of fifth, as petition[ed] for by my brother, and earn my permanent residence, so that within five years, I could become a citizen.47

Peng’s pathway to citizenship reflects the shift toward prioritizing and facili- tating immigration by knowledge workers based on employment, principles of immigration selection that have since gained general acceptance as ratio- nal standards for entry and settlement in the United States. This dramatic shift came only after decades of constant and mounting pressure for immi- gration reforms that would discard the national origins quota system.

Opening the Gates

As described in chapter 7, the push for immigration reform had been a pro- tracted, deeply contested, and long- delayed process. As early as 1944 White House officials such as Immigration Commissioner Earl Harrison and his successor Ugo Carusi had called for greater attention to the “international implications” of immigration laws in pressing for reforms.48 By 1950 a coali- tion of Jews, Catholics, liberal Protestants, left- leaning Democrats, and eth- nic organizations were pressing for abolition of the national origins system in favor of one emphasizing individual merit, as argued in William S. Ber- nard’s American Immigration Policy: A Reappraisal (1950).49

These campaigns informed the significant reforms enacted through the Hart- Celler Act. Hart would continue to propose bills that aimed “to elimi- nate the provisions which discriminate against certain nationality and racial

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

214  •  Chapter 8

groups” and facilitate family reunification while increasing the overall im- migration quota by 100,000 to 250,000. Support was mounting for such measures— S.4030, for example, had the endorsement of twenty- five sena- tors and the backing of Senator James Eastland (D- MS), the powerful chair of the Judiciary Committee, which oversaw immigration legislation. Hart particularly emphasized his goal for “an immigration statute that will select the best immigrants without prejudice because of race or nationality.”50 Al- though S.3043 did not pass, Hart would try repeatedly with bills reiterating nearly the same terms.51

Disappointing immigration reformers, John F. Kennedy did not propose general immigration reform during the first two years of his presidency despite receiving from the Bureau of Security and Consular Affairs a pro- posal for immigration legislation with seven main provisions drawing on ideas and bills developed during the 1950s. The State Department’s agenda in May 1963 addressed a mixed bag of priorities and sought to improve ac- cess for groups facing inequitably small opportunities to legally immigrate while retaining overall caps on entry, prioritizing skilled workers, and ad- dressing foreign policy concerns for refugees. The proposal suggested mechanisms such as the redistribution of unused quota numbers to first- , second- , and third- preference applicants, which included employment con- siderations; broadening the definition of refugees to make more Asians ad- missible; the elimination of the Asian- Pacific Triangle; nonquota status for immigration within the Western Hemisphere; and the imposition of visa fees to help cover costs.52

Vice President Lyndon Johnson, in his capacity as president of the Senate, assessed for Kennedy the kinds of immigration reform that might pass in Congress in 1963. The legislature echoed many of Hart’s and the State De- partment’s priorities and supported replacing the outdated and meaning- less national origins system with a preference system that emphasized the skills of the immigrant and their relationship to American needs; family re- lationships between immigrants and relatives already here; and priority of registration. In particular, Johnson’s outline recommended that “especially skilled or trained workers” need not arrange for jobs before coming because this was inhibiting useful immigrants from applying for entry.53 Such terms would greatly improve immigration conditions for Chinese, considerations informed in part by lobbying from both Nationalist and Chinese American advocates.

As they had since the 1943 campaign for repeal, but with growing clout, Chinese American community leaders pressed for immigration reform. Lim P. Lee, a well- connected community leader and Democratic activist in San Francisco, corresponded regularly with the White House deputy press sec- retary, his fellow Californian Andrew Hatcher.54 Lee conveyed community criticisms of discriminatory immigration laws, such as the Asian- Pacific Tri-

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  215

angle, which led to the turning away at the border of the biracial Canadian writer Wayson Choy, an event decried in Chinese American newspapers.55

J. K. Choy, an assistant vice president of the San Francisco Federal Savings & Loan Association, wrote directly to Kennedy reminding him of promises made while he was a senator criticizing “the most blatant discrimination” of the McCarran- Walter Act and of proclamations made as president that “there is no place for second class citizenship in America.” Choy summa- rized the ongoing impact of the Chinese exclusion laws even after their re- peal and asked Kennedy to amend the laws so that dependents of Chinese who had entered fraudulently could regularize their status. Choy acknowl- edged that these paper son immigrants were not being deported to Com- munist China but still existed in an illegal limbo created by unreasonable laws. Choy’s demands echoed criticisms made by editor Dai- ming Lee through an early 1950s campaign waged in the Chinese World newspaper that publicized efforts by the PRC government to extort ransoms for relatives of Chinese Americans unable to immigrate to the United States. Lee called for the U.S. government to amend its laws that forced Chinese to enter illegally so that families could reunify and escape such vulnerability.56 Choy also urged increasing the Chinese immigration quota, abolishing the Asian- Pacific Triangle, and extending refugee relief programs.57

Chinese Americans proposed reforms that placed Asian immigration on a basis closer to that of Europeans, changes that the State Department con- fidently projected would not produce significant increases in their numbers even if the Asian- Pacific Triangle was abolished. The State Department had issued a “confidential inquiry” to “all diplomatic missions and certain key consular posts” asking for estimates of Asians living within their jurisdic- tion and numbers “likely to apply for immigrant visas.” This survey found that “the change would have a most favorable effect on our posture abroad,” but some missions warned that if the proposed changes were made public but then not enacted, a “potentially adverse effect” would result. The coun- tries of greatest concern were in the Western Hemisphere, for which there were no proposed immigration caps. Consular authorities estimated that Chinese visa applicants would be in the mere thousands— 5,842 in total— with Ecuador claiming 3, El Salvador 28, and Haiti 6.58 According to these projections, the laws could be amended to improve America’s image abroad without fear of being overrun by Chinese.

That greater numbers of scientifically and technically trained individuals would immigrate was a key element attracting restrictionist support for proposed immigration reforms. The American Legion backed the measure because numerical ceilings would limit immigration while preferences for professionals and scientists “well may add significantly to the wealth and power of the United States.” It correctly anticipated the influx of “scientific, technical, and professional migrants from less developed countries to the

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

216  •  Chapter 8

United States,” although it did not foresee the burgeoning of Asian immi- gration overall that would also result.59

Kennedy’s assassination left Lyndon Johnson in charge of the fight for immigration reform, an issue in which he had previously expressed so little interest that he had voted for the now decried McCarran- Walter Act. His landslide victory in 1964 and the death of Francis Walter in 1963 made 1965 seem a year in which many previously unattainable changes might become possible. Representative Michael Feighan (D- OH), who had so alarmed the Hong Kong consulate during his inspection tour of 1955, replaced Walter as lead defender of the immigration status quo. Johnson’s original proposal, drawing on Kennedy’s priorities, featured a preference system that set aside 50 percent of visas for skilled immigrants, 30 percent for family reunifica- tion, and 20 percent for refugees. Feighan pressed for greater emphasis on family reunification in order to maintain America’s racial and ethnic demo- graphic mix and insisted on numeric caps for immigration within the West- ern Hemisphere, a concession that he won but with the unanticipated con- sequence of producing the intractable problem of immigration without permission that the United States still struggles with today.60

With these priorities established, the Hart- Celler Act dismantled the dif- ferential quota system and implemented instead a series of preferences that scaled back Kennedy’s emphasis on economic considerations to allot 74 per- cent of visas for specified relatives of citizens and lawful permanent relatives and nonquota status for immediate relatives of citizens such as parents, spouses, and unmarried minor children. Occupational preferences dropped to third and sixth place from first with only 20 percent of quota slots, target- ing professionals and other workers who filled jobs “for which qualified U.S. workers were not available” in fields such as accounting and auditing, aeronautical engineering, architecture, chemical engineering, chemistry, civil engineering, dietetics, electrical engineering, electronic engineering, industrial engineering, mathematics, mechanical engineering, metallurgy and metallurgical engineering, nuclear engineering, nursing, pharmacy, physical therapy, and physics.61 Such applicants had to receive Department of Labor certification that they would not displace American workers. In- vestors and refugees received preferences as well.62 These measures ensured that the Asian brain drain could become a steady flow after 1965 and evolve into a primary component of the growing numbers of Asians now able to immigrate to the United States. The act also accomplished the final exor- cism of the paper son system of immigration fraud, for the twenty thousand annual allocation and nonquota immigration for immediate relatives ren- dered such illegality largely unnecessary for Chinese entry.63 At the same time, the burden of illegal entry shifted to U.S. neighbors to the north and south who faced for the first time quantified limits on entry into the United States policed by heightened measures for border control and surveillance

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  217

in a sundering of relations with those sharing land borders that has yet to find resolution. In contrast, Chinese and Asian immigration in general has not only increased but attained “model minority” standing largely through the preferences imbedded in the Hart- Celler Act of 1965.

Draining Asian Brains to America

As early as 1968 the British economist Brinley Thomas observed that changes in U.S. immigration laws dating to 1962 deliberately encouraged brain drain, particularly, although not intentionally, from Asia. He noted the rapid increase of professional immigrants from Asia, which stood at 24 per- cent of the total in 1963— a threefold increase over 1962 after the new law provided nonquota status for “alien scientists and engineers to achieve im- migrant status within a relatively short period of time.” In contrast, the in- flux of European scientists and engineers increased only 23 percent. Within one year Asian professionals had displayed “a remarkably high elasticity with respect to a moderate liberalizing of the restrictions” that made pre- dictable the surge in their immigration after 1965.64 Thomas’s analysis sum- marized how the lack of economic opportunity and desire for higher educa- tion and professional opportunity in Asia, combined with fluent pathways to study and find employment in the United States now culminating in ready access to permanent residency and citizenship, produced high levels of brain drain. International consternation, including criticism from the United Nations, greeted this alarming pattern of the loss of the most value- added human resources from developing nations to the most advanced economy in the world. Rather than returning and helping their homelands gain ground economically and politically, educated elites from the Third World were staying in the United States. Over the long term, however, key elements of this brain drain have cycled back to their homeland in a circula- tion of knowledge, networks, capital, and strategies that has distributed eco- nomic development and integration more widely than as an endgame of absolute losses and gains.

The first outcries against this form of American theft came from Western European countries like England alarmed at high numbers of doctors and engineers pursuing higher salaries and better work conditions in the United States. In 1963 the British minister of science noted the annual departure of 7 percent of people with PhD degrees in science to work in the United States, which he charged with operating “parasitically on other people’s brains.” Unlike the Asian brain drain, which consisted primarily of students who changed status after gaining advanced degrees and finding jobs in America, Europe’s was more costly because the knowledge workers had al- ready received graduate training before relocating.65 After U.S. laws dropped

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

218  •  Chapter 8

their racial restrictions, however, the number of educated Asians immigrat- ing increased dramatically, turning developing nations into the main sources of brain drain.

Since World War II the number of Asian students has increased steadily (see fig. A.2). In 1970 Chinese students (from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and other areas) numbered 19,231, Indians 11,327, Japanese 4,156, and Koreans 3,991, ac- counting for 30 percent of the foreign student total.66 Many Chinese chose scientific and technical careers as the most likely to bring fellowships and employment after graduation. In 1971 Charles Kao found that 82 percent of all Chinese receiving PhD degrees in the United States between 1955 and 1964 studied engineering and the sciences, commenting, “The preference for sciences and engineering among Chinese students come as no surprise. Greater demand and better rewards for such specialization at home and abroad provides the incentive and thereby accelerates the supply.”67 Students from Taiwan made strategic choices that facilitated their resettlement in America.

The U.S. government tracked the steadily increasing percentage of scien- tists, engineers, and physicians immigrating into the United States from de- veloping countries, primarily from Asia. In 1956 Asian percentages hit 32.9, increasing to 42.6 percent in 1963, and by 1967 had risen to 51.8 percent.68 Taiwan had the highest rates of brain drain if measured by student F visas converted to immigrant status at 86.1 percent, or 1,137 of 1,321. The average for all nations was 23.9 percent, or 3,648 of 15,272. India’s rate was next highest at 75.4 percent, or 1,074 of 1,425, and then Korea at 71.7 percent, or 193 of 269.69

James A. Perkins, president of Cornell University, estimated that between 1949 and 1961, 43,000 scientists and engineers had immigrated to the United States, many from less developed countries. During the 1964– 1965 fiscal year, some 11,000 out of 41,000 interns and residents in American hospitals had degrees from foreign medical schools, with 8,000 coming from developing nations. Perkins noted this serious situation in which “over 90 per cent of Asian students who arrive for training in the United States never return home.”70 Man Singh Das compiled statistics from 1967 that show the high numbers of Asian and particularly Taiwanese students converting to perma- nent status from F- 1 visas. Of the 9,957 such conversions, 81.1 percent, or 8,073, were from Asia and 26.4 percent, or 2,629, were from Taiwan.

Shu Yuan Chang’s survey of Chinese in the New York area in 1972 tracked the steady progression of Chinese immigrants into permanent residency. On arrival, 79 percent of survey participants entered with student visas, 8 percent came as immigrants, 6 percent as exchange scholars, 4 percent as visitors, and 3 percent as military or diplomatic personnel. By the time of the survey, however, only 47 percent were of solely Chinese nationality, 29 percent had gained U.S. permanent residency, 21 percent were naturalized U.S. citizens, and 3 percent were something else. In terms of occupation, 53

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  219

percent remained students, 45 percent were professionals, and 2 percent were other.71

These changes in the numbers and qualifications of Asian immigrants swiftly changed the demographic makeup of Asian communities in the United States. By 1969, immigrants entering under occupational preferences constituted 20.8 percent of those from Taiwan, 45 percent from India, 23.2 percent from South Korea, and 42.3 percent from the Philippines. By 1972, 86 percent of scientists and engineers and 80 percent of doctors immigrating came from less developed nations.72 Asian immigrants had become signifi- cant assets for the American economy, even as their improved ability to re- settle attracted vocal criticisms of U.S. immigration policy, albeit from the perspective of economic exploitation rather than racial discrimination.

Rationalizing Brain Drain: Neoliberalism and Global Labor Markets

International protests quickly identified these emerging migration patterns as deepening economic inequality around the world, a criticism that forced the United States to defend its new immigration policies. In 1966 the United Nations circulated a report calling for “drastic remedies  .  .  . by individual governments and international agencies to curb the flow of talent from the underdeveloped areas.”73 In response, Congress convened hearings. After much testimony, scholarly analysis, and scrupulous consideration, the U.S. government exculpated itself, concluding that brain- drain migration flows

Table 8.2. Temporary Nonimmigrants (H- 1, H- 3, J- 1, and F- 1) Who Changed to Immigrant Status, by Country or Region of Previous Residence, Fiscal Year 1967

Country Total H- 1 Visa H- 3 Visa J- 1 Visa F- 1 Visa

All countries 11,372 256 174 985 9,957 Total Europe 1,386 96 61 230 998

Total Asia 8,904 85 87 659 8,073 India 1,816 16 21 70 1,709

China (ROC) 2,743 13 23 78 2,629 Africa 254 7 2 23 222

North America 507 48 16 45 398 South America 171 5 4 17 145

Source: Man Singh Das, Brain Drain Controversy and International Students (Lucknow, India: Lucknow Publishing House, 1972), 64.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

220  •  Chapter 8

operated according to rational market forces rather than deliberate policy choices and that state entities should protect individual free choices rather than intervening in rational economic processes. Such neoliberal principles have become naturalized and remain primary assumptions of contempo- rary U.S. immigration laws.

The Senate’s Immigration and Naturalization subcommittee, under the leadership of Edward Kennedy (D- Massachusetts), met in 1967 to explore the contradiction between America’s diplomatic outreach through educa- tional and cultural exchanges and the impact of its recently changed im- migration law. In opening the Senate hearings, Kennedy, the late president’s brother and a key player in passage of the Hart- Celler Act, set out the key issues. Perceptions of a brain- drain crisis burdened America with “the brunt of growing criticism among countries of emigration” such as Europe and “the underdeveloped areas of the world,” which labeled “this migration . . . a major cause accentuating the gap between the rich and poor nations. It is viewed as a serious brake to progress in Asia and Africa and Latin America.” In matters of foreign policy, Kennedy warned that “brain drain” “is threaten- ing our relations with several governments, and the credibility of our na- tional objective to assist the economic, social, and political development of other nations through foreign aid and other channels” while undermining “our efforts to assist the developing countries through foreign aid, the Peace Corps, and other programs.” The loss of knowledge workers eroded Ameri- can efforts to build stronger ties with poorer nations by helping them de- velop economically. These contradictory outcomes presented complex ques- tions regarding whether and what kind of responsibility fell to the United States to redirect such migration flows, including whether there should be another change in U.S. immigration laws.

Alongside the damage to international relations, however, Kennedy also stressed core American ideals of freedom of choice to ask whether the United States should restrict “the freedom of movement and the right of an individual to choose his way of life in a manner which will develop his full potential for the benefit of all mankind.”74 In weighing the balance of a more equitable distribution of human resources around the world against advantaging the American economy, the Senate committee evoked the even- handed rationality of free- market forces to mask the U.S. government’s agency in privileging the entry and settlement of knowledge workers through the preferences legislated in 1965. The choice of legal “freedom of move- ment” was, and is, more available to those with certain levels of professional and educational credentials, and to those without, not at all.

Walter Adams, an economist at Michigan State University and adviser to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, took a leading role in defend- ing America’s responsibility for stimulating brain drains by testifying as an expert witness and editing the pioneering anthology, The Brain Drain. As

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  221

representative of the world’s greatest collector of knowledge workers, Adams questioned the outcries of crisis by critiquing the so- called national model, which linked the possibility for economic progress to the retention of human capital. Adams summarized the accusations: “brain drains” impeded the de- velopment of poorer nations whose “top- grade professional manpower,” often produced with “substantial doses of public investment,” were relocating to wealthier countries, thereby becoming “a ‘gift’ from one country to an- other—typically from a poor country which cannot afford it to a rich coun- try which does not need it.” The growing numbers of Filipino doctors and nurses going to the United States during and after the 1950s illustrated this type of loss. According to Adams, perhaps most critically, “the ‘nationalist’ model points to the conclusion that unfettered migration of brainpower today favors the most advanced and affluent nations,” producing calls to pro- tect developing nations by ensuring the return of their educated workers.75

Adams minimized the agency of the United States in this imbalanced migration by invoking the logic of free markets and calling on developing nations to foster their own economic development rather than for industri- alized countries to change their immigration laws. He identified the main problem as “the lack of absorptive capacity,” which produced poor employ- ment conditions in terms of salary, communities of comparably educated colleagues, and access to advanced research infrastructure, all of which de- terred the most highly trained workers from returning. The problem was not selective immigration policies but that developing nations had not yet reached the stage of economic development in which they could usefully, and competitively, employ the highly skilled workers choosing to remain in the United States. What need did a primarily agricultural economy such as that of Taiwan in 1960 have for a world- class nuclear scientist? Adams proposed that advanced economies could “provide effective aid to the un- derdeveloped world” by providing “development assistance” and help less developed countries to “participate in world economic growth through in- ternational trade.”76 Through capitalist development, which would further entwine their economies with that of the United States, poorer nations could advance enough to compete eventually in international markets so that educated elites would choose to return.

In Adams’s anthology, a single voice represented the “nationalist” perspec- tive. V. M. Dandekar placed blame squarely on the immigration and economic policies of advanced economies and supported restrictions requiring students to return to India to work. Dandekar criticized educated fellow nationals who found employment abroad but also the complicity of democratic govern- ments that facilitated their immigration through legal preferences. “It is the leading democracies which have the most stringent and discriminatory im- migration laws.” He described as “only specious” “the trade theory explanation of the Brain Drain [as] no more than a movement of factors in response to

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

222  •  Chapter 8

prices.” Advanced nations such as the United States built into their immigra- tion laws discriminations based on skills and educational credentials. If wealthy nations could choose primarily to admit and to grant permanent resi- dency to educated and economically useful elites, poorer nations should also implement measures to prevent their departure or to ensure their return.

Dandekar pointed out that high salary differentials between advanced and developing nations existed not only for skilled and trained scientists and technicians but for housemaids as well. Despite such compelling mar- ket inequalities, there was no substantial outmigration of Indian housemaids because American laws gave manual workers few options for immigration. Dandekar called for greater defensive measures by developing nations: “In a contact between the rich and the poor, there is no more danger, if ever there was, of the rich being robbed. There is greater danger now of the poor being robbed. He must therefore protect himself.”77

Offering perhaps the most balanced and far- reaching analysis in Adams’s anthology, the British economist Brinley Thomas affirmed Dandekar’s charge of government agency in the imbalanced flow of educated elites. Thomas described the mobility of educated knowledge workers as a migration flow new to the twentieth century, contrasting “the high proportion of interna- tional migrants who belong to the professional classes and the relative im- mobility of unskilled labor.” He attributed the emergence of this pattern to deliberate intent. “Governments now regulate immigration according to strictly national interests, and there is a premium on highly qualified man- power.” The modern world economy favored the most advanced nations already operating at the leading edge of scientific innovation, and “the in- ternational flow of these skills is heavily influenced by the rate of growth in the largest and richest sector, North America.” In the emerging landscape of professional and technical migration, “Human capital is highly mobile in- ternationally and is attracted to areas where real private productivity is highest. It constitutes a gift from the areas which incurred the costs of in- vestment and a return flow of benefits to the investors is not inherent in the process.” With such tight competition for educated manpower, “Immigra- tion policy has come to resemble tariff policy as a flexible instrument for maximizing national advantage.” Thomas pointed to the 1962 law as demon- strating these preferences and warned that through such immigration pref- erences, “United States growth policy . . . can inhibit the realization of other countries’ growth policies.”78 Looking back from the twenty- first century, the entwining of fiscal and immigration policy identified by Thomas has become commonplace, particularly in other countries of high immigration such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Such employment preferences, however, have not operated as detrimentally as initially feared for some de- veloping economies because they have produced in the longer term not

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  223

only the losses of brain drain but the more mutually beneficial phenome- non of knowledge exchange.

Adams concluded The Brain Drain anthology with “An Agenda for Ac- tion” that proposed eight solutions, seven of which required action by the governments losing knowledge workers, such as revising salary structures, increasing professional opportunities, and rationalizing manpower poli- cies. Only his final recommendation suggested that “pull countries” remove monopolistic restrictions.79 According to Adams’s interpretation of brain drain, the United States should continue with its existing policies of foreign aid and immigration preferences rather than enacting controls to channel educated workers to return home.

The actual trajectories of Taiwan and India, which experienced the high- est levels of brain drain during the 1960s, bear out Adams’s projections that on reaching a certain stage of development, their economies would become competitive in the recruitment of knowledge workers. Even in 1972 Man Singh Das argued that most students actually did return to their homelands, particularly those with government scholarships who had the most useful skills and experiences. “The ones who decided to settle down permanently in the United States were those who were privately supported and those who specialized in subject matter areas of little functional consequences to their transitional societies,” such as the humanities, social sciences, and highly spe- cialized subjects such as nuclear physics. Das found that most brain- drain knowledge workers were from China, India, South Korea, Philippines, Iran, and Pakistan, where “most of the good government jobs are filled  .  .  . and there are few places for the newer graduates. In some countries, indigenous universities already produce more highly qualified and technically trained people in some occupations than the national economies can absorb now or in the foreseeable future.” In light of their inability to find appropriate em- ployment at home, Das noted that most international students planned to obtain work experience and training abroad before returning, offering an additional bonus to their homelands after a delayed return.80 Taking his analysis a step beyond that of Adams, Das viewed brain drain not so much as a crisis of loss and inequality as a stage in knowledge circulation.

Returns from Brain Drain

In the longer term, Taiwan has borne out Das’s projection that knowledge circulation facilitates development by fostering capital investment and closer economic integration with the United States. More than other devel- oping nations and despite Chiang Kai- shek’s heavy military investments, Taiwan followed American guidelines for economic growth. In addition to

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

224  •  Chapter 8

sending a steady flow of college graduates for advanced studies, Taiwan re- ceived regular infusions of U.S. capital along with significant doses of eco- nomic and technological guidance in developing its economic infrastructure between 1950 and 1965. As projected by Adams, by the 1970s the Taiwanese economy had become sufficiently developed to woo back knowledge work- ers who, after years of working in the United States in some of the most technologically innovative research settings, had also gained sufficient expe- rience and networks to function as highly effective global entrepreneurs. This return migration contributed significantly to Taiwan’s emergence dur- ing the 1980s as a leading international manufacturer of computers and peripheral equipment in intimate cooperation with cutting- edge technolo- gies developed in California’s Silicon Valley.

This eventual success notwithstanding, Taiwan nonetheless experienced considerable anxiety for a couple of decades regarding its departed human resources. As early as 1955, even as the Bureau of Education implemented policies sending away the best and brightest of Taiwan’s college graduates, the Executive Yuan established the Guidance Committee for Students Edu- cated Abroad to facilitate the return and reintegration into Taiwan’s society and economy of liuxuesheng, or students who studied abroad.81 In 1969 the Guidance Committee issued A Report on the Specialists Needed by Govern- ment Agencies and Academic Bodies to be distributed overseas through Tai- wan’s embassies, consulates, cultural agencies, overseas Chinese organiza- tions, and the overseas edition of the Central Daily News to publicize the need for 1,344 “specialists in all fields” with detailed statistics concerning what kinds of expertise were needed by each kind of prospective employer. In the early 1970s the Nationalists offered incentives such as free return transportation, job placement, and occasionally free housing and cash sub- sidies. Despite such efforts, Charles Kao found in 1971 that Taiwan had many jobs for doctoral degree holders, but that rates of return remained less than 10 percent, belying Adams’s explanation that suitable jobs were lacking in economies suffering brain drain.82

Although in the early 1970s Taiwanese government officials and scholars could not yet know that knowledge circulation would turn toward Taiwan’s advantage, Kao’s study indicates that they nonetheless embraced the same neoliberal, market- driven analysis of their losses as did Adams in explaining American gains. He assessed motivations for knowledge workers to remain overseas as “gaining knowledge, gaining working ability, improving promo- tion opportunity, and improving social status.”83 All eight ethnic Chinese who have won Nobel Prizes in the sciences trained and worked in either the United States or England: Li Zhengdao, Yang Zhenning, Samuel C. C. Ting, Li Yuanze, Steven Chu, Daniel C. Tsui, Roger Y. Tsien, and Charles K. Kao.84 Arguably they could not have attained such levels of success without access to major research facilities and communities of fellow scientists, a reality of

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  225

scientific innovation that inspired thousands of less visible but ambitious Chinese scientists, engineers, and technicians who chose to work in the United States. Although not mentioned by Kao, concerns regarding politi- cal instability in both Chinas also shaped individual choices. Bearing in mind such factors, Kao’s solution for brain drain affirmed those of Adams regard- ing salaries, work conditions, and special incentives. Kao did not ask for changes in immigration laws and seemed to trust that market forces would indeed eventually generate more equitable returns, optimistically noting a slight increase in those returning in the early 1970s that grew in the succes- sive decades.85

Since the 1970s Taiwan’s dramatic transformation into one of the four Asian “tigers,” along with Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea, has pro- duced a triumphalist narrative that rewrites “brain drain” as “knowledge circulation” into a key national asset. In 1982 the scholar Wu Yuan- li boasted of Taiwan’s high returns from its “flow of human capital.” “In the short run, human capital outflow represents a waste of investment in human capital; in the long run, however, it accumulates and grows abroad into an asset upon which interest can be drawn. . . . In Taiwan this principal has become rather large, and in recent years Taiwan has started to collect interest and probably a small proportion of the capital.”86 If brain drain facilitated the migration of value- added human capital, knowledge circulation further en- riched the educated resource to the advantage of both sending and receiv- ing economies.

In 1994 Sun Chen, a professor of economics, former president of National Taiwan University, and the then minister of national defense, described brain drain as a particular advantage that complemented the stages of Taiwan’s economic development. As it assumed control of Taiwan, the Nationalist government invested few of its scant resources in higher education because there were so many highly educated immigrants from the mainland. The departure of college graduates for advanced studies abroad had limited im- pact because “of the availability of this highly educated group” during the 1950s.87 Higher- education facilities developed in tandem with advances in industrial infrastructure and other forms of “technology of the economy.” Eventually, capital- and technology- intensive industries become predomi- nant. In 1965, however, only 3 percent of employed persons had any higher education, so that Taiwanese in fact appreciated America’s generosity in providing educational opportunities that led to jobs and satisfactory homes for educated elites otherwise unemployable at home. By 1988, however, the proportion of educated workers had risen to 14.7 percent, of whom 55 per- cent had junior college degrees and 45 percent had university-or-higher- level education.88

The reversal of Taiwan’s brain- drain flow occurred even as the numbers immigrating to the United States increased. After concerted lobbying efforts

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

226  •  Chapter 8

and the normalization of United States relations with the PRC, Taiwan re- ceived its own immigration quota of 20,000 in 1981. Taiwanese immigration rose from under 2,000 in 1965 to 14,895 in 1985, with surges in years of cri- sis.89 Since 1987, political liberalization and economic growth have leveled off emigration from Taiwan.

During the 1980s more than 12,000 scholars and students returned from abroad with postgraduate degrees and considerable research and entrepre- neurial experience. According to Chen, they enhance “the number of those at the highest levels of the work force and have contributed a great deal to Taiwan’s rapid technological and economic development,” particularly in high- tech industries. Benefits to Taiwan accrued even from those who re- mained abroad as they “contributed significantly to the development of the home country . . . by offering professional advice, by providing access to the most advanced sciences and technology in the world, and by short return visits.” By the mid- 1990s, Chen proclaimed brain drain as a critical asset in Taiwan’s economic development: “The large number of students, scholars, and experts who have remained abroad form a potential supply of highly trained people that Taiwan can draw upon for its future development. They provide an advantage that few other developing countries possess.”90 Most visibly, Taiwan has benefited from the close ties to American high- tech in- dustries developed through these transnational technical entrepreneurs.

Taiwan’s brain exchange advantage has been most apparent in the infor- mation technology and manufacturing center based in the Hsinchu Science- Based Industrial Park, which in 1994 was home to 150 high- tech businesses that had generated nearly US$5 billion in sales in 1993. It pro- duced half the world’s supply in scanners, about 30 percent in network

Table 8.3. Number of Immigrants from Taiwan Entering the United States, by Decade, 1950– 2000

Decade Taiwanese Immigrants to United States 1950– 1960 7,373 1961– 1970 26,873 1971– 1980 86,109 1981– 1990 147,511 1991– 2000 123,173

Source: Lung Wen- pin and Huang Guo- nan. Taiwan ji liang’an sandi huaren renkou tuigu fangfa— lilun goujian yu shizheng tantao (yi Meiguo wei lie) [Methods for estimat- ing the population of Chinese from Taiwan, PRC, and Hong Kong using the Ameri- can example— discussion of theoretical structures and evidence] (Taipei: Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, 2002), 25.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  227

cards, and 10 percent of the personal computer market. Almost half of these companies had been started by Taiwanese engineers returned from the United States.91 For example, David Lee (Sen Lin) was born in Beijing in 1937 but fled to Taiwan in 1949 with his family. The Lees migrated to Argentina in 1952 and eventually learned Spanish. The family opened a successful Chi- nese restaurant and then moved into the import- export business. Lee’s fa- ther wanted him to study engineering in the United States, and in 1956 Lee enrolled in Montana State University in Bozeman. He worked his way through college and received his BS degree in mechanical engineering in 1960, then an MA degree from North Dakota State University. After work- ing for established American firms, in 1969 Lee branched out to become one of the earliest successful Taiwanese Chinese entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley by developing computer peripherals such as the first daisywheel printer. Lee started a series of businesses and was bought out repeatedly by larger corporations such as Xerox, Qume, and ITT. Qume became the largest manufacturer of printers and floppy drives in the United States. Part of Lee’s success stemmed from his use of cheaper Taiwanese manufacturers such as Acer and Mitac, which in turn helped Taiwan become a major exporter of PCs and computer peripherals.92

During the 1990s Taiwan extended its strategy of providing competitively priced manufacturing facilities and labor for global IT industry markets by expanding to the Chinese mainland, which had liberalized economically under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership across the 1980s. In 2002 Taiwanese inves- tors controlled two- thirds of China’s IT output.93 The growth in Taiwan’s economy has been dramatic, with per capita income growing from US$200 per year in the 1950s to $12,465 in 2003.94 In 2006 Taiwan’s per capita GDP stood at $27,500, thirty- fifth in the world. In 2007 it gained further to reach $29,500, or thirty- third. In that year Taiwan’s GDP was $375.6 billion, or twenty- third. Taiwan’s economic development is notable for its close integra- tion between cutting- edge research in the United States and lower- cost man- ufacturing facilities in Taiwan. The human resources once regarded as Tai- wan’s losses have turned into mobile knowledge workers and entrepreneurial bridges that have provided uncommon economic advantages in enabling Taiwan to build closer and mutually beneficial ties with the United States.

Exile in America

The students from Taiwan who became such instrumental knowledge work- ers and entrepreneurs experienced a relatively easier entry into American suburban, middle- class life compared to other minority groups and even American- born Chinese. By the 1960s statistical and anecdotal evidence cele- brated the many Chinese entering professional and white- collar employment

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

228  •  Chapter 8

and middle- class neighborhoods. The commissioning of I. M. Pei to design the Kennedy Library in 1964 was one such key landmark (see fig. 8.2). Many of the most visibly successful were immigrants who entered American soci- ety already bearing significant levels of education and skills. The reposition- ing of Chinese as model immigrants and their high levels of attainment gained them greater entry and acceptance in the United States; such attain- ments, however, did not assuage the sense of exile and dislocation on the part of those who were nonetheless refugees and whose repeated reloca- tions as the consequence of over a decade of war and invasion tainted their settlement in America with uncertainty and nostalgic longings for their lost homeland.

In the late 1960s Chia- ling Kuo found that American- born and Taiwanese Chinese living on Long Island experienced discrimination in significantly different ways, with the latter claiming never to have encountered racism whereas the former appeared scarred by “the effect of discriminatory prac- tices against their parents or themselves during their childhood.”95 The Cold

Figure 8.2. I. M. Pei supervising construction of the John F. Kennedy Library during the 1970s. Pei had won the commission after charming Jaqueline Ken- nedy, who personally insisted on his hiring. Courtesy of John F. Kennedy Presi- dential Library and Museum.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  229

War had changed the parameters of acceptable discrimination against Chi- nese, who, for the purposes of cultivating American support abroad, had to be seen as enjoying equal opportunities in the United States. According to Christina Klein, “Questions of racism thus served to link the domestic Amer- ican sphere with the sphere of foreign relations, proving their inseparability: how Americans dealt with the problem of race relations at home had a direct impact on their success in dealing with the decolonizing world abroad.”96 In a number of arenas, past practices of discrimination against Asians became untenable in light of how America might be viewed abroad in the 1950s.

The residential discrimination case of Sing Sheng reflects these changes. A former captain in the Nationalist Air Force, Sing Sheng married an American- born, ethnic Chinese woman, came to study in America, then decided to remain. In 1952 the couple attempted to buy a house in an all- white suburb in South San Francisco called Southwood. Their legal right to break the residential color barrier had been established with the Supreme Court case Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, which invalidated racially restrictive housing covenants. Judicial proclamations did not, however, prevent their prospective new neighbors from bitterly protesting in the name of protect- ing their property values from racial “blockbusters” like the Shengs. To their surprise, these economic rationales became a national controversy, with Sing Sheng drawing parallels between his quest for a home and the interna- tional “fight with communism.” According to Charlotte Brooks, “numerous observers commented on Southwood as if it were as much a foreign policy issue as a matter of civil rights. A Life magazine editorial argued that, after Southwood, ‘in Asia they will . . . be asking whether American democracy is still worth betting on.’ ” In the end the Shengs decided to forgo the South San Francisco house and moved instead to Menlo Park, another uninte- grated neighborhood but one that provided a warm welcome.97 As friendly “foreigners” whose experiences of American democracy bore the weight of U.S. foreign relations aspirations in the western Pacific, Taiwanese Chinese encountered much more receptive conditions as they established new lives.

Despite such pressures to demonstrate egalitarian treatment of Chinese, the sociologist Peter Li observed that perceptions of growing numbers of professional Chinese were misleading and resulted instead from “the growth of a second generation of Chinese in recent years [and] the changing immi- gration policy which place a heavy emphasis on professional credentials as a qualification for immigration.” Li stressed that the rising standard of Chinese Americans’ socioeconomic standing was attributable more to immigration selection rather than the opportunities of American democracy. Li credited “selective recruitment by legislative control” for professionally credentialed Chinese immigrants, rather than upward mobility on the part of “the ear- lier immigrant cohorts of Chinese,” for this change.98 Rather than fostering opportunities for the multiple generations of Chinese American lodged in

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

230  •  Chapter 8

laundry and restaurant work, starting in the 1950s the United States had sim- ply begun importing high- achieving scientists and engineers from overseas.

This patina of success masked the considerable personal difficulties expe- rienced by many Taiwanese knowledge workers. Chinese students shoul- dered great responsibilities to their families to pay back the investment in their education by earning status and wealth as well as carving out a toe- hold to make possible the migrations of other family members, as described by the anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh. “They are expected to return the investment by such means as earning face- giving degrees; sending remit- tances to cover living expenses, younger brothers’ schooling and so forth; making connections that can be exploited by other family members; and eventually perhaps helping younger siblings move to the city.”99 Such pres- sures increased the stakes of their presence in the United States, for if they did not succeed in school, work, marriage, and gaining legal status, they failed their families as well. With such pressures, most felt no choice but to com- plete graduate degree programs, enter white- collar or professional employ- ment, marry and start families, and send their children to college.

Leslie Chang describes the personal and familial dysfunction of her mother and her three Beiyinu classmates. Although all attained the markers of socioeconomic success listed above, each experienced lives of discontent and discord, drawing on material but not spiritual groundings in America. Chang wrote her book in an attempt to understand her neglectful mother, whom she capsulizes as “the pragmatist, the assimilationist, able to move from world to world without ever belonging to any particular one.” Delving into family history and exploring the consequences of her mother having lived in thirteen different cities and towns by the age of twenty- one, losing both parents, and becoming dependent on an abusive and manipulative uncle, Chang finds a way to forgive her mother and her generation’s lack of introspection and preoccupation with material comforts by focusing on her disrupted life.

Self- reflection was too painful. The women did not want to think. History was tragic. It had ended their childhood, killed their parents, driven them from their homes. Culture was useless. It had not given them rice when they were starving or found them a place to sleep when they were homeless. Success meant washing machines and air conditioning, college education for the children, and well- paying jobs. My mother and her friends had been too busy surviving life to pon- der its mysteries.100

Such survivalist imperatives had produced varying degrees of quantifiable attainment in America: university degrees, suburban homes, educated chil- dren, and white- collar or professional jobs that nonetheless did not replace the losses and displacements they had sustained. Material prosperity and

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  231

security could not dislodge the shadow of their irredeemable pasts. Despite the relative comfort of their American lives, the student immigrants had found their way to the Land of Opportunity through circumstances of com- promised choices and considerable desperation.

Bai Xianyong’s short story “Winter Night” depicts the psychic anguish of a successful Chinese professor teaching at UC Berkeley whose professional attainments and high status mask his existential turmoil. Wu Zhuguo has returned to Taiwan and pays a visit to his classmate and fellow former May Fourth protester, Professor Yu Qinlei, in his Taipei home. They reminisce about their history as youthful political activists, fervently demonstrating against Japanese aggression and calling for China’s modernization. Memo- ries of past idealism lead Yu, once half of “China’s Romeo and Juliet of the day” couple, to admit the disappointments of his current life— his failure to publish, the limits of his teaching, the crass materialism of his mahjong- obsessed second wife, and his admiration for Wu’s successes abroad, which have vindicated the blighted careers of Yu and other classmates trapped in Taiwan. Wu responds with intense regret that despite his international stat- ure and speaking engagements, he regards himself as “a deserter abroad for so many years.” Of late he has been particularly troubled. He attended a talk delivered by a young graduate student who criticized the May Fourth activ- ists for having had little impact and as being “lost” in “spiritual exile . . . tak- ing refuge in their isolation.” Wu confesses he did not respond, for “On such an occasion how could my own pride permit me to stand up and speak for the May Fourth Movement?” and admitted his unwillingness to talk about the history of his own generation from a sense of complete failure. He also describes his many books as “empty talk,” undertaken for no more reason than “to satisfy the requirements of the American universities. . . . If I didn’t have to publish, I wouldn’t have written a single one of them.” Yu confesses in turn that for years he has longed to shed his Taiwanese poverty by gaining a fellowship to go to the United States. Although he knows that as a Chinese he will not be allowed to teach his specialization, Byron’s poetry, he is will- ing to make the sacrifice and become a language teacher in order to afford better educational chances for his two sons. The two friends part, neither satisfied with his own existence and each longing for the purposeful life he thinks the other inhabits.101 The irreconcilability of the men’s aspirations, the impossibility for them to find both material and spiritual fulfillment while in exile from a China they could not save, in lives divided between Taiwan and the United States, leave them in tormented limbo.

Whether they came as refugees or students or immigrants, and regardless of their psychic discontent, these waves of post– World War II immigrants constituted a new class of Chinese Americans, “the uptown Chinese,” in the coinage of Peter Kwong.102 Associated with America’s ally, the National- ists on Taiwan, and originating from higher classes socio- economically and

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

232  •  Chapter 8

educationally, these immigrants outperformed the largely working- class Chinese who had borne the brunt of American discrimination during the exclusion era. Chia- ling Kuo observed:

It seems that although the majority of the American- born Chinese are engineers by profession, the rest of the members hold less prestigious jobs, including post office clerks, small business proprietors, salesmen, elementary school teachers, etc. But most of the [Chinese immigrants] are engaged in prestigious professions other than engineering, such as university teaching, medical research or practice, or management in big corporations. Thus, the stranded- Chinese as a group are more successful in their professions than are the American- born. All of them have received the master’s degree and many hold the Ph.D. degree. A small num- ber of them occupy top- ranking teaching, executive, managerial, or research posi- tions in American firms, corporations, banks, and universities.103

Both groups of Chinese had benefited from the diminishing of open dis- crimination and legislation regarding residence, employment, and educa- tional access. The American- born Chinese, however, who reflect more clearly the ascent of racial minorities overcoming discrimination to leave behind the marginalized working classes to become middle class, did not succeed to the same striking degree as their Chinese immigrant counter- parts. The latter not only attained middle- class status but showed up in in- creasing numbers in high- status occupations, such as teaching in elite uni- versities and colleges, besides working as engineers, architects, and scientists.104 Based on such examples, Chinese clearly had broken through to the inner circles of socioeconomic attainment in the United States. Much of their success, however, rested on the cultural and economic capital that they brought with them as immigrants screened by their educational capital and employment potential for entry.

The importation of educated elites also obscured the reworking of ste- reotypes of Asians, who became associated with middle- class attainments and integration into fields such as the sciences and engineering but were seen as lacking in leadership or creativity. The oddly invisible influence of Yi- fu Tuan reflects the simultaneous opening and obscuring of attainment available to Asian Americans. Tuan is highly celebrated within his disci- pline of geography, with the historian Simon Schama describing him as “one of the most remarkable and creative forces in the intellectual life of our time” but also as “the most influential scholar you’ve never heard of.” Tuan attributes his lack of visibility to his ethnicity with the complaint that because he does not operate in “an accepted field, ethnic studies or physics,” as a Chinese American he has not received greater public acclaim.105 His capacity to transcend his racial attribution is striking, however, and reflects the opening of opportunities for ethnic Asians after World War II. Tuan’s

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  233

simultaneous accomplishment and disappearance seem to suggest the pos- sibility for a postracial realm of ideas in which he could speak for human beings as a species in ways that rendered irrelevant race, gender, class, and a host of other modes of categorization. To be sure, while professionally ac- tive, Tuan emphasized his kaleidoscopic and eloquent ponderings of the general human condition while shrouding his marginality as a gay, Chris- tian, ethnic Chinese.106 Tuan attained great intellectual influence but at the cost of a kind of invisibility that reflects the new levels of attainment that became available to Asian Americans even as it suggests the necessity of certain kinds of conformity.

The broadening of Chinese access to previously restricted employments and neighborhoods also contributed to greater visibility through increas- ing numbers. The dismantling of Asian exclusion and the possibility of en- tering as nonquota students and refugees produced rising rates of popula- tion growth after World War II. In 1930 the Chinese American population had stood at 74,954, an increase of 21.6 percent over a decade earlier. The Great Depression sharply curtailed immigration over the next decade to increase by only 3.4 percent, with a population in 1940 of 77,504. Despite World War II, however, over the ensuing decade the Chinese American pop- ulation grew by 51.8 percent to reach 117,629 in 1950. The very low national origins quota of the repeal in 1943 and the McCarran- Walter Act in 1952 did not prevent this population from doubling over the 1950s to reach 237,292, an increase of 101.7 percent by 1960. Most Chinese during this decade im- migrated through nonquota statuses such as family reunification and as refugees.107 Notably, the Chinese American population was already growing at geometric rates before passage of the Hart- Celler Act, the law most com- monly credited with the dramatic increase in the number and proportion of skilled Asian immigrants. Decades before 1965, the United States had been working through principles of immigration selection that have be- come our common- sense priorities for border controls.

Although they chose different paths in the 1950s, with Yang Zhenning staying in the United States and Qian Xuesen returning to China, at the onset of the twenty- first century the two were both back in China. Yang was among the first Americans to visit the PRC in 1971 as relations began thawing. He actively facilitated student and scientific exchanges with the United States, as did Li Zhengdao, and moved back to China perma- nently in 1998 upon retiring from SUNY– Stony Brook to assume a posi- tion at Tsinghua University. Yang is perhaps the most visible example of a brain- drain intellectual recruited back to his ancestral homeland. Li Yuanze, Charles Kao, and Daniel C. Tsui are other Nobel Prize– winning scientists who also returned to work in Asia. Of the remaining four ethnic Chinese scientists to have attained this honor, three hold official affiliations

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

234  •  Chapter 8

with academic institutions in China, Taiwan, or Hong Kong.108 In 1979 Li Zhengdao returned to China as a celebrated patriot, where he met again with Wu Ningkun after a twenty- eight- year separation.109 I. M. Pei designed the Bank of China building that opened in Hong Kong in 1990. Yi- fu Tuan has also visited China, in 2005 after an absence of sixty- four years, as an academic star returned from abroad.110 Notable examples of American- educated Chinese who returned to positions of great influence include two of the three democratically elected presidents of Taiwan and a majority of its cabinet ministers, along with thousands of well- connected, entrepreneurial engineers.

AnnaLe Saxenian has labeled such cosmopolitan operators “the new Ar- gonauts” because they “are undermining the old pattern of one- way flows of technology and capital from the core to the periphery, creating far more complex and decentralized two- way flows of skill, capital, and technology.” At the dawn of the twenty- first century, they operate at the cutting edge of international economic developments and collaborations because “they transfer first- hand knowledge of these financial [venture capital] institu- tions to the periphery” while disseminating and institutionalizing techno- logical advances. Such individuals are often economic and technological vanguards in their homelands with transformative potential. “They form technical communities with the potential to jump- start local entrepreneur- ship, and the most successful returnees build alliances with technical pro- fessionals, businesses, and policymakers in their home countries.” Taiwan during the 1970s and 1980s serves as an exemplary model for these transfor- mations in the global economy. Taiwanese engineer- entrepreneurs started returning from Silicon Valley to pioneer “the model of early- stage high- risk investing” based on their capacities as “native- born investors [who] brought cultural and linguistic know- how as well as the capital needed to operate profitably in these markets. They also brought technical and operating ex- perience, knowledge of new business models, and networks of contacts in the United States.” Moreover, they function as “dynamic collaborators” who develop “incremental but cumulatively significant improvements in pro- cesses and products that now provide a distinctive competitive advantage” in niche markets that complement but do not compete directly with indus- try leaders in Silicon Valley.111 New Argonauts not only integrate economic functions between core and peripheral economies by providing the near instantaneous linkages between cheaper manufacturing and labor costs in the latter to the most recent technological innovations in the former, they also enable research and development capacities in the periphery that pro- pel two- way flows of technological innovation, which promotes diversifica- tion through the proliferation of small and medium- size businesses.

The economist Paul Collier notes additional benefits, such as the dis- semination of “political and social attitudes that they have assimilated from

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

Symbiotic Brain Drains  •  235

their classmates.” The capacity for political dissidents to organize while in America and then return significantly fueled Taiwan’s political liberaliza- tion in the late 1980s. Generally, “their skills raise the productivity of the unskilled majority, and their attitudes accelerate democratization.”112 The success and global reach of Taiwan’s bounding IT economic sector relied in no small part on the education and technical skills brought back by re- turned knowledge workers who imported as well business networks and experience, democratic values, and the financial expertise that jumpstarted this industry.

Despite the many criticisms of its first two decades, brain drain func- tioned as knowledge exchange, an early stage in the circulation of educated and influential leadership individuals whose migrations between China and America are privileged and facilitated. From the exemptions for Chi- nese students in the exclusion laws through the fostering of international education programs and the expansion of cultural exchanges during and after World War II, the perceived usefulness of educated Chinese leveraged greater access, resources, opportunities, and legal accommodations for con- tinued rights of entry and, by the 1950s, permanent resettlement. The strate- gic value of this class of Chinese, particularly scientists and engineers dur- ing the throes of the Space Race, helped to press the cause of immigration reform and abolishing of the discriminatory national origins system. As will be discussed in the concluding chapter, the selective processes encour- aging migration of educated elites also laid the foundations of the so- called model minority so celebrated in the first decades of the twenty- first century and now normative values for the privileging of knowledge workers that mask new forms of racial inequalities.

This content downloaded from 129.210.6.137 on Fri, 19 Apr 2019 18:55:32 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms