The Immigrant Experience in America and How Political Policy Has Impacted It

With immigration reform stalled in Congress, and policy on the minds of many, the immigrant experience is often overlooked. American University Professor Angie Chuang has an interesting take on the immigrant experience in America and how it has changed over the past 50 years. As government and social policy towards immigration has changed, there has been an emphasis on accepting immigrants from different parts of the world for different reasons. Politicians in the Cold War felt immigrants were needed for a perceived engineering gap, then they felt immigrants were needed for an unskilled labor shortage, and now the political climate believes that the information technology industry needs skilled immigration, says Chuang, which makes for a 180 degree turn in policy.

In Professor Chuang’s forthcoming book, The Four Words for Home, she looks at the immigrant experience in America through two families: her own Taiwanese family that immigrated to America in the 1960s, and an Afghan family that began to immigrate slowly over the next several decades. Her research into the subject has given her unique insight into immigrant assimilation and history. She has found that as the environment on Capitol Hill changes, the immigrants settling in America change too.

WHO: American University Professor Angie Chuang

WHAT: Professor Chuang is an expert on the immigrant experience in America and is the author of a forthcoming book on the subject that explores her Taiwanese family’s journey and contrasts it with an Afghan family’s on-going immigrant story. WHEN: October 24 and on-going

WHERE: In-Studio, via Skype, via telephone, or at American University

CONTACT: American University Communications at 202-885-5935 or [email protected]

Angie Chuang is a professor of Journalism. Her research and teaching focuses on race and identity issues in the news media. She joined the American University in 2007 after a thirteen-year career in newspaper journalism, as a staff writer at The Oregonian, The Hartford Courant, and the Los Angeles Times.

Prof. Chuang's forthcoming book, The Four Words for Home, was the Willow Books Literature Awards Grand Prize Winner in Prose. It will be published by Willow Books in early Spring 2014.