Publication Date
2-10-2023
Abstract
The perpetual foreigner stereotype is the misconception that people of Asian descent are inescapably foreign and never truly “American.” This stereotype has plagued Asian Americans since the first Asian immigrants arrived in America and it continues to negatively impact Asian Americans today, regardless of the years, or even generations, that they have lived in the United States. This Comment first breaks down the perpetual foreigner stereotype into three “pillars”: First, Asian Americans, despite their best efforts to assimilate, are irreducibly foreign and therefore are unentitled to the rights and protections guaranteed to American citizens. Second, because they are unentitled to the rights of American citizens, Asian Americans can be refused American citizenship or removed from America altogether. Finally, because Asian Americans are irreducibly foreign and “un-American,” they are ultimately more loyal to their foreign “country of origin” and are very likely to become enemies of the state. Next, this Comment examines how the American legal system created, enforced, and perpetuated the pillars of the perpetual foreigner stereotype through a series of exclusionary statutes and racially discriminatory legal decisions. This legal history includes the anti-immigration and anti-labor policies of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Alien Land Act, case law prohibiting Asian Americans from becoming citizens, and Supreme Court decisions that upheld the incarceration of over 125,000 Japanese Americans. Finally, this Comment explains that the pillars of the perpetual foreigner stereotype remain pervasive in society today. The catastrophic rise in Asian American hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates that many people continue to view Asian Americans as perpetual outsiders who threaten the “American way of life.” To overcome its misplaced fear of this “Newest ‘Yellow Peril,’” American society must dismantle the pillars of the perpetual foreigner stereotype by undergoing substantial political, societal, and legal change.
First Page
305
Recommended Citation
Adam Minoru Yasui Estacio, The "Newest 'Yellow Peril'": How American Legal History Shaped the Rise in Asian American Hate Crimes in the COVID-19 Pandemic, 100 DENV. L. REV. 305 (2022).