What does the term "Asian American" describe? Describe how Chinese Americans first came to America. What kinds of discrimination did they face? When did Japanese Americans enter the United States? What kinds of discrimination did they face?

What is the status of Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans today?

An ideal response will:
1. Identify the term "Asian American" as a description of approximately 10 million people from many different countries and ethnic backgrounds.
2. Describe how the Chinese, often young men, were the first to come to the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and how they moved to the American West to work in mines, on railroads, and on farms.
3. Discuss the anti-Chinese sentiment that grew after their arrival, resulting in attacks on Chinatowns and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 that restricted Chinese immigration and excluded Chinese already in America from citizenship.
4. Describe how Japanese Americans migrated first to Hawaii and then to California in the mid-1800s.
5. Identify that Japanese Americans in the early 1900s were excluded from owning land and becoming citizens, and their children were excluded from school, and describe how during World War II many of them were sent to internment camps and lost their businesses and property.
6. Detail the status of both groups today: the Chinese have moved into mainstream U.S. society and are beginning to run for local political offices, while discrimination against the Japanese persisted long after World War II, and only in 1988 did the U.S. government sign a law providing restitution to the World War II internees.