Research Highlights Podcast
March 11, 2026
A short history of Asian immigration
Hannah Postel discusses the evolution of Asian immigration to the United States.
President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act.
Source: LBJ Library photo by Yoichi Okamoto, restored by Bammesk
Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States and are on track to become the largest immigrant group by 2050. Yet, researchers have devoted much less attention to this population than to other immigrant groups.
In a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, author Hannah M. Postel helps to fill that gap. She traces Asian immigration to the United States across three policy eras—1882–1943, 1943–1965, 1965–present—and explores how they affected the characteristics of those admitted, where they settled, and what work they were allowed to do.
Postel recently spoke with Tyler Smith about the origins of the US federal immigration system, the history of Asian immigration, and how current policy might shape immigration going forward.
The edited highlights of that conversation are below, and the full interview can be heard using the podcast player.
Tyler Smith: Why do you think Asian immigration to the United States isn't getting enough attention from researchers? And what drew you to try to fill that gap?
Hannah Postel: Throughout history, there has been a kind of secondary exclusion of Asian immigrants—not just from entry to the United States, but from studies of immigrant assimilation and immigrant trajectories over time. This dates back to the most seminal studies of immigrants in the US in the early twentieth century. Traditionally, Asian immigrants have been considered marginal to studies of immigration and nativism. I think this is partly because numbers of Asian immigrants remained relatively small and they were geographically concentrated outside the places where most of these seminal studies were done. Most Asian immigrants lived on the West Coast, particularly California, while most of the studies were conducted in places like Chicago, New York, and Boston. So, there was not much overlap between where people were thinking about these issues and where Asian immigration was high. Having left this group out early on has had some path dependence in terms of how we think about which groups are important to study now.
I was really drawn to filling this gap because I have studied Chinese immigration in particular across time and space—including in modern-day Africa. I have been struck by how similar anti-Chinese rhetoric has been both across the globe and across time. You could almost cut and paste what was being said about Chinese immigrants in the 1880s in California and in 2015 in Zambia. I also learned more about how the entire US immigration system was formed with the goal of keeping out Chinese people. Our federal immigration system did not exist before we decided we wanted to exclude Chinese immigrants. Everything we think of as inherent to an immigration system—visas, passports, photographs in your passport—was developed to keep Chinese immigrants out of the US. I have learned so much from the historical literature on this topic, and I am trying to bring more systematic and quantitative evidence to bear on groups that have been underrepresented.
Smith: You break up Asian immigration to the United States into three historical periods: an exclusion era, a restriction era, and a growth and diversification era. First, what was the time period of the exclusion era and how would you characterize it?
Postel: The exclusion era officially started in 1875 with the first-ever federal immigration policy, the Page Act, which was essentially designed to keep out prospective female Chinese immigrants. It deepened with the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, followed by a series of policies designed to plug gaps and increase enforcement of those early exclusion attempts. I would say this period continues until the 1940s. What really characterizes this period is explicit bans based on race and national origin. Asian immigrants were sequentially singled out for almost categorical bans on entry and ineligibility for citizenship—first Chinese immigrants in the 1880s, then Japanese immigrants in the early 1900s, followed by the Asiatic Barred Zone, which barred everyone from that geographic area in 1917. There were not only entry restrictions but also many court cases that constrained Asian access to citizenship and upheld the right to categorically remove people from the country.
Smith: These exclusions start with the Chinese and ramp up to cover other groups. But then things start to change. When do these exclusions begin to relax, and why?
Postel: This was mostly tied to World War II and US diplomatic engagement overseas. In the 1940s we started to see a slight softening of the exclusion laws—though I would say this was more of a legal or official shift than a functional one, especially in terms of the numbers of people actually entering the United States. Some of the country-wide barriers were lifted, and a small number of people from these origin countries were able to enter each year, but only about 100 new immigrants per year. The Magnuson Act in 1943, for example, lifted the bar on Chinese immigrants, but only 105 people from China were able to enter annually. So these changes didn't do much for total entry numbers, but what they were really impactful for was family formation and socioeconomic status. Some of these laws allowed people who were engaged or married to US service members stationed overseas to enter the country, enabling family formation for people of Asian immigrant descent that hadn't previously been possible. And these laws also allowed naturalization for many of these groups, phased in sequentially across national origin groups from 1943 to 1952.
Smith: In 1965, the Hart-Celler Act, signed by Lyndon Johnson, appeared to open the doors to greater growth and diversification of Asian immigration. How did it change the immigration system?
Postel: The Hart-Celler Act had truly massive impacts on immigration from everywhere, but particularly from Asia. It replaced nationality-based quotas with a preference system built around two main channels—one was family reunification and the other was employment-based, which fundamentally altered both the numbers of people who could enter the country—through the removal of quotas—and the characteristics of the people who were immigrating. This was particularly important for Asian immigration because most countries had been severely limited under the quota system. With family reunification-based migration, we start to see the growth of populations that hadn't previously been allowed to grow. We also see a large amount of immigration through employment-based channels, facilitating high-skill immigration from countries like India and China. As a result, the total Asian immigrant population grew more than twentyfold from 1960 to 2019, resulting in a significant change in composition in terms of national origin, employment, and occupational outcomes.
One thing the historical record of immigration restrictions suggests is that people are willing to go through a great deal to move. Restrictions have often translated into people traveling through different and more dangerous routes or choosing different destinations.
Hannah Postel
Smith: Asian immigrants have come to the United States in several different ways—sometimes through family connections, other times through work programs. How have these different pathways shaped the economic trajectory of different immigrant groups?
Postel: I’d like to highlight two groups in particular. People who enter through high-skill employment channels tend to have high levels of education. They are more advantaged in terms of education than both the average person in their origin country and the average American in their destination. They also tend to have strong labor market attachment because many arrive on a visa tied to a specific employer, which means higher economic resources and higher potential earnings from the start. Contrast that with refugee groups, many of which arrived with fewer resources and less of a direct connection to the labor market, facing a much more difficult time assimilating economically and achieving socioeconomic mobility. This led to high levels of inequality both within and between Asian immigrant groups. Indian immigrants, for example, show a very different pattern of educational and economic achievement than Vietnamese immigrants. And even within a single group, like Chinese immigrants, some demonstrate very high educational and occupational attainment while others look more like refugee populations. So, we are observing high levels of inequality both within and between groups, which is one reason the aggregate statistics about Asian Americans can be so misleading.
Smith: How might current trends in immigration policy shape Asian immigration going forward?
Postel: The current administration's outlook is broadly restrictionist across skill levels and backgrounds, so I would anticipate it becoming more difficult for people to enter the US in the short term, and perhaps a decreased demand as well. We are seeing fewer international students applying for graduate work in the United States. But one thing the historical record of immigration restrictions suggests is that people are willing to go through a great deal to move. Restrictions have often translated into people traveling through different and more dangerous routes or choosing different destinations. Recently, for example, migration through the Darién Gap was running at around half a million people a year, with large numbers of Indians, Nepalis, and Chinese making that journey, which translated into higher numbers of encounters at the southern border with Indian and Chinese nationals. That trip is an incredibly expensive, dangerous, and grueling journey. When we see people willing to go through that, it suggests that while migration may decrease and become more difficult under the current administration, we are likely to see it increase again in the future—potentially through more dangerous channels.
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“Asian Immigration to the United States in Historical Perspective” appears in the Winter 2026 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. Music in the audio is by Sound of Picture.