Becoming American: Why Immigration Is Good for Our Nation's Future (15 page)

NOTES

1. Nikhil Joshi, “The Business Case for Immigration Reform Part 1: Low-Skilled Workers,”
Business Forward.org
, April 2013,
http://www.businessfwd.org/blog/body/BF_Immigration_Final.pdf
(accessed October 23, 2013).

2. White House, “Building a 21st Century Immigration System,” May 2011,
www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/immigration_blueprint.pdf
(accessed October 23, 2013).

3. Brookings Institute, “Brookings: Quality. Independence. Impact,”
http://www .brookings.edu
(accessed July 8, 2013).

4. The Partnership for a New American Economy, “Open for Business: How Immigrants Are Driving Small Business Creation in the United States,” August 2012,
www.renewoureconomy.org/sites/all/themes/pnae/openforbusiness.pdf
(accessed July 20, 2013).

5. Mark Koba, “How Immigrants Are Changing US Businesses,”
CNBC
, September 4, 2012,
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48646997
(accessed August 27, 2012).

6. Megan Slack, “By the Numbers: 44 Million,”
White House Blog
, November 3, 2011,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2011/11/03/numbers-44-million
(accessed July 8, 2013).

7. Vivek Wadhwa, AnnaLee Saxenian, Richard Freeman, Gary Gereffi, and Alex Salkever, “America’s Loss Is the World’s Gain: America’s New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part IV,” Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, March 2009,
www.kauffman .org/uploadedfiles/americas_loss.pdf
(accessed July 1, 2013).

8. Fiscal Policy Institute Data Release, “What Kind of Businesses Do Immigrants Own? Detail by Country of Birth,” June 2012,
http://fiscalpolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/immigrant-business-owners-by-country-of-birth-20120615.pdf
(accessed August 27, 2013).

9. Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
(Volume 1, Unabridged) (Stilwell, KS:
Digireads.com
Publishing, 2007).

10. Committee on the Judiciary, “U.S. Economy, U.S. Workers, and Immigration Reform,” U.S. Government Printing Office, May 3, 2007,
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg35117/html/CHRG-110hhrg35117.htm
(accessed July 8, 2013).

11. Erin Durkin, “Mayor Bloomberg Blasts Immigration Policy to Stanford Grads,”
New York Daily News.com
, June 17, 2013,
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/mayor-bloomberg-blasts-immigration-policy-stanford-grads-article-1.1374798
(accessed August 14, 2013).

11

How Did He Get Here: Yoon-shik Park

K
orean and American relations began in 1866, when the American ship USS
General Sherman
landed in Korea. Sixteen years later in 1882, diplomatic relations were formally established between the two countries through the signing of a treaty of peace, friendship, and commerce.
¹
Just three years later, Philip Jaisohn, or Seo Jae-pil, left Korea as a political exile and became the first Korean citizen of America, where he became a medical doctor. After Japan was defeated in World War II, the U.S. Army military government, which controlled southern Korea, asked him to return to Korea to act as the chief advisor to the commanding general of the U.S. Army in South Korea. He was eventually asked to run for president of Korea, but he declined the nomination.
²
Today, Jaisohn’s legacy lives on in Philadelphia in the form of the Jaisohn Memorial Foundation, which is a Korean center that provides medical, social, cultural, and educational aid to new Korean immigrants.

After Philip Jaisohn’s immigration to the United States, Korea sent many more successful immigrants to America, even though immigration laws were not always in their favor. Between 1903 and 1905, over seven thousand Koreans immigrated to Hawaii as laborers for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. They were hired for the sole purpose of being cheap labor. The planters did, however, have a hard time convincing Koreans to immigrate. Consequently, missionaries were sent in, and nearly half of the recruited workers were Christian converts.
³

Then, in 1905, Japan turned Korea into a protectorate and prevented any further emigration. Korea became a Japanese colony in 1910, thus extending to them the 1908 Gentleman’s Agreement between Japan and the United States. This agreement allowed immigrant men to bring their wives to the United States, and between 1910 and 1924, eight hundred Korean women arrived in the United States. In this time period, Korean students also came to the United States to study or to work, including Syngman Rhee, who went on to become the first president of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) with U.S. military support after Korea was liberated from Japan.
⁴

In 1920, the Korean American population numbered six thousand.
⁵
Then, the 1924 Nationality Origins Act completely prevented Asians from immigrating to America. The purpose of this act was to “preserve the ideal American homogeneity.”
⁶

After decades of this discriminatory policy, Koreans were once more allowed to immigrate to America with the passage of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act in 1952. This act allowed Korea a quota of one hundred people who could immigrate each year. Finally, the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 abolished immigration based on national origin.
⁷
This was the year Yoon-shik Park received the opportunity to move to America.

As the youngest son of Korean farmers, Park went on to exceed everyone’s expectations. He excelled in scholastic activities, and in 1965, after finishing college in Korea, he was awarded the one full scholarship provided by his alma mater, Kyung Hee University in Seoul, to study in the United States.

At the time Park came to the United States, he was at the forefront of a new wave of immigration to the United States from non-European regions. By 1970, about seventy thousand Korean Americans lived in the United States.
⁸
He did not come to the United States as an immigrant like the bulk of Korean Americans, as he belonged to that privileged group of Korean young men and women who had the fortunate chance to study in America. Only after completing his advanced education in the United States did he decide to stay in this country to work and to raise a family.

By pursuing academics, he followed the long cultural tradition of Sa Nong Gong Sang (the societal hierarchy of scholar mandarins, farmers, artisans and manufacturers, and lastly merchants and traders) that had been part of his historical legacy for many centuries.

The Korean War began in 1950 with the invasion of the South of Korea by the North, and it lasted for three years. Infrastructure was heavily damaged, and at the time, South Korea had an underdeveloped, agrarian economy and was heavily dependent on foreign aid.
⁹
Due to the lack of foreign exchange reserves and the poor economic situation in Korea, the Korean government only allowed Korean students to leave the country to study abroad with a total of $50 in their possession. This was irrelevant to Park, as he only had $16 to his name.

Moving to Boston to continue his studies at Harvard Business School, he left his college sweetheart behind in Korea with the promise he would finish his studies within five years, after which they could be married.

At that time, there were few Korean immigrants in the area, but he did find a small group of compatriots through the local Korean church. The local church used the facilities of an American church for services each week in his mother tongue. At the end of his studies, he kept his promise, and his fiancé, Heawon, joined him in the United States. A local Korean minister married them in the Harvard University chapel.

Upon graduation with a doctorate in business administration, Park was offered a job with the World Bank in Washington, D.C., as an economist. In 1970, he and Heawon moved to Washington, D.C., and they had their first child, a son named Daniel. Park tells us that at this time there was only one Korean restaurant in the entire metropolitan Washington area (which was located in the basement of a hotel that has now become the Chinese Embassy), one Korean grocery store, and only one Korean immigrant church.

Meanwhile, back home, a military leadership took control of South Korea after angry students overthrew President Syngman Rhee. Although the government was autocratic and, at times, repressive, the economy experienced rapid growth from around 1961 to 1996, which came to be known as “the miracle on the Han River.” Per capita income increased more than a hundredfold, and the economy grew about 9 percent annually.
¹⁰

By the late 1970s, Dr. Park had become a well-known expert in international finance, and he was tapped by the founder and chairman of Samsung Group to return to Korea to serve as financial advisor. The perks of working in the private sector and especially for the largest multinational conglomerate in Korea were many. In addition, Korea began directing fiscal and financial policies toward consumer electronics in the 1970s, so it was an exciting and interesting time to work at Samsung.
¹¹

In the meantime, he and Heawon had two more children, a son, Jason, and a daughter, Joann, both of whom were born in the United States. The couple agreed that this career opportunity was too big to pass up, and so the family of five moved to Seoul. While he was experiencing incredible career growth, Park felt that his family life was not benefitting to the same degree. After two years, they decided to move back to the United States in order to offer their children the benefits offered by the richest, freest, and most advanced country in the world. By this time, Heawon and the children already thought of America as “home.”

A popular Korean word that many Korean immigrants live by is  
anjoˉng
. This term can be translated to mean “security” or “stability,” and its meaning is often adopted by first-generation Korean immigrants. Korean immigrants who run small businesses usually do not set out to make millions of dollars but to achieve a modest, stable lifestyle; this ideal is at the center of anjoˉng.
¹²

Upon returning to the United States, Dr. Park entered full time into the professional life of an academic by taking a teaching position at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He discovered a renewed sense of purpose interacting with bright young students from all over the world and felt that he had finally found his true calling.

As their children began middle and high school, Heawon, who had been an accomplished violin student at her university, found herself with more time on her hands and decided to pursue her realtor’s license as a part-time hobby. She quickly realized she had natural business acumen and went on to become a successful real estate developer, with a substantial stable of commercial properties in her possession.

In the meantime, Park, in addition to being a beloved professor, was beginning to become a much-sought-after consultant, working with organizations such as the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, International Finance Corporation, Inter-American Development Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), U.S. Federal Reserve, U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, U.S. Export-Import Bank, New York State Banking Department, Kuwait Institute of Banking Studies, and other private and public institutions around the world. He also found himself being consulted by a steady stream of Korean CEOs, cabinet ministers, and journalists. He assisted Lee Myung-bak, former CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, in obtaining a visiting scholar position in Washington, D.C., before he went back to Korea to be elected as the mayor of Seoul and then the president of Korea. Between 1998 and 2009, Park also served as a member of the board of directors of Samsung Corporation in Korea. By now, Park was a scholar mandarin of the highest order.

By observing their parents, Daniel, Jason, and Joann learned the importance of education and hard work at a young age. In addition, Heawon ruled with an iron fist when it came to academics.

The eldest, Daniel, graduated from West Point and served five years in the military, including two years stationed in Korea, before he retired from military service as a captain. He went on to Harvard Business School, where he obtained his master’s degree in business administration. He has had a successful career, starting out with McKinsey and Company, moving on to work with Target Corporation, and finally ending up at Amazon. He married a Caucasian American and is fielding inquiries about the timing of grandchildren from his eager parents.