Trespassers? - Willow Lung-Amam

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In Fremont, this likely included a large percentage of Portuguese farmers, who had worked the land for generations. Asian Americans were less than 2% of the population. By 1980 Asian Americans had made significant inroads, growing to about 9,600 people, or roughly 7% of the population. Still, Asian Americans were a distinct minority, and they felt it. Having entered elementary school in Fremont in the early 1970s, David recalled being 1 of only 2 Chinese American boys at his school. Though his family was “acculturated”—eating meat loaf and pizza for dinner most nights, “not rice bowls”—he grew up with the nagging feeling that he was different. While he did not recall any direct acts of racial discrimination, he felt his difference in simple, everyday activities such as looking at his class pictures year after year in which everyone but him was blond or brunette.

      Whether driven by feelings of isolation or hostility, many early Asian American suburban pioneers looked for communities to which they could belong outside of their local neighborhoods. To establish a stronger sense of community and retain their cultural ties, several early ethnic and cultural associations developed in Fremont. The South Bay Chinese Club (SBCC) was founded in Fremont in 1965 to preserve Chinese culture and customs while also fostering and encouraging better understanding among Chinese Americans of their civic responsibilities and the “American way of life.” 47 The SBCC was and continues to be largely a social club for American-born Chinese. The Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA) started its first California chapter in Fremont in 1974, drawing its members from across the South Bay and the East Bay. Inspired by groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Japanese American Civics League, the OCA had a far more political agenda than the SBCC. The OCA was concerned with both the civil rights and political representation of Chinese Americans. Judy Wu was among the California chapter’s founding members. Having grown up on the East Coast, where her parents were active in the organization, Judy was concerned with the lack of Asian American political representation in Fremont, a cause that she and her husband fought hard for. With their support, Yoshio Fujiwara became the first Asian American elected to the city council in 1978.

      Religious institutions also became an important part of the emerging cultural and community fabric. In 1978, Gurdwara Sahib was founded in Fremont to serve the religious needs of the region’s growing Sikh American population. By the mid-1980s, Fremont’s diverse faith institutions had come to include Wat Buddhanusorm, a Thai Buddhist temple; Vedic Dharma Samaj, a Hindu temple; and a host of small mosques and Asian ethnic Christian churches scattered throughout the city.

      Despite Asian Americans’ efforts to develop a sense of community rooted in their common suburban experiences, many continued to rely on established urban centers for their daily necessities and social support. Fremont’s Chinese American residents still regularly traveled 30 miles or more to Oakland’s and San Francisco’s Chinatowns on the weekends to do their grocery shopping, eat out, or get a haircut. Indian Americans would head to University Avenue in Berkeley, where clusters of retailers and restaurants could be found near the University of California campus. These neighborhoods were not just service centers; they also served as important social and cultural hubs that provided moments of relief and a meeting point for those who had left their communities behind when they moved to the South Bay suburbs. This generation of Asian American pioneers consisted of largely young families headed by U.S.-born householders who had struggled to afford entry into the suburbs and build the community and cultural infrastructure they needed to thrive. They were quickly joined by a generation of recently arrived Asian immigrants who were doing the same.

      NEW IMMIGRANT GATEWAY (1970–1990)

      By the 1970s the technology industry in Silicon Valley was blossoming, and so too was Asian immigration. New laws made way for fresh waves of émigrés, while a growing number of high-tech companies ensured plentiful opportunities for their employment. As the valley’s population grew, so too did its reputation as a place that was “good for immigrants.” As they had done for generations, Asian immigrants imagined the Bay Area as a land of bountiful wealth and opportunity. But now their visions centered on the possibilities arising in South Bay, not in San Francisco. The New Gold Mountain was, in fact, not gold at all—it was silicon.

      By the 1970s, Santa Clara Valley was fully engaged in its transformation from an economy based on agriculture to defense and aerospace contracting. Facilitated by alliances that began during the early Cold War period, Stanford University engineering professor and future provost Frederick E. Terman, the so-called “father of Silicon Valley,” pioneered efforts to pair talented university researchers and engineers with the needs of emerging industries to create a “community of technical scholars.” 48 Thriving off its unique culture of competition and collaboration, the region became a hub of innovation that gave birth to some of the most important technological milestones of the late 20th century. From microelectronics and the semiconductor to the personal computer, the region broke ground in technology that became the hallmark of a new information age.49

      Early Silicon Valley companies clustered in exclusive suburbs and employed an almost all-White labor force, especially among white-collar engineers and managers.50 The valley was a dream landscape for many early high-tech employees who were enticed not only by its well-paying jobs but also by the promise of orderly and manicured suburban neighborhoods and high-end office parks designed around the same principals.51 In 1970, for instance, the elite suburb of Palo Alto just beyond the Stanford University campus was 93% White. The community also housed the Stanford Research Park, a 700-acre site that was home to many of Silicon Valley’s most prominent companies, including Bell Labs, Varian Associates, Hewlett-Packard, General Electric, and Lockheed.

      Silicon Valley’s rise to global prominence also came at a time of massive immigration from many parts of the world, particularly Asia. Immigrants were pushed by ongoing political and social turmoil and harsh economic conditions abroad and were pulled by the valley’s mild climate, extant Asian American populations, and wealth of new job opportunities. Following the passage of the historic 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, émigrés began arriving in record numbers. Commonly known as Hart-Celler, the act opened the floodgates of Asian immigration by lifting restrictive quotas from non-European countries and instituting new policies aimed at family reunification and attracting skilled labor.52 The population of Latino and Asian immigrants in the United States expanded rapidly—far faster, in fact, than Congress had anticipated. “The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants,” Senator Edward Kennedy assured his colleagues. “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.”53 Facing pressure from civil rights advocates but expecting little change, Congress passed a bill that has had one of the most significant effects on the numbers and diversity of immigrants ever since.

      More educated and skilled than previous generations, post–Hart-Celler immigrants were far more likely to bypass central-city destinations to settle directly into suburbs, such as those in Santa Clara County.54 Between 1970 and 1980 the population of Asian Americans in the county grew threefold, from around 30,000 to more than 100,000, making up just under 8% of the population. In the subsequent decade the population more than doubled to over 260,000, comprising nearly 18% of the county’s population. Fremont saw similarly dramatic trends, with Asian Americans growing from fewer than 2,000 residents in 1970 to more than 33,000 in 1990, comprising about one-fifth of the city’s population. During the same period, the city’s immigrant population went from less than 5% to about 20% of the population (Table 1).

Lung

      Santa Clara County’s first major wave of Asian immigrants were a diverse lot but highly stratified by occupation, education, and skill level. The valley’s “barbell economy” tended to concentrate jobs at the top and at the bottom—clearly dividing the workforce between manual and mental laborers.55

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