Arizona has become infamous for its strict abortion bans, limited access to healthcare providers, and limited reproductive health education. What may not be as well known are the various ways that these restrictions can affect the Asian American women of the Arizona community.
Sponsors of the restrictive law have voiced the belief that Asian women prefer sons instead of daughters. This insulting stereotype is used as a justification- they believe that restrictions merely prevent abortions of Asian daughters. Because the law requires that the doctor determine the woman’s reason for an abortion, Asian women are placed in a difficult position with such a stereotype ruling against them.
In addition to this, anti-immigrant laws have played its role in Asian American women seeking healthcare. Although Asian-American immigrant families need health care just as much as the next person, their fear of the law enforcement separating their family prevents them from seeking medical attention. Worst of all, Arizona employees must prove that their use of birth control is for a medical reason. An employer can now fire a woman for using or seeking contraceptive coverage elsewhere.
All of this is in addition to the various cultural differences that often go unrecognized. Asian American women must already face the challenge of language barriers, economic pressures and cultural taboos toward sex. But rather than aid these women, laws have decided to further restrict them.
The Asian American women of Arizona have decided to put up a fight. An Arizona chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum was established. Last month, the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Arizona filed a lawsuit today on behalf of the NAACP of Maricopa County and the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. They are “challenging a state law that relies on harmful racial stereotypes to shame and discriminate against Black women and Asian and Pacific Islander (API) women who decide to end their pregnancies.”
We’ve all heard of the stories of undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as babies — culturally American but legally not. But what happens if you’ve been in the US legally for decades, but still can’t obtain a green card to stay in your home country because of holes in the US immigration system that the government has no plans to fix?
ISSUE: Fall 2012
DEPT: Features
STORY: Ada Tseng
Photo by Maura C. Lanahan that accompanied Ana La O’s LA Citybeat article.
In 2006, Ana La O’ — at the time an undergraduate at UCLA — wrote a cover story for the alternative weekly newspaper LA Citybeat titled “The Hidden Classes,” about the first wave of undocumented immigrants that could afford to attend California public colleges after 2001’s AB 540 law allowed them to pay in-state tuition rates. The students she interviewed had been brought over to the United States as kids and educated in the American school system, yet they were unable to work legally and in danger of being deported to countries they hadn’t lived in for 15 to 20 years.
“It was the first time that I had spoken to people who had the same kind of psychology that I did,” says La O’, who moved to the U.S. from the Philippines when she was 11 months old. “I totally understood everything about being culturally American, but not having the same rights, feeling in limbo, and working toward this degree without knowing what I could actually do with it when I graduated.”
Except that La O’ was not an undocumented (what some call “illegal”) immigrant. By 2006, La O’ had been living in the United States legally for 21 years. Yet, for the next five years, she would continue to struggle to get a green card, until she was so fed up with the holes in the United States immigration system that she voluntarily self-deported in 2011, leaving her family and friends to move to the Philippines. Being plopped into a country she hadn’t lived in since she was a baby seemed like a better option than the hoops she would have to jump through just to be considered for – let alone acquire – a green card, after 26 years of living in this country.
