Trespassers?. Willow Lung-Amam

dreams; they served as critical supports in their pursuit of them. Asian Americans have long used their ethnic communities and resources not just as a refuge but also as a platform for social mobility.⁷⁴ The community and cultural infrastructure being built in places such as Fremont was, as much as the suburbs themselves, their launching pads.

      Taking stock of just how much Fremont changed over two decades of rapid immigration was not so easy for those who lived through it. But for those just coming to the area, the contrast between it and other American suburbs was clear. When Irene Yang arrived in Fremont in the mid-1980s from New Jersey after emigrating from Taiwan, she could not believe what she found:

      I almost felt like I’d moved to another country. This [was] not the America that I was used to. When I [went] to the playgrounds, the people [spoke] in their different languages. The Indian moms would be together speaking in Punjabi or whatever, and the Chinese moms—the Taiwanese moms—would be speaking Taiwanese dialect to each other (the ones from back then, very few from mainland China). And then, very few already, very few Caucasian moms.

      For many Asian immigrants, even those such as Irene who had lived in the United States for many years, moving to Fremont changed the way they perceived of the suburbs and their relationship to it. Entering a city that was fully entrenched in its transformation from a White working- and middle-class community to a global hub for skilled migrants from all over the world, Irene was faced with a kind of diversity that she had never seen before. Amid such diversity, she saw both new opportunities for connecting with those similar to herself but also new challenges of negotiating the separate spheres that were beginning to take shape among Asian Americans and between Asian Americans and Whites. Such experiences marked the new social realities faced by Asian American suburbanites of this generation as distinct from all those who had come before them.

      COSMOPOLITAN SUBURBIA (1990–2010)

      By 1990, Silicon Valley was entering its boom years. A decade later the ride was over, and the region was dealing with the aftermath of the dot-com bust and ongoing effects of the Great Recession. But throughout this period of rapid economic expansion and contraction, the region was constantly being reshaped by its role as a popular immigrant gateway, especially for highly educated, geographically mobile immigrants from mainland China and India. Compared to previous generations who often left their homelands behind, these migrants remained closely tied to their friends, families, and even workplaces abroad. In only two decades, they turned many valley suburbs into cosmopolitan places that were more dynamic, globally connected, and ethnically diverse than ever before.

      The year 1990 marked a critical turning point in the history of immigration policy for highly skilled immigrants. That year, Congress signed a new immigration and naturalization act focused on attracting skilled laborers. The act tripled annual immigrant quotas for professional employment-based visas from 54,000 to 140,000 and initiated the H-1B, a visa that permitted foreign nationals with “special skills” that were in demand among American companies to work in the United States for six years with the option of pursuing a green card.⁷⁵ The initial cap on new visas was set at 65,000 but continued to rise throughout the decade, reaching 195,000 by 2001.⁷⁶ Policy changes coincided with improved foreign relations with both India and China and booming economies in both countries that produced large numbers of highly trained engineers, researchers, and other information technology professionals.

      While national and international forces propelled Asian immigration, high-tech companies played a significant role in facilitating their migration to Silicon Valley. During the dot-com boom (1995–2000), over 168,000 new jobs were created in Santa Clara County—more than had been produced in the previous 15 years of a thriving electronics industry.⁷⁷ Arguing that there were insufficient American-born employees to fill these positions, Silicon Valley companies pressed Congress to raise the cap on H-1B visas and allocate a larger portion of those visas to high-tech employers. Their lobbying efforts proved effective.⁷⁸ In the first few decades of the program, Silicon Valley companies ranked among the nation’s top employers of visa holders, and computer-related occupations received the bulk of all H-1B visas.⁷⁹ In 1999, for example, 57% of all H-1B visas went to workers employed in information technology.⁸⁰

      As more visas were granted, Silicon Valley began to use them to aggressively recruit skilled foreign-born workers. Some placed ads in overseas trade journals and newspapers announcing the availability of jobs and employer-sponsored visas.⁸¹ Indian and Chinese workers were the primary beneficiaries of these efforts. Between 1990 and 2010 Indian nationals, whose educational system shifted in the 1990s to train more highly educated engineers, dominated the ranks of recipients, receiving 46% of all visas.⁸² During the same period, émigrés from China came in a far second, receiving only about 6% of H-1B visas.⁸³

      Asian immigrants profoundly transformed the face of high-tech work. Between 1990 and 2000, the percentage of foreign-born engineers in Santa Clara County rose from 33% to 53%. Among them, nearly 40% were of Asian descent.⁸⁴ Asian immigrants were not only hired by companies; they also launched new firms. Between 1995 and 2005, over half of all Silicon Valley companies had one or more immigrants as a key founder. Indian and Chinese immigrants founded nearly one-third of new high-tech firms during the period.⁸⁵ Thus, while many recognized that the integrated circuit (IC) fueled the valley’s success, when locals referred to the region as “being built on ICs,” they were oftentimes referencing the region’s large number of Indian and Chinese immigrants, who were commonly described as the engines that drove the industry.⁸⁶

      Immigration slowed during the dot-com bust in 2000 and the subsequent Great Recession. During these challenging times, many migrants were forced to return to their home countries, including many H-1B workers who were unable to remain in the United States without an employer sponsor. Immigration was further restricted by Congress’s 2003 downgrade on new H-1B visas from a cap of 195,000 to the original 65,000.⁸⁷ With thriving technology sectors abroad—in places such as Bangalore, India; Chengdu and Dalian, China; and Hsinchu, Taiwan—many immigrants were also lured back to their home countries for better employment opportunities.⁸⁸ But even as Asian immigration rates slowed, the Asian American population in the valley rose. Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian American population in Santa Clara County increased by 32% to around 565,000.

      Though they predominantly came from mainland China and India, the diversity among Asian immigrants in the region was striking, including many South Koreans, Filipinos, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, and Malaysians as well as Chinese and Indians from many different parts of the world. As Lisa Lowe argued, the abolishing of national origin quotas and exclusions that began with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 brought in many groups that widened the definition of “Asian American.”⁸⁹ By 2009, Fremont’s residents came from as many as 147 different countries and spoke over 150 different languages.⁹⁰ Irene Yang’s neighborhood is exemplary of such diversity, as it took shape in some of Fremont’s more well-to-do neighborhoods. Sitting in her custom-built house in the Mission San Jose hills, which she described as Frank Lloyd Wright–inspired with feng shui touches, Irene pointed out the diverse families who surrounded her. She counted one White family; two Indian families, one from India and the other from Pakistan; and six Chinese families, including those from Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and mainland China. Irene’s family also reflected this diversity. She was born in Taiwan but grew up in Japan and married a second-generation Chinese American. Held together by their class status, this potpourri became the norm in Silicon Valley neighborhoods by the first decade of the 21st century.

      Diverse as they were, these newcomers shared one important similarity. They were far more likely than previous generations to regularly travel across the Pacific Rim for work and family. A 2002 study found that approximately half of all Silicon Valley foreign-born professionals traveled to their native countries for business yearly, and 5% made the trip five times or more per year.⁹¹ Among these, Taiwanese were the most likely nationality to return home on a regular or even permanent basis, followed by Indians and Chinese mainlanders.⁹² For many of these families, life was lived on both sides of the Pacific. Aiwah Ong describes late 20th-century globalization as producing generations of elite “hypermobile cosmopolitans” whose sense of citizenship has been