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At times in the past, the U.S. did not restrict the number of immigrants.

When I was growing up, Asians were so few and far between as to be almost invisible. And so the idea of an Asian American movement or an Asian American thrust in this country was unthinkable.

The United States didn't ban Italian immigration in the 1920s because a small minority of Italians became members of the Mafia, and the country is a richer place for it.

I would point out that Japan's proposal at the Versailles Peace Conference on the principle of racial equality was rejected by delegates such as those from Britain and the United States.

They were concerned about the racial issue. They thought it was not a safe issue to go Asian, unfortunately.

If Asian America exists, it is because of systemic racism.

I had fought against the unjust restriction of immigration.

Citizenship and ethnicity can become, in certain contexts, restrictive, and perhaps that's one reason I was interested in people who feel compelled to mask their origins and thereby circumvent the restrictions.

The Indians, however, could not migrate from one part of the United States to another; neither could they obtain employment as readily as white people, either upon or beyond the Indian reservations.

As a matter of history, the Fourteenth Amendment was not understood to ban segregation on the basis of race.