- Nolan: I live with my grandmother, my mother and my sister. Ever since we moved into apartment, everything's been much more cramped. There's not that much space to be free. Basically we come here to eat, sleep, and then leave to go back to work. There were times where I
couldn't travel to school, because I didn't have enough
money to pay for a bus, or if I did pay for a bus, I wouldn't have enough money to come back. It got really bad to the point
where a simple bowl of rice, we weren't even able to afford that. So there were times where a bowl of rice would be a meal for all three meals, or we just simply did not eat. I have definitely felt that I
was a huge financial burden. As I started growing up, started becoming like much taller, I will be eating a lot more food. And there are times where
I genuinely kinda wish I, a little bit, disappeared,
just so that maybe, you know, if my mom only needed to support
my sister, that we will be, well, they will be financially stable. - Neil Ruiz: There are assumptions
that all Asian Americans are well-off and highly educated. But in reality, about one-in-ten Asians in the U.S. live in poverty today. - Neil Ruiz: Asian Americans
have the highest income inequality compared to other
racial and ethnic groups. So we wanted to dive deeper
into understanding those who are living in economic hardship, meaning Asian Americans living at or near the federal poverty line. - Ziyao Tian: Not everyone
experiences economic challenge the same way. Some of the important factors
that we really consider are how that experiences might
be different by nativity. That is to mean that whether someone was born in the U.S., grew up in the U.S., or immigrated as an adult. Another factor we really consider is how that experiences might be different for different origin groups. Oftentimes, they are just grouped as a single group without
giving us the chance to take a closer look at how their experiences
might be different. I'm the second to the youngest child, and my sister just younger
than me has cerebral palsy. So when my parents had my sister, then my mom stopped working. And then grandma passed away, and so my dad was the only provider for the family. Growing up my family farmed,
and we grew like cucumbers, herbs, just veggies. And that was the way we made
income in the summertime, selling our produce at
the farmers markets. Now I know that there were a lot of money problems
when I was younger, but then, at the time, I didn't realize that there were money problems. I didn't realize until I was older. And a lot of my peers had
toys that I didn't have, and I wanted to take dance classes, and my parents couldn't afford it. I definitely felt I missed out as a child, and I think that's probably
a pretty common theme among Hmong immigrant children whose parents are farmers. - Ziyao Tian: We heard
from the focus groups that language plays a role for people who lived both in the city and who lived in more
suburban or rural areas. - Neil Ruiz: Many of
them were talking about how it's important to have English proficiency in order to navigate
their way around the U.S. For instance, getting a driver's license, being able to navigate the bus system, and also being able to get a job. - Ziyao Tian: Sometimes, they
may have a good education, a college education,
even with a STEM degree. But without good enough
English, they met employers that wouldn't really see
their value as a worker. - Neil Ruiz: So the issue
of transportation came up a lot in our focus groups, and it was really about
being able to navigate to getting to a job. - Ziyao Tian: For those
living in urban areas, you know, how to navigate the
subway system, for example, could be really challenging for them. But for those who live in
places where the majority or the mainstream transportation
tool is just driving, not knowing how to drive
could be really challenging. - Nolan: Having transportation in California, especially in L.A., is one of the most foundational
things you need here. School was 15 minutes away, bus rides an hour, 45 minutes away. I worked a day job
during my college years. That trip with a car was 15 minutes. And some without a car, that trip became a 2 hour and 30 minutes, 2 hour, 45 minutes. - Ziyao Tian: There are different feelings toward asking for help. There is one thing about awareness, and there's another
thing about willingness. When it comes to awareness, we noticed that those
immigrants who came more often because of wars or conflicts,
they were more aware of the existence of different government assistance programs, compared to immigrants who came for other reasons. But when it comes to willingness, we also heard that people share with us, sometimes they just didn't really want to share their family situations with people that they often talk to. Remember? - The biggest financial help we've gotten was the medical insurance. I feel like they provide
us with medical insurance. We don't have to pay. - I believe it's almost
like a myth in our culture that you apply, that
sponsor got in trouble. - Ziyao Tian: When we asked
people where do they go for help or have they turned to
a variety of sources for help when in need, one thing we noticed is
that family and friends are often their number one choice. - Saba: In order to
overcome all the stress, my dad, I know, reached out. And my older sister was able to help manage all the expenses. - Yeah. - Saba: I actually didn't know that that the money that we
sent from here to my uncle, he saved that up and he
sent that back to us. - Phuoc: So for me, I like
to stay with my parents, help them make sure they're safe because they're getting old. So I'd rather stay together with them. It's my culture. I think it's the value
that I wanted to keep too, and I'm gonna tell my kids like that too. Just don't forget whoever helped you, especially your parents. They, I think they've been through a lot. I remember, I don't - I didn't get to see my my dad that often. Two jobs. Now that you grow up, you've been through
more, you experience more and then you feel like, man,
that's tough time for them. 'Cause like now, I even take
part time, and I feel it because you spend the
whole day, you'd be tired, really tired and I admire that. So like I mentioned, if I grow older, I'll tell my kid because
that's how life is, right? I wanna pass along a good thing, and I think that's something
that I wanted to share among the next generation as well. - Ziyao Tian: U.S.-born
Asians and immigrant Asians view the value of education differently. But we hear more often from the U.S. born that they feel like just having a formal education is not enough. They also want to have
more specific education, say on finances, on how to invest. And also, those soft knowledges
about how to network, how to get into the right industry. - Tang: So I do have a bachelor's degree, however, I feel, in today's day and age, that doesn't mean a whole lot now than it probably did
a long, long time ago. So myself and a lot of my peers, even after obtaining a college degree, there is still a lot of
hardships, financially, to secure a job that you actually like, to earn enough to actually live off of. - Saba: So I know with college degree, you're able to get a better job, right? That's what you're always told growing up. But I realized my sister already
had her bachelor's degree and she was struggling to find a job 'cause these days they want experience. I feel like, even after
my associate's degree, I was still kind of financially stuck. And I was so upset that I
couldn't help my dad out. - Nolan: My education definitely hurt my economic life. College is not cheap. And especially having
nobody to really rely on, college is extremely expensive. Networking is a huge
portion of being successful. If you have the proper connections, if you have the proper sources, those all are beneficial to you because you have these
individuals who already went through life, and they can help you learn, because a lot of this stuff is,
you don't learn from school, you learn it from people
who's already experienced it. So networking is a huge and vital thing for an American dream. - Neil Ruiz: The American dream
means many different things to different people. So we really wanted to understand what is the American dream to them,
and is it attainable for them? - Saba: To me, the American dream is what my dad believes it to be. And it's having a house here, being educated and having a career, so that in the future, you
don't have to struggle. And after a house it's just trying to get
into medical school, 'cause I feel like it's something... I know, like, I keep bringing up my dad, but it's also something my
dad really, really wants. So I feel like, in a way, I'm kinda just running behind his dream. Because something he
couldn't accomplish here, living in the U.S., I kinda wanna accomplish it for him. I feel like he struggled a lot here just driving a yellow cab. So like, I wanna get out there, you know? Like, I want to do it, it's just a lot of things
that have held us back. So I feel like if I achieve that, he will know that there's
something that he came for in this country, which is, you know, to get his kids educated for
them to become something. And that house, getting the house would just be our biggest
accomplishment for him. He'll know that he came here for a reason, and he got that reason achieved. - Phuoc: I think it's
similar to what my dad said, American dream's very secure that you, at least you have a great job to take care of yourself. I think if I can start
myself to be like investor to create wealth to fully
achieve my own American dream, to create wealth for
myself, my next generation. - Neil Ruiz: So often in
research, we look at data points. We look at statistics, but we forget there's a human
side to every data point. - Ziyao Tian: For many people, hearing about stories of
U.S. Asian people living in poverty might be something new. But to them, these are
their daily experiences. These are their past and
their current situations. Asian Americans are often discussed as one singular group when it comes to conversations about race and ethnicity in the United States. Research like this allow us to really understand
the diverse experiences of this fastest growing racial
group in the United States.
