PERILOUS PASSAGE: RECENT LEGAL AND ILLEGAL CHINESE AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS.(Review)

The Chinese Americans. By Benson Tong. The New American Series, Series Editor, Ronald H. Bayor. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000. xiv + 264 pp. Illustrations, noted Chinese Americans, notes, selected bibliography. $39.95.

Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States. By Ko-lin Chin. Foreward by Douglas S. Massey. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Temple University Press, 2000. xx + 221 pp. Tables, glossary, methodology, notes, bibliography. $64.50 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

Benson Tong and Ko-lin Chin have written a detailed picture of the contemporary Chinese American immigrant situation. While Tong covers the historical experience, with an emphasis on the post-World War II situation, Chin focuses upon the illegal Chinese from Fujian province who have settled in New York in the 1990s.

Tong's book, designed for the high school, undergraduate, and general readers, is an interpretive narrative of the Chinese American experience from the 1780s until the present. The first chapter describes the roots of the Chinese diaspora: pre-Qing history, the Middle Kingdom, language, the societal structure, thought and religion, and the rise and …