State of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Series

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPIs, are a significant factor in the changing demographics in the United States. But the lack of centralized and accessible data has created a large knowledge gap about this fast-growing and influential group. Data about this group have often not been available or presented in a way that is accessible to policymakers, journalists, and community-based organizations.The Center for American Progress in conjunction with AAPI Data, a project at the University of California, Riverside, have launched a series of reports on the state of the Asian American and Pacific Islanders communities, featuring the most comprehensive research and analysis of its kind for the AAPI population in the United States. The report series will provide an unprecedented look at this community and provide new insight and analysis along various issue areas including: demographics, public opinion, immigration, education, language access and use, civic and political participation, income and poverty, labor market, consumer market and entrepreneurship, civil rights, health care, and health outcomes

Delaware\u27s Global Competitiveness

For about a hundred years, Delaware has been the leading jurisdiction for corporate law in the United States. The state, which deliberately embarked on a mission to build a haven for corporate law in the early twentieth century, now supplies corporate charters to over two thirds of Fortune 500 companies and a growing share of closely held companies. But Delaware’s domestic dominance masks the important and yet underexamined issue of whether Delaware maintains its competitive edge globally.This Article examines Delaware’s global competitiveness, documenting Delaware’s surprising weakness competing in the emerging international market for corporate charters. It does so principally by studying the corporate law preferences of foreign firms listed in the United States. While Delaware was once a popular jurisdiction for foreign corporations listing in American stock markets, it has dramatically fallen out of favor in recent years. This is particularly true among firms based in China that have recently made their debut to American investors. For instance, the Cayman Islands is now the juridical home to over half of Chinese companies listed in American stock markets, compared to Delaware’s 5%.By exploring the paradox of Delaware’s domestic popularity and international unpopularity, this Article makes three contributions to the literature. First, it presents data indicating that Delaware’s dominance of the corporate charter market may be a parochial, American phenomenon. Second, it develops a theory to explicate why foreign firms operating within vastly different market environments may be averse to Delaware’s corporate governance paradigm. Finally, it adds to the corporate law convergence debate, counseling against blind exporting of Delaware corporate law to foreign nations

What Influences the Diffusion of Foreign Language Programs in U.S. K-12 Public Schools

As the United States becomes ever more pluralistic and globalization makes the world more closely connected, it has never been more necessary to build an educational system that helps students grow into competent world citizens who can communicate effectively in languages other than English. Despite the growth of foreign language education in the United States during the past decades, an increasing number of research articles on foreign language programs have shown that foreign language learning in U.S. K-12 public schools is still lagging behind compared to the other nations and the desired state that U.S. policymakers, educators, parents, major research organizations, business leaders, and the general public would like it to be. Among different states and different foreign languages, there are huge gaps. In addition, very little is known about the patterns by which foreign language programs diffuse and how the current patterns are formed, which can inform our understanding of the state of U.S. foreign language education and provide information for policymakers and stakeholders for schools. Building on existing research, this dissertation explores these two research questions: What factors influence the diffusion of foreign language programs in U.S. K-12 public schools, and to what extent do these factors help form the current state of foreign language enrollments in U.S. K-12 public schools? In this study, the term foreign language refers to any language other than English, though some foreign languages that are taught in U.S. schools are not foreign to the U.S. or to all students therein. Based on a review of literature on human capital theory, social and cultural capital, resource dependence, and institutional theory, this dissertation relied on various data sources to construct a state-level panel dataset for the school years of 2004 to 2005, 2007 to 2008, and 2014 to 2015, focusing on foreign language enrollments in all 50 states for U.S. K-12 public schools, and regression with random-effects using Stata, to address the stated research questions. Analysis results demonstrated that parents’ education, state policies, race, state political conservatism, and region factors have significant effects on the current state and diffusion patterns of foreign language programs in U.S. K-12 public schools. The results indicate that both parents’ education and state policies have strongly positive effects on foreign language education, even though the effects are not significant or exclusively positive on all the seven selected foreign languages which are Spanish, French, German, Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The influential power of race and state political conservatism is comparatively smaller and varies depending on different foreign language programs. In terms of percentages of foreign language enrollments, region factors also matter and showed significant effects. Further research is needed to identify factors that could help shape the within-state (such as district-level or regional level) disparities of foreign language enrollments. The research can also extend to private schools and college-level foreign language education, include a wider range of foreign languages and more forms of foreign language instruction, and explore diffusion patterns of foreign language programs in different grade levels and taking language proficiency levels into consideration

Student Expectations and Motivation in Spanish for Heritage Speakers Programs

The changing demographics in the United States and the growing need for multilingual individuals originated by globalization, among other reasons, have contributed to the emergence of a new field within the area of Applied Linguistics: The Teaching and Learning of Heritage Languages. Due to historical and geographic causes, Spanish for Heritage Speakers (SHS) is currently the largest and most established of these programs. However, the curricula, like those of most college courses, has been developed from professors’ perspectives, largely ignoring what students want to learn and/or their motives for enrolling in these classes. The lack of student input is especially poignant because, unlike with other programs, there is a deep and unique connection between these individuals and their heritage language. Therefore, the present study set out to find out what students expected to learn, as well as what they wanted to learn in their SHS courses. As closely related topics and to further understand the students’ perspective, the research also investigated why they enrolled in SHS classes and how satisfied they were with these programs. The study was designed as a mixed methods inquiry that included a student survey, student and professor interviews, and classroom observations. This design followed similar published articles and it was an attempt to capture a large data sample and to triangulate the qualitative information with quantitative figures. The data was collected at four large universities located the Southwest region of the United States. It included 120 student surveys, 30 student interviews, eight professor interviews, and nine classroom observations. The results showed that while students were keen about improving their grammatical competence, the end purpose and motivation were enhancing communication with their families, friends, and heritage language (HL) community at-large. Therefore, the curricular implications included surveying student interests and needs at the beginning of every semester and incorporating a service- learning component that would directly connect students with their HL community

Sociolinguistic dimensions of immigration to the United States

Since its inception, the U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants. Mainstream national discourses about the presence and value of non- English languages (and their speakers), however, are often negative and view linguistic diversity as a problem. This article summarizes some of the major infl uences on the national and the linguistic landscape of migratory movements to the U.S.Dimensiones sociolingüísticas de la inmigración en Estados Unidos. Desde su creación, Estados Unidos ha sido siempre una nación de inmigrantes. Sin embargo, los principales discursos nacionales sobre la presencia y el valor de las lenguas diferentes del inglés (y de sus hablantes) a menudo son negativos y consideran la diversidad lingüística un problema. Este artículo resume alguna de las principales infl uencias en el panorama nacional y lingüístico de los movimientos migratorios hacia Estados Unidos

Sociolinguistic dimensions of immigration to the United States

Since its inception, the U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants. Mainstream national discourses about the presence and value of non- English languages (and their speakers), however, are often negative and view linguistic diversity as a problem. This article summarizes some of the major infl uences on the national and the linguistic landscape of migratory movements to the U.S.Dimensiones sociolingüísticas de la inmigración en Estados Unidos. Desde su creación, Estados Unidos ha sido siempre una nación de inmigrantes. Sin embargo, los principales discursos nacionales sobre la presencia y el valor de las lenguas diferentes del inglés (y de sus hablantes) a menudo son negativos y consideran la diversidad lingüística un problema. Este artículo resume alguna de las principales infl uencias en el panorama nacional y lingüístico de los movimientos migratorios hacia Estados Unidos