My dear brothers and sisters,

How many of you were born outside the United States? How many of you have a parent who was born outside the United States? Me too. My name is LeiZhao，I came from China 23 years ago as a bright eyed student with the excitement and dream for a new life in America, the land of opportunity, the land of liberty, and the land of equality. Twenty-three years later, I am a naturalized American citizen, an attorney licensed to practice law in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States District Court, and have two children born in the city of Boston and raised in the public school system of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I am unaffiliated with any religion or political party. My real religion is America. My true affiliation is to America. I embrace wholeheartedly the American value and feel privileged that, among the world’s 7 billion people, I have become one of the 323 million lucky enough to be an American. Don’t you feel the same? Lucky to be an American?

But are we really as American as other Americans? As Asian Americans, are we sometimes made to feel less American? We look too different from other Americans, with our distinctive physical features, our eyes maybe too slanted, our hair too straight, our frames too small. Our accent too thick and strange. We eat too much rice. We study too hard. We are too quiet. We are too shy. We are too exotic. We are nearly invisible in the pop culture of the modern America, whether it is in the media, sports, literature or entertainment. We have little political involvement or experience. We have almost no voice of our own, partly because of our own limitations and inexperience, partly because of the whitewashing and stereotyping of Asians, especially east Asian Americans in our society.

Interestingly I feel more American when I am outside the United States. When I traveled to Europe, I was quickly recognized by people over there to be from America because how my “r” was pronounced (for example, “water”). When I was in foreign countries, people introduced me to their friends as “an American.” Years ago in Sweden, I was invited to a local friend’s home for dinner. As I tried to follow his lead and took off my shoes at the door, he stopped me: “No, you don’t have to do that,” he said, “You are an American.” We Americans have the reputation of going to bed with our outdoor shoes on. As silly as it may sound, I was so touched and comforted by his gesture and acceptance of me as an authentic American. This is something I don’t always feel in my adopted homeland. Back at home, we Asian Americans’ American identity is frequently challenged. Asian Americans are perceived as the “perpetual foreigners.” Our loyalty to America is often questioned. There is a presumption among some non-Asians in our society that Asian Americans have a better relationship with the country of their ancestral heritage (China, Japan, Korea, India, Vietnam, etc...) than with America, and therefore ought to be placed in a second-class citizen role, because we are unable to fully adopt all the characteristics to become a full citizen of the United States of America. This xenophobic image has been faced by many Asian Americans from a variety of Asian backgrounds, and not only by the first generation immigrants, but also the 2nd, 3rd generation Asian Americans who were born and raised in their own native land. This is why we are being asked, our children and grandchildren are being asked by strangers with or without any ill intention, again and again: where are you really from? This is why it still is all too common to have grossly racist portrait of Asian Americans by the media such as the “Watters’ World: Chinatown Edition” on the O’Reilly Factor show last year.

And this is why the proposed bill H3361 to collect disaggregated ethnicity data from Asian Americans, and Asian Americans only, is so astoundingly absurd and outrageous. No matter who and what benign intention is behind this bill, and what goals this bill purports to achieve, the sponsoring of this bill is misguided, discriminatory in effect, and harmful to Asian Americans and American society. By asking each and every Asian American in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, no matter how long we have lived in America, whether we were born in America, whether our parents were born in America, and whether we speak any language other than English or ever have traveled outside the US, to identify ourselves as being from some far away land such as China, Korea, Japan, India, Vietnam, Cambodia, Philippine, ... this bill further isolates us from the American society. It puts us in a separate category from the rest of Americans, intrudes upon our individual privacy, continues the perpetual foreigner and subordinate Asian stereotype, and invalidates our American experience.

We are proud Americans. Our dream is from this land and our allegiance is to this land. This land is our land. We refuse to be singled out. We refuse to be divided. We refuse to be labeled as perpetual foreigner, as model minority, as outsider, as anything other than true and full American. We are Asian by appearance, and American in mind and spirit. Together, loudly and clearly, we say NO to Bill H3361. This land is your land. This land is my land. This land is our land, the land of ALL Americans.