Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS)    

Articles About Asia and Pacific Islands

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month

    The month of May is set aside as Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, just as February is Black History Month, and September is Hispanic Heritage Month. One of the purposes of this celebration is to remind mainstream America of the contributions of these minority groups to this country. This year's APA Heritage Month celebration began with a Forum in Washington, "Celebrating Asian Pacific American heritage Month: Partnership for the Future," cosponsored by the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) and the White House Initiative on Asian and Pacific Islanders (WHIAAPI) on May 3rd.

     Asian contributions to this country are a well-known fact, from Nobel Price winners in the sciences (quantitative, medical, etc.) to health care and construction, to supplying of fresh fruits and vegetables, and so on. The Filipinos can paralyze health care on the East Coast if they decide to go on strike and do damage to the system. This is also the reason why their nurses and healthcare professionals are in such high demand in hospitals, senior citizens home, among other. The Chinese can slow down research in the National Laboratories and National Institutes of Health, especially in the areas of complex mathematical equation. The Koreans are the largest suppliers of fresh produce to the country's largest supermarkets and well as open public markets.

     Diversity is almost synonymous with Asia. It stretches from Pakistan on the West to Japan on the East, and from the northern borders of China to the southernmost boundaries of Indonesia. Within these borders are included: South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, and Maldives Islands; East Asia: China (PRC), Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hongkong, Macao and Mongolia;  Southeast Asia: Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Brunei;  Central Asia: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz Republic, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan;  Pacific Islands: Fiji, Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

     The region has a total area of 8 million square miles. Some of the individual countries are larger than many American and European nations. The People's Republic of China rivals the US in size. India (the largest democracy as well as the largest English-speaking country in the world) is bigger than any European nation. There are more people traveling everyday in India than the combined population of France and Germany. Indonesia is more than 3x the size of France, and extends east and west approximately spanning the same distance separating the East and west coasts of the US.

     Looking at Asian geography, one sees vast land areas holding 61% of the world's population. They are the new immigrants to this country. Four out of five Asians counted in the 1990 census had immigrated to the US since 1970. They comprised half of the legal immigrants in the 1980s. Though of diverse language backgrounds (the Philippines alone has 82 dialects; to understand each other they have to sometimes resort to English), they share a commonality in culture, values and physical traits. Many of the recent immigrants are illiterate even in their own language, e.g., Laotians and Cambodians, and have no professional skills to market for jobs. However, they have a propensity to survive, especially those who came from large cities of Asia.

     The US population is now becoming multiracial, with 26% composed of minorities. Nationwide, more than 10 million say they are Asian-Americans, and nearly 12 million more claim some Asian ancestry, according to the 2000 census, the first to allow people to check more than one race. The higher figure is a 72% increase over the number of people who checked that category in 1990. California, the most populous state of the Union, is 51% minority. Minorities constitute the majority of 33.1 million residents: Hispanics (31.6%), Asians (11.4%), Blacks (6.7%), and Native Americans (0.6%). Whites are at 49.9%, a milestone of profound political and social impact in a place where ethnic diversity is no longer a concept but a daily reality. The last time whites were a majority was in 1860.

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     From a business perspective, the top ten states which have the largest number of firms owned by Asians: 1) California: 313,048 = 12% of total number of firms in the state;  2) New York: 123,258 = 8%;  3) Texas: 60,226 = 4%;  4) Hawaii: 50,634 = 54%;  5) New Jersey: 41,443 = 6%;  6) Illinois: 36,857 = 4%;  7) Florida: 33,769 = 3%;  8) Washington: 23,309 = 5%;  9) Virginia: 22,441 = 5%;  10) Maryland: 22,169 = 6%. There are now 2.7 million minority business enterprises (MBEs), responsible for 89.9 million employees, with total combined revenues of $5.4 trillion, out of the nation's 20.8 million companies. MBEs face tougher times ahead. As a matter of fact, many of these companies declined to their lowest level since 1993. The troubles are a result of the following:

   1. Lingering Prejudice. The overwhelming majority of Blacks, Latinos and Asian report they occasionally experience at least one of the following expressions of prejudice--poor service in stores and restaurants, disparaging comments, and encounters with people who clearly are frightened or suspicious of them because of their race or ethnicity.

   2. "Bait and Switch."  A company enters into a teaming agreement with a large prime who develops amnesia after award of contract, and has to compete with other MBEs for task(s) the MBE thought was its portion of the work when they were working on the RFP (request for proposal).

   3. Bundling. This allows the government to restrict the number of vendors who must be included in the competitive range. Competition saves between 15% to 70% in the $200 billion-plus a year on federal contracts. It drives potential competitors out of the market and drives up the prices of those who stay in.

   4. Past Performance.  It would be quick and easy to award contracts primarily on the basis of reputation, but this would not be appropriate. Agencies are buying promises of goods to be supplied in the future, not the past. Agencies that buy based on reputation would miss out on much of the innovation in information technology where new and small businesses have been the source of many of the terrific advances in hardware, software and problem resolution generally.

   5. Umbrella Contracts.  At the agencies' discretion and without possibility of outside review, agency officials will issue tasks or delivery orders, for reasons of convenience rather than best values. The concept has some utility when differences are measurable, which is frequently true for goods, but where the differences are difficult to gauge, which is often true for services, its use of umbrella contracts makes decisions about who gets a contract highly subjective.

   6. Personnel Cuts in Government.  They are becoming severe in some agencies, forcing the contracting professionals who remain to do more work than they are capable of, while the veterans who know how to get things done are being enticed out of the door through buyouts.  

   7. Streamlining Government Procurements.  Few, if any would object to the goal of making the process faster, cheaper and more reliable. However, efforts to streamline government procurement processes are overshadowing the importance of making procurement decisions that promote a strong and diverse small business sector. 

   8.  Fairness Issue.  Large companies represent less than 5% of all businesses, yet, consistently receive almost 80% of all federal contract dollars.

   9.  The "Buzz Words." Multiple Award Schedules, IDIQ, Purchase Blanket Agreements, Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts represent the latest and most popular contracting vehicles, all of which encourage contract consolidations, centralized administration and long-term vendor agreements with fewer and larger companies. It is much easier today to add a task to an existing contract vehicle than to compete it.

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     There is great concern when competition is eroded; when regulations favor big businesses; when small business goals have little meaning; or when the convenience of a contracting officer is more important than building a sound and diverse base of government vendors.

     The number of Hispanics (35.3 million) in the 2000 census was up nearly 60% from 1990, bringing the number of Hispanics equal to the number of African-Americans (34.4 million).  The Hispanics are a much larger minority group and are more cohesive than Asian-Americans. Though they have different trade associations, catering to a particular Hispanic community, e.g., Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Salvadoran, etc., the US Hispanic Chamber of Commerce is the larger umbrella accessible to most of them.    

     Such is not the case with Asian-Americans, where compartmentalization is evident.  It is a case of Chinese with Chinese, Koreans with Koreans, Filipinos with Filipinos, etc. Because of their diversity, each group takes care of the needs of its business community in different states of the country, trying to do for their respective groups with very limited resources. To view a sampling of these organizations across the country, there are the:

	Chinese Chamber of Commerce (Phoenix, AZ);
	Vietnamese Chamber of Commerce (San Jose, CA);
	Japanese Chamber of Commerce & Industry (Chicago, IL);
	Korean American Chamber of Commerce (Miami, FL);
	Filipino Chamber of Commerce (Honolulu, HI);
	Network of Indian Professionals (New York, NY);
	Overseas Laotian Professional Group (Albuquerque, NM);
	Taiwan Merchants Association of Ohio (Cincinnati, OH);
	Asian American Business Roundtable (Washington, DC)

     There is another Asian trade association in Washington, the US Pan Asian Chamber of Commerce, which claims to represent all Asian businesses and professions in the US, though the majority of its members are Chinese. The Asian American Business Roundtable is more diversified in its membership structure, working closely with the Federal Government in procurement opportunities than any of the Asian Chambers of Commerce in the nation.

     None of this group individually can draw the others to join them and transcend their differences and harness their meager resources for a greater and more effective collaborative effort on the level of a USHCC which has become self-supporting with viable and strong corporate support. Overall, the business prospects are more promising and brighter for the Asian-owned companies vis-a-vis the Hispanic companies because of the size of trade in the Asia-Pacific Rim theater maximizing on their cultural and linguistic links with the region.

     The enormous diversity of Asian-Americans is an enigma which makes them similar as well as different in many ways. This exacerbates the problem of working together instead of accomplishing more for their businesses. There is a proposal on the table to Harvard's Business School to explore bringing all these different trade organizations under one umbrella. Why Harvard? The school's total enrollment is more than 35% Asian, while three-fourths of graduate students in Business School are Asian.

     The university wants to give back something to the Asian community. With the support (which includes financial support) of Harvard, this goal of creating a national chamber of commerce to become self-supporting on the level of a USHCC can be achieved. Hopefully, Harvard can bring these diverse groups under one umbrella. It will make it easier to support (instead of compete for separate sources of funding) this unified effort, promote collaboration and get the large corporations to stand behind it. If this is done, 2002 is a year to remember in the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
          
                                                                  Rawlein G. Soberano, Ph.D.
                                                                  Germantown, MD

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Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS)

The Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS) was formed to build a politically empowered Asian American (PA) population, to be the political pipeline for Asian Pacific Americans to enter and advance into elected office, and to act as a resource to Congress about the APA community.

In support of the APAICS mission, the organization has implemented the following programs:

	The Leadership Academy for Asian Pacific American Elected Officials
	Political Education Conference
	Anheuser-Busch/Horton Fellowship Program
	Daniel K. Inouye Fellowship Program
	Summer Internship Prgram
	Year-Round Internships

Plans are underway for the APAICS to serve as the national clearinghouse to provide timely and accurate information relating to Asian Pacific Americans, to establish policy analysis personnel for tracking issues of national policy debates, and to act as catalyst for sponsoring public policy forums in major cities throughout the United States.  APAICS' local presence is supported through its support of existing community groups by polling policy expertise and by providing accurate information relating to the interest of Asian Pacific Americans.

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Articles About Asia and Pacific Islands

    As we take time to reflect on the numerous contributions of Asian Pacific Americans, we at AABR hope you will too.

	Article: Asian Business Owners Gaining Clout - By Jim Hopkins
	The Diversity that is Asia
	Asia and Pacific Islands
	Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus

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