Between 1970 and 1980, there has been an increase of more than 140% of Asians in America, mainly through the influx of new immigrants as a result of the 1965 legislative amendment to the old national quota immigration law. Along with the increase of new immigrants and their families, we experienced a sudden awareness of the problems of the immigrant elderly in addition to those who came during the first decade of the present century as farm labor from China and the Philippines, as well as the very old Issei (first generation) and the aging Nisei (second generation) from Japan. Our data showed that not all elderly Asians are taken care of by their kin or the ethnic community facilities. Compared with the general American population, such elderly populations have problems associated with economic conditions, cultural mismatch, as well as the structural factors of ethnic communities that left many elderly living alone or with nonrelatives. The myths of the support group have not been rigorously investigated in such ethnic communities.
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