First Sentence

"Although the first Asians arrived in present-day America long before the European immigrants, Asian Pacific Americans (Asians, hereafter) have not been considered as a viable political force in the mainstream electoral politics until recent decades when changes in U. S. immigration policies and laws as well as economic, social, and political forces within and outside the United States converged to forge a new and accelerated era of Asian immigration (Daniels 1988; Takaki 1989; Chan 1991; Reimers 1992; Hing 1993; Ong, Bonacich, and Cheng 1994; Kitano and Daniels 1995)."