The minimum salary for an H1-B Visa is $60,000, which would put someone at the 68-th percentile of individual income (or the fourth quantile). The statistics I am referring to are for asians whose parents had incomes in the lowest quantile (below about $19,000 today) between age 11-22.
Now, that could capture a lot of immigrants who have skills or education back home, but are underemployed once here. (E.g. college degree back home, but working in food service here.) But it excludes immigrants who were able to use their degrees or skills to provide financial advantages to their kids in the U.S.
I'd like to see some numbers on that.
Lot's of Asians have come as refugees over the years, and also as family connections.
Yeah, the ones I meet at my Silicon Valley job are highly educated and often on that kind of visa, but that's of course a big selection bias trap...
[Strike out] Asians mostly use high-skilled visas / education based visas as a door to enter the nation. Almost by definition, this beings in the subset of Asians who grew up in a culture of education and hard work. [\Strike out]
I think, the cultural boon/curse of living vicariously through your child also leads to parents pushing their child towards "lucrative" / "respected" careers.
There might also be a snow-ball effect, where Asians aspire to pursue careers where Asians have traditionally succeeded. That would be professions in STEM fields, which have high median wages.
[Strike out]The real title should be -> "Children of Asian immigrants who were top percentiles in their own countries, perform at a similarly high level"[\Strike out]
edit: didn't see the lower quartile number. Renders my argument invalid.