Its a shrinking definition.
Anybody with slightly olive skin knows that its better to identify as a minority. Identifying as a white means you get considered last for any job/university application. Identifying as hispanic/latina gets you oppression points, despite there being no present or historic oppression.
I think by and large, "affirmative action" should not apply to immigrants. The original intent of affirmative action was to address structural inequities resulting from the treatment of most nonwhites in America, particularly Black Americans, and the lingering consequences of those inequities faced by their descendants.
I don't see how an immigrant can claim America has "wronged" them in any way. If America were such a terrible, racist place, why in the world would they not just go back to their country of origin?
The most flagrant offenders in this regard are arguably Hispanics with little to no indigenous ancestry who occupied high-SES positions in their home countries and then come here for college or graduate school and act as though they are no different from the migrant workers picking lettuce in the Rio Grande Valley or the people Cesar Chavez was organizing in grape fields in the 1970s. It's how you end up with companies bragging about all these "people of color" they have in management and it's a woman whose grandfather was a sugar plantation owner who tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, and a guy from Brazil whose name sounds like it wouldn't have been out of place at the Nuremberg Trials.
Yes, it is mind bogglingly stupid but goes completely unquestioned. Somebody whose parents moved here from Colombia 20 years ago gets preferential treatment for jobs and education purely because they grew up hearing their parents speak Spanish.
