Bessie Li is a second-year Anthropology major. Her project is about immigration and crime and employs anthropological perspectives and methodological approaches. She hopes that her project will provide a more substantive understanding of Asian migration to the U.S. and the hate crime rate that the evening news never covers. She believes that there is so much to be explored about the factors that lead to these racially motivated hate crimes that cannot be covered in mainstream Western media but that she can take on and empirically test via in-depth research. Participating in URSP will impact Bessie’s short and long-term goals significantly. Since she was a kid, she had a huge passion for legal fields. She is enthusiastic about figuring out the reasons behind each phenomenon and analyzing each criminal case. Her goal is to help minority people in promoting their justice and provide legal assistance in protecting them. She views research as being a pathway for justice to the victims of hate crimes given that empirical data is a major factor that contributes to policy making. By bringing to light the injustices against minorities in the U.S., she sees research as an avenue to shed light on the social, historical, and political factors that have been motivating hate crimes against minorities in the U.S.