As I understand it, the change in peoples' view of Asian immigrants is partly because the immigrants have changed. A greater proportion of recent Asian immigrants to the US (compared with early waves of Asian immigrants) were of high socioeconomic status in their home country, and are coming for professional careers or to go to school, rather than to be factory or other low-status workers.

(And depending on how you define caught in the cycle, the descendants of early Asian immigrants might still be - even if race isn't against them anymore (which it might be in some cases - I don't know), social mobility is still difficult.)