This article examines the development of legislation to create a Minority Serving Institution federal designation for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) serving institutions. Specifically, the article draws from interviews with nineteen policy makers, congressional staffers, and community advocates in order to address their motivations for establishing this designation and the related challenges that they encountered in creating a new Minority Serving Institution designation. Besides the complexities of ushering legislation through Congress, one of the major challenges highlighted includes the lack of political infrastructure for advocating Asian American issues related to education. Recommendations for the future sustainability of federal support for Asian American and Pacific Islander serving institutions are also discussed. (Contains 3 notes.) [Support for this research was provided by the UCLA Institute of American Cultures and the University of California AAPI Policy Multi-Campus Research Program. This article has been published as: Park, J. J., & Chang, M. J. (2010). Asian American Pacific Islander serving institutions: The motivations and challenges behind seeking a federal designation. "AAPI Nexus: Policy, Practice, and Community," 7(2), 107-125.]