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Census Releases Data on Asian Subgroups

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By Neela Banerjee

Just released Census 2000 reports show that Chinese and Filipino American communities continue to dominate the Asian American population, but Indian and Vietnamese American numbers increased at the fastest rates and showed the most growth.

Chinese Americans still constitute the largest Asian American subgroup, with a population growth of 48 percent, from 1.6 million in 1990 to over 2.4 million now. Filipino Americans have gone from 1.4 million to over 1.8 million in the past 10 years.

These big population changes fit in with the overall analysis that Asian Americans are now the fastest growing group in the United States.

The growth rates in the Indian and Vietnamese communities, at 106 percent and 83% percent respectively, are the most substantial in this data.

“For the Indian American community, one of the big reasons is family unification immigration laws,” said Parag Khandhar, policy analyst with the New York based non-profit Asian American Federation.

The tremendous INS backlog between 1980 and 1990 finally began to ease up in the early 1990s and allowed many more people from India into the country. Khandhar said that closer analysis of the data further down the road will show these trends more specifically.

“There are no definitive answers yet,” Khandhar said.

The huge increase in Indian numbers is also attributed to the high-tech industry and the heavy recruitment of workers who arrive on H1-B visas.

The increase in numbers was no surprise to Ash Bhatt of the Indo-American Commerce Trade Council, a Bay Area organization that was formed in 2000 after members of the community returned from a trip to India with then-President Clinton’s delegation.

“I think the numbers reflect the need of the United States for highly skilled workers more than anything else, or any specific motivation of the Indian American community,” Bhatt said.

Bhatt went on to point out that colonial history has made Indians one of the most proficient English-speaking groups of the Asian sub-groups, which makes India prime recruiting ground for shortages in both high-tech and other fields like nursing.

“I believe that these numbers will get more people involved in political participation,” Bhatt said. “Our children are growing up here now and we are not going back.”

Bhatt said the new numbers show that the Indian American community is really becoming a part of the larger American community, and that this assimilation is an important and necessary thing.

“The people who are settling here — their future and their children’s future is the United States,” Bhatt said. “We need to focus more on local issues and get more involved with electoral politics.”

Increased Vietnamese American numbers have to do with immigration restrictions easing up in the past 10 years and a stronger United States-Vietnam relationship.

The Japanese American community is the only major Asian sub-group that showed a decline in population, down 6 percent from 1990. There has not been any significant, concentrated immigration from Japan for decades. The community’s population has stabilized and is now even decreasing.

But because these numbers do not include anyone who checked off more than one race on the census form, Khandhar predicts that the numbers will actually be higher for most communities.

“I think for Japanese Americans, the numbers will be higher because of places like Hawaii,” Khandhar said. “While for groups like the Indian Americans, there will be little difference because of low rates of out-marriage.”

Data for Asians in combination with another race will be released later this year, as will data about other Asian subgroups, such as Bangladeshi, Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, Pakistani and Thai.