Asian American Communities

The Asian American community has existed in the United States for more than 150 years. It is a vastly diverse ethnic community consisting of people whose ancestors, or who themselves, were born in more than twenty Asian countries. In 2000, the Asian American population had grown to 11.9 million, up from 1.4 million in 1970, with a median age of 31.1 years, 4.2 years younger than the general U.S. population (35.3 years). [Page 61]The group's sevenfold growth in the span of 30 years is primarily due to immigration. Currently, more than 60 percent (or 7.2 million) of the Asian American population are foreign born (the first generation), another 25 percent are native born with foreign-born parents (the second generation), and only 15 percent are native born with native-born parents (the third generation), with the exception of Japanese Americans, who are entering the fourth generation in America. Immigration from Asian countries has remained high since the 1970s. The share of immigrants from Asia as a proportion of U.S. total inflow grew from a tiny 5 percent in the 1950s to around 35 percent in the 1980s and 1990s. China, India, Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam have been on the list of top ten countries of origin for immigrants to the United States since 1980. As recently as 1970, no Asian country was on this list. While most of the immigrants have come directly from their ancestral homelands, others have arrived from a different country. For example, Chinese immigrants come into the United States not only from the People's Republic of China but also from Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Americas. Similarly, some Indians have arrived from Canada, England, and Uganda, and most of the Southeast Asians settled in the United States only after stops in third countries, having fled their ancestral homelands. Among Asian immigrants, about 42 percent have arrived in the U.S. since 1990 and 47 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens.