Asians have
surpassed Hispanics as the largest wave of new immigrants to the United
States, pushing the population of Asian descent to a record 18.2 million and
helping to make Asians the fastest-growing racial group in the country,
according to a study released Tuesday by the
Pew Research Center.
While Asian
immigration has
increased slightly in recent years, the shift in ranking is largely
attributable to the sharp decline in Hispanic immigration, the study said.
About 430,000 Asians — or 36
percent of all new immigrants, legal and illegal — moved to the United
States in 2010, compared with 370,000 Hispanics, or 31
percent of all new arrivals, the study said. Just three years
earlier, the ratio was reversed: about 390,000 Asians immigrated in 2007,
compared with 540,000 Hispanics.
“Asians have become the largest
stream of new immigrants to the U.S. — and, thus, the latest leading actors
in this great American drama” of immigration, Paul Taylor, executive vice
president of the Pew Research Center, wrote in the report.
Immigration scholars have attributed the
decrease in Hispanic immigration
to a mix of factors, including the economic downturn in the United States,
increased deportation and border enforcement by the American authorities,
and declining birthrates in Mexico.
Tougher enforcement
measures have made a greater impact on the Hispanic immigrant
population than on the Asian immigrant population because a much
higher percentage of Hispanics are in the United States without immigration
papers, experts said. About 45 percent of Hispanic immigrants in
the United States are here illegally compared with about 13 percent to 15
percent of Asian immigrants, Pew demographers found.
Under this pressure,
Hispanic immigration dropped 31 percent from 2007 to 2010, while Asian
immigration increased about 10 percent.
Pew researchers estimated that
Asian immigration surpassed Hispanic immigration by 2009. Mr. Taylor said in
an interview on Monday that the delay in identifying this shift was due in
part to the fact that the analysis relied on later demographic data,
including the 2010 American Community Survey.
The findings are part of a
study called “The Rise of Asian-Americans,” a comprehensive analysis of the
Asian population in the United States. The Pew Research Center is a
nonpartisan organization in Washington that has provided some of the most
reliable estimates for illegal immigration.
Drawing on
Census Bureau and
other government data as well as telephone surveys from Jan. 3 to March 27
of more than 3,500 people of Asian descent, the 214-page study found that
Asians are the highest-earning and best-educated racial group
in the country.
Among Asians 25 or older,
49 percent hold a college degree, compared with 28 percent of all people in
that age range in the United States. Median annual household income among
Asians is $66,000 versus $49,800 among the general population.
In the survey, Asians are also
distinguished by their emphasis on traditional family mores.
About 54 percent of the respondents, compared with 34 percent of all adults
in the country, said having a successful marriage was one of the
most important goals in life; another was being a good
parent, according to 67 percent of Asian adults, compared with
about half of all adults in the general population.
Asians also place greater
importance on career and material success, the study
reported, values reflected in child-rearing styles.
About 62 percent of Asians in the United States believe that most American
parents do not put enough pressure on their children to do well in school.
The growth of the Asian population
has been noteworthy for its speed. In 1965, after a century of
exclusionary, race-based policies, the Asian share of the American
population was less than 1 percent. But immigration reform legislation that
year opened the door to broader immigration from around the world.
The Asian share of the total population is now about 5.8 percent,
the Pew study said.
“A century ago, most
Asian-Americans were low-skilled, low-wage laborers crowded into ethnic
enclaves and targets of official discrimination,” the study said.
“Today they are the most likely of any major racial or ethnic group
in America to live in mixed neighborhoods and to marry across racial lines.”
A closer look at the numbers can
reveal sharp differences between subgroups.
At least 83 percent of the total
Asian population in the United States traces its ancestry to China, the
Philippines, India, Vietnam, the Korean Peninsula or Japan — and
demographic
characteristics can vary widely from group to group.
Indians, for instance, lead all
other Asian subgroups in income and education, the report said. Indians,
Japanese and Filipinos have lower poverty rates than the general public,
while Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese have higher poverty rates.
But Mr. Taylor said there was
still value in the macroanalysis. “For better or worse, throughout our
history, we’ve always used race as a prism to understand who we are,” he
said. “Anything that illuminates the latest immigration wave, that
illuminates a growing race group, helps us to understand ourselves better.”
With illegal immigration slowing, Asian migrants to US now surpass newly
arrived Hispanics
by Hope Yen
Associated Press 19 June 2012
For the first time, the influx of Asians moving to the U.S.
has surpassed that of Hispanics, reflecting a slowdown in illegal immigration
while American employers increase their demand for high-skilled workers.
An expansive study by the Pew Research Center details what it
describes as "the rise of Asian-Americans," a highly diverse and fast-growing
group making up roughly 5 percent of the U.S. population. Mostly foreign-born
and naturalized citizens, their numbers have been boosted by increases in visas
granted to specialized workers and to wealthy investors as the U.S. economy
becomes driven less by manufacturing and more by technology.
"Too often the policy debates on immigration fixate on just
one part — illegal immigration," said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a political science
professor at the University of California-Riverside and a fellow at the Woodrow
Wilson International Center for Scholars. "U.S. immigration is more diverse and
broader than that, with policy that needs to focus also on high-skilled
workers."
"With net migration from Mexico now at zero, the role of
Asian-Americans has become more important," he said.
About 430,000 Asians, or 36 percent of all new immigrants,
arrived in the U.S. in 2010, according to the latest census data. That's
compared to about 370,000, or 31 percent, who were Hispanic.
The Pew analysis, released Tuesday, said the tipping point
for Asian immigrants likely occurred during 2009 as illegal immigrants crossing
the border from Mexico sharply declined due to increased immigration enforcement
and a dwindling supply of low-wage work in the weak U.S. economy. Many Mexicans
already in the U.S. have also been heading back to their country, putting recent
net migration at a standstill.
As recently as 2007, about 390,000 of new immigrants to the
U.S. were Asian, compared to 540,000 who were Hispanic.
The shift to increased Asian immigration, particularly of
people from India, China and South Korea, coincides with changes in U.S.
immigration policy dating to the 1990s that began to favor wealthy and educated
workers. The policy, still in place but subject to caps that have created
waiting lists, fast-tracks visas for foreigners willing to invest at least half
a million dollars in U.S. businesses or for workers in high-tech and other
specialized fields who have at least a bachelor's degree.
International students studying at U.S. colleges and
universities also are now most likely to come from Asian countries, roughly 6 in
10, and some of them are able to live and work in the U.S. after graduation.
Asian students, both foreign born and U.S. born, earned a plurality (45 percent)
of all engineering Ph.D.s in 2010, as well as 38 percent of doctorates in math
and computer sciences and 33 percent of doctorates in the physical sciences.
Several bills pending in Congress that are backed by U.S.
businesses seek to address some of the visa backlogs, through measures such as
eliminating per-country limits on employment-based visas or encouraging
investment in the sluggish U.S. real estate market. They have stalled amid
broader public debate over immigration reform that has focused largely on
lower-skilled, undocumented workers.
In recent years, more than 60 percent of Asian immigrants
ages 25 to 64 have graduated from college, double the share for new arrivals
from other continents.
As a whole, the share of higher-skilled immigrants in the
U.S. holding at least a bachelor's degree now outpaces those lacking a
high-school diploma, 30 percent to 28 percent.
"Like immigrants throughout American history, the new
arrivals from Asia are strivers," said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of
the Pew Research Center and co-author of the report. "What's distinctive about
them is their educational credentials. These aren't the tired, poor, huddled
masses of Emma Lazarus's famous inscription on the Statue of Liberty. They are
the highly skilled workforce of the 21st century."
The findings are part of Pew's broad portrait of
Asian-Americans, immigrants or U.S.-born children of immigrants who come mostly
from China, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Korea and Japan. Now tied with
Hispanics as the fastest-growing U.S. group, the nation's 15.1 million
Asian-Americans are slowly becoming visible as founders of startups in Silicon
Valley, owners of ethnic eateries, grocery stores and other small businesses in
cities across the U.S., as well as candidates for political office and a key
bloc of voters in states such as California, Nevada and Virginia, according to
experts.
Projected to make up 1 in 10 residents by midcentury,
Asian-Americans as a whole tend to be more satisfied than the general public
with their lives and the direction of the country. They lean Democratic, prefer
a big government that provides more services, and place more value on marriage,
parenthood, hard work and career success.
The Pew study also revealed wide variations among Asian
subgroups in poverty, employment and education, which sometimes belied their
typecast as a "model minority." For instance:
—Poverty: As a whole, Asian-Americans had a poverty rate in
2010 of 11.9 percent, lower than the 12.8 percent for the general U.S.
population. By country of origin, however, Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese were
more likely than the average American to live in poverty, at rates of 14 percent
or more.
—Education: The share of Asian-Americans who hold at least a
bachelor's degree surpasses the national average, 49 percent to 28 percent.
Vietnamese, however, fell below the national average at 26 percent.
People from
India were most likely to have a college degree, at 70 percent.
—Unemployment: Asian-Americans ages 25 and older were
somewhat less likely to be unemployed than the national average for the first
quarter of 2012 — 6 percent compared to 7.4 percent for all U.S. workers. But in
terms of long-term unemployment, Asian-Americans fared much worse, with median
duration of unemployment at 28 weeks, second only to African-Americans (31
weeks). The national average was 22 weeks.
—Illegal immigration: While immigrants from Asia often obtain
visas and arrive legally, many also sneak across the U.S. border or become
undocumented residents after overstaying their visas. Up to 15 percent of Asian
immigrants in the U.S. are here illegally, compared to 45 percent of Hispanic
immigrants.
The Pew survey is based on an analysis of census data as well
as interviews with 3,511 Asian adults living in the U.S., conducted by cell
phone or landline from Jan. 3 to March 27. The poll has a margin of error of
plus or minus 2.4 percentage points for all respondents, higher for subgroups.
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