Asian American are changing the South

[RandySF]

The growing Asian population in the South includes transplants from other regions of the U.S. and immigrants from Asia, with job opportunities and a lower cost of living drawing people to the region, according to demographers.

“The South is the new destination for Asian immigrants,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, the founder of AAPI Data.

In Georgia, for example, the number of Asian-Americans grew 136 percent from 2000 to 2016, and now accounts for 4 percent of the total population. The number of Asian-Americans in Virginia grew 113 percent in the same period.

The effects of the population growth are vast. In areas where Asian-American communities have been firmly established, experts say Asian-Americans have slowly gained the potential to affect school curriculums and influence elections.

Asians are also the only ethnic group in the U.S. with more members born outside the country than inside it, according to AAPI Data, with most Asian immigrants coming in on either employment-based visas or family-based visas. This leads to diverse Asian-American communities, with distinct challenges in navigating majority-white areas and gaining political influence.

Nguyen, now in his 40s, has witnessed those changes at home in Texas, where he’s now the co-owner of the popular South African restaurant group Peli Peli in Houston.

“I’m just amazed at how a city that used to be very vanilla, very conservative, has now grown to be a city of innovation and diversity,” Nguyen said. “It was steak and potatoes. It was pretty plain Jane, and now Houston is so vibrant to me.”


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/asian-american-growth-south_us_5a948133e4b0699553cb5834

[appalachiablue]

1. K & R. Thanks for posting this important info.

[Hortensis]

2. We own a house occupied by relatives in an

Atlanta satellite community. Their child attends good, very diversified schools, one of his best friends from the neighborhood black, another Vietnamese. Their class pictures are like a poster for a Democratic Party candidate. Last week a house in their/our neighborhood came on the market and received several offers, one accepted, the same day. They tell me it's the schools. People want to live and raise their children there.

Needless to say, there are others who do not. My husband and I live by a lake over an hour farther from the city in a very white, far more rural (but unfortunately urbanizing) county, where property values in the nearest town are nevertheless surprisingly, but perhaps shouldn't be, almost as high. Our high schools have excellent football teams, and a central lawn of the one in town joins seamlessly with that of a neighboring church that coincidentally is open to students during lunch and other breaks. If one didn't know, one would assume they were all one property.

There's tension between old and new, needless to say. But new will win.

[Aristus]

3. I've heard for a while now about how diverse and progressive Houston is.

It sure wasn't when I lived there in the early 1980's.

Nice to hear things are improving.