Features

Drawn by high-tech jobs, immigrants are making communities more diverse 

OAKLAND – Lured by the high-tech boom, California’s Asian population has surged over the past decade to become the fastest growing race in the state, census data show. 

Immigration propelled the increase, reinforcing California’s standing as a distant cousin to Asia, itself a strikingly diverse continent. More than one in three of America’s 11.6 million Asians now lives in California, the survey reported last week. 

About 3.8 million California residents identified themselves as Asian or Pacific Islander, up from 2.7 million in 1990. An additional 550,000 people said they were part Asian or Pacific Islander — an option for the first time as the 2000 census allowed respondents to check multiple races. 

While the state’s population rose 14 percent, to 33.9 million people, those identifying as at least part Asian jumped 61 percent. 

That disproportionate increase was not confined to established Asian communities around Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area. Asians percolated into high-growth suburbs as well as cities sprinkled along the Central Valley. The Asian population more than doubled in some cities including Folsom, Tracy, and Galt. 

The trend also extend to native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. About 116,000 people in California identified themselves as an islander, slightly more than in the state of Hawaii itself. 

Asians are not proliferating everywhere. Kettleman City, a Central Valley town of 1,500 residents, lost all three of its Asian residents during the 1990s. Overall, though, 373 of California’s towns and cities saw a gain in Asian population, while just 86 lost Asians. 

Asians are now a majority in five cities: Cerritos, Monterey Park, and Walnut Park, all in the Los Angeles area, and Daly City and Milpitas, both south of San Francisco. 

Across the state, immigration was the driving force behind the rise in the state’s Asian population. Although the census hasn’t yet broken down respondents into country of origin birth, California netted 731,000 Asians or Pacific Islanders through immigration and 528,000 through births during the 1990s, according to Mary Heim, a demographer with the state’s Finance Department. 

Work originally drew Asian immigrants to California in the 1850s and work was again the main enticement in the 1990s, analysts said. 

But while Chinese first came to help mine the Sierras and build the rail system, the state’s recent high-tech gold rush is the new stimulus — and it is attracting a broad mix of immigrants. 

“It’s job-based immigration,” said Chin Ming Yang, a Taiwan-born regional planner who came to Philadelphia for school but settled in the Bay Area. 

Yang’s financial success motivated six nieces and nephews to earn advanced degrees at U.S. universities and settle within an hour’s drive of their uncle. Demographers call it “chain migration,” and it was a powerful force over the last decade as recent immigrant communities settled in the state. 

Asians have reached a critical cultural mass in many California communities. San Jose and Orange County have Vietnamese language papers, while Asian shopping districts, cultural centers and many other public spaces abound across the state. 

In the Silicon Valley bedroom community of Fremont, for example, the Asian population more than doubled in the 1990s. During that span, the city acquired a Hindu temple where many Indian computer programmers and engineers worship. 

“Asians want to come to already established communities,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Milken Institute in Santa Monica. “Because of these kinds of community ties, California remains the top destination.” 

While Chinese and Japanese immigrants first came generations ago, many new groups have come for political reasons. 

Refugees from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia began immigrating after the United States pulled troops from Southeast Asia in the 1970s. Filipinos were already immigrating after considerable damage to their country during World War II. 

Once the first members of those groups settled they attracted their extended families, in part because immigration laws make it easier for immigrants to come if they already have a relative who is a U.S citizen. 

Also, newer immigrants tend to have higher birth rates than longer-established Chinese and Japanese immigrants, Heim said. That produced a spike in the number of children born to Asian parents, she said. 

Asian explosion in the 1990s 

The following is a look at how California’s Asian and Pacific Islander population increased during the 1990s. 

• Population of Asians-Pacific Islanders in 2000: 3.8 million. 

• Number of people who identified as Asians-Pacific Islanders and another race in 2000: 550,000. 

• Total number of people who identified as at least part Asian-Pacific Islander: 4.35 million. 

• Population of Asians-Pacific Islanders in 1990: 2.7 million. 

• Increase in Asian-Pacific Islander population from 1990 to 2000: 61 percent. 

The following is a look at California cities where Asians are a majority of the population. The city is followed by its total population in 2000, its population of Asians and native Hawaiians-Pacific Islanders in 2000 and how much that population of Asians and native Hawaiians-Pacific Islanders increased between 1990 and 2000. 

• Monterey Park; 60,051; 37,162; 6 percent 

• Cerritos; 51,488; 30,187; 25 percent 

• Walnut Park; 30,004; 16,752; 54 percent 

• Milpitas; 62,698; 32,875; 87 percent 

• Daly City; 103,621; 53,462; 32 percent 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau.