Immigration from China and Mixed Race Babies Fueling Population Growth in U.S.

The group 18 Million Rising , a group of activists trying to increase the influence and presence of Asian Americans, might have to change its name. There are now 20.3 million Asians living in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2014 data that was released last week. 18 Million Rising was formed in 2012 and the data of that year reflected the 2010 Census results.

Sam Garrow, a Census Department demographer, said Asians have been the fastest-growing race group since about 2000, and the main driving force is international migration. In 2013, China replaced Mexico as the top sending country for immigrants to the U.S., officials said.

 

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The term “Asian American” is too general to describe ethnicity in Hawaii, said Jonathan Okamura, an ethnic studies professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

“Diversity is recognized,” he said. “We tend to use categories like Filipino, Japanese and Chinese to describe people who immigrated from Asia,

“Talking about Asians as the fastest-growing group is meaningless,” he said.

Instead, people should take specific looks at the Filipino or Japanese population on Hawaii to get a feel for the Asian American population in the state, Okamura said.

Since 2010, Filipinos are the second-largest ethnic group in Hawaii, he said. In 2010, people who identified as Filipino increased 24 percent from the 2000 census. The ranking knocked the Japanese population down to the third-largest ethnic group in Hawaii.