Talk Elections

Not the largest group of total immigrants from past years still in the country, just to be clear - that would take a long time - but the largest group now coming. At least according to data just released by the Pew Research Center (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/06/19/us/asians-are-immigrations-new-face.html?ref=us); they aim to include both legal and illegal immigrants, and of course the latter must be estimated.

It's a little hard to know whether this is a temporary blip caused by the crash in certain lower-skilled sectors, but if it continues it would certainly affect the long-term demographics of the country in various ways.

One thing I find in general is that the media and the popular imagination tend to underestimate the share of immigrants who are coming through established legal channels, who are often well-educated.


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I wonder now: does the median asian income provide a better quality of life in practice, considering their population is largely concentrated in areas with higher costs of living compared to white Americans?

Sanchez is gonna love this.

Net migration with Mexico is less than zero ever since the housing bubble went kaput.

That 70% figure for Indians is likely due to resume fraud.  The east and southeast Asian countries listed have much better educational systems than India.

Yeah, what is the actual source of the data shown on the right?  Is it just self-reporting?  Because I think it's pretty well established that people tend to lie about their educational level to pollsters.

Note that Thailand doesn't even register there - they don't want to leave, or after a taste of the USA for a few years, usually come back in horror.

The list is only of the 6 largest groups, they could have added more groups and then they would register. Also, There are reasons other than lack of desire for the lack of immigrants. In Israel Thai's are brought in specifically to pick fruit in hothouses, a hard and not well paying job (by Israeli standards).

I wouldn't call it fraud, but India does have different standards for a college degree. I've seen cases where their college degree was more like a vocational or trade school degree. The US would at best consider them to be associates degrees. It's complicated by the fact that many Indian degrees are from institutions equivalent to a college engineering degree. Without inspecting the actual transcript and knowing the texts used, it's nearly impossible for an American to tell.

Socal seems to have quite a number of Thais around. There is even a little Thai neighborhood in LA just to the NW of Silverlake.

I'm not sure about the source of the educational data. (My interest was more in the left-hand side of the graphic, but it's a single image.)

Yeah there are some of course, but very few as a percentage of Thai population, compared to the number of migrants from other Asian countries.  Of course to be fair this is partly just a simple matter of economics - Thais are much better off in rough per-capita-gdp than say Philippinos, Indians, etc, but it also has a lot to do with various quality of life issues such as societal functionality and good governance.

I love jfern's hatred of Indians.  (They're taking his JEEERRRBBB!!!)

Are Filipino-Americans really that wealthy and educated? I was always under the impression that they were one of the poorer (and more Democratic-leaning) Asian immigrant groups.

I'm a little surprised Koreans are only at 50k. Vietnamese I can understand are not that wealthy since many came here as political refugees. Filipinos are pretty middle class I would say and are overrepresented in job fields such as nursing.

I was just pointing out the suspiciously high numbers for them. The east and southeast Asian countries, even Vietnam, have higher education levels in the general populace.

Keep in mind that first-generation south Asians English skills are likely far better than first-generation east and southeast Asians. Sometimes this spills over even to the second generation, because children whose parents have impeccable English skills are better able to relate to 'American' culture than children whose parents have poor English skills. I would be curious to see the difference between Taiwanese and mainland Chinese.

They're fairly wealthy and educated, and are one of the most Republican immigrant groups period.

Can you tell us more about good governance in Thailand? I'm not plugged in, but for a time the Thai political system looked like the world's largest soccer riot.

This makes me insanely happy. I'm trying to think of something meaningful to say, but can't. Oh well. I hope this trend continues, and I hope that we see a shift to the GOP. The poll said that Asians were more likely to place a higher value upon marriage, parenthood, hard work (or something like that) and education- our traditional American values. Seeing their overrepresentation in our elite universities, it's a matter of time before we see overrepresentation in politics, and those values reenter the political dialogue.  Of course, their economic and scientific contributions needn't be mentioned. It wouldn't be a stretch to say Asians may very well save this country by refocusing it on its core values.

It's a shame the GOP's small mindedness prevents them from tapping into this potential base. You'd think Black-Asian antagonism (see Rodney King riots) might push them in that direction... but it's nice to think they're other ways to do that. Alas, they're not likely to be pursued.

Guys, remember that immigrant communities are NEVER representative of the countries from which they originate. Most Indians who can get a visa to the U.S. come from the upper classes/castes, and are thus by far the most likely to know English, hold degrees or be well-educated. They are here because they have had access to opportunities of which the typical Indian cannot even dream. Only at tiny, tiny fraction of the overall Indian population is here: even if there are a million or more people of Indian origin in the U.S., there are hundreds of millions more in India.

This. But I think there's a greater cultural outlook difference as well.

Well Asians aren't as big as a population group as Whites or the big population group that Hispanics are going to be in a few more decades. That is probaly why the GOP doesn't put a focus on Asians in elections. I think Asians are socially liberal like Jewish people are thats why they vote Dem.

Asians on the whole are not "socially liberal" by any stretch of the imagination. Leftist economically, yes.

That is largely dependent on their generation. Generally, first and second generation asians are much more socially liberal.

As contrasted to? This seems to indicate a fairly traditionalist bloc of people:

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A focus on marriage, family ties, morality, and hard work? Sounds very "old-school".

Compared to the US population as a whole. Sorry, I should have clarified that.

I'm sort of surprised that people in the general public don't find it all that important to have a successful marriage or to be a good parent(!).

Remember that marriage is on the decline in the US.  With 50% of couples getting divorced I'm not that surprised that the gen pub doesn't have a very high opinion of the institution.

On another note, it would be interesting to see where the newcomers are settling.  I know that Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast have fairly high Asian populations just based on proximity.  I'm wondering if there are any "interior" or eastern enclaves also or if it is a geographically neutral thing.  I'm sure it differs somewhat by country of origin.  I believe their is a significant Vietnamese population in New Orleans; New York is always a general immigrant hot spot; I've also gotten the impression that DC and Atlanta have higher than average Asian populations.  Are their any other major destination cities?

Seattle, Houston

Believing in hard work and close family ties does not = believing personal religious views should become laws of the country...

Believing in those things or not doesn't really impact if someone is socially conservative or liberal.

Social conservatism doesn't necessarily imply religion or vice versa. 

I'm a Filipino-American decent and most Filipinos I know voted for Obama. 

Asian is an even less meaningful label than Hispanic. What exactly do Persians and Japanese immigrants have in common?

A lot of Persians/Iranian immigrants do not list themselves as Asian. They consider themselves Caucasian and hence white. But I do agree that Indians and Japanese do not necessarily share the same interests.

Middle Easterners come under White.