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Author Topic: Bhutanese Americans  (Read 1184 times)
minionofmidas
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« on: July 20, 2012, 05:34:30 AM »

Amazing fact I just stumbled across on the Census website:

The Bhutanese population in the United States grew by 9699% between 2000 and 2010, from 192 (alone) / 212 (alone or in any combination) to 18814 / 19439. That might not sound much, but Bhutan has not much more than 700,000 people, so one Bhutanese in 40 emigrated to the US during the past decade.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #1 on: July 20, 2012, 05:38:11 AM »

The next highest growth rates among Asian groups are Nepalese and Burmese, both of which grew about sixfold, to now about 100k Burmese and 60k Nepalese in the US. Small wonder given the turmoil Nepal was in - and that not even more people leave Myanmar is due to it not being that easy to get out.
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Brittain33
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« Reply #2 on: July 20, 2012, 05:51:14 AM »

Where did the Bhutanese settle?
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #3 on: July 20, 2012, 06:16:55 AM »
« Edited: July 20, 2012, 06:20:04 AM by Tsiraki Midou »

(seeks out tables)

Quite spread out, but in a nonstandard way with some surprising states on the list.
2275 in Texas, 1824 in New York, 1703 in Georgia, 1210 in Arizona, 1198 in Pennsylvania, 977 in Washington state, 865 in Ohio, 764 in New Hampshire, 750 in California, 614 in North Carolina, 592 in Colorado, 559 in Illinois, 544 in Massachusetts, 514 in Virginia for a total list of states over 500, though that excludes the (along with the low Cali number) most surprising figure: 354 in North Dakota. 0 only in West Virginia, Puerto Rico, and - more surprisingly - Oklahoma, but there's a large number of states with single and low double digit numbers.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #4 on: July 20, 2012, 06:43:08 AM »

Decided to do lists for the Burmese and Nepalese as well, with 1000 as a threshold. (Oh, also 0 Bhutanese in Arkansas and Mississippi, overlooked that. And only 1 in Maine despite the 750 next door in NH.)

The Burmese are quite spread out apart from the top two states, with notable numbers all over the Midwest: 17978 California, 7868 Indiana(!), 3779 North Carolina, 3763 Minnesota, 3450 Maryland, 2950 Illinois, 2675 Arizona, 2646 Georgia, 2578 Florida, 2275 Texas, 2250 in Nebraska, 2058 Washington state, 1856 Michigan, 1824 New York, 1822 Colorado, 1668 Virginia, 1524 Kentucky, 1356 Ohio, 1324 Tennessee, 1260 Iowa, 1204 Kansas, 1198 Pennsylvania, 1197 New Jersey, 1197 Wisconsin, 1146 Oklahoma, 1072 Massachusetts

The Nepalese are much more concentrated, in a distribution somewhat resembling Indians: 7625 New York, 7513 Texas, 6231 California, 4770 Virginia, 3412 Maryland, 2865 Massachusetts, 2751 Colorado, 1959 Georgia, 1459 Illinois, 1438 Minnesota, 1429 Pennsylvania, 1158 Washington state, 1039 North Carolina


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they don't love you like i love you
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« Reply #5 on: July 20, 2012, 11:12:10 AM »

Not too surprised by North Dakota. A few things that might apply:

-North Dakota is currently one of the easiest states to get a good unskilled labor job and has had lots of immigrants coming over for the oil industry, my childhood friend's South African husband was met in North Dakota while working on the oil fields. It's causing both internal migration from elsewhere in the US and from other countries.
-With its current economy, ND is also bringing in other Asian immigrants in jobs that are known for them. My brother currently works in the kitchen of a Japanese restaurant, staffed mostly by Asian immigrants (not Japanese obviously, mostly Chinese and Thai), many of whom barely speak English. Supposedly there's plenty of job placement services for them in California where many recent immigrants immediately come. Wouldn't surprise me if some Bhutanese were doing the same (also explaining why they are being more spread out throughout the country.)
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Tetro Kornbluth
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« Reply #6 on: July 20, 2012, 12:03:03 PM »

Any idea why these people chose to go to the US and from what social strata in their own countries did they come from?

Really interesting find btw.
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Sbane
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« Reply #7 on: July 20, 2012, 01:02:17 PM »

They are ethnic Nepali refugees from Bhutan. I was under the impression Nashville was one of the bigger destinations but I guess I was wrong.

http://www.photovoice.org/bhutan/timeline.php
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CultureKing
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« Reply #8 on: July 20, 2012, 01:08:18 PM »

Any idea why these people chose to go to the US and from what social strata in their own countries did they come from?

Really interesting find btw.

A large number of both the Bhutanese and Nepalese are entering the country as refugees. In the last few years the US has begun settling ethnic Nepalese who had left Bhutan during a period of government-sponsored ethnic cleansing in the early 1990s. Basically the ethnic Bhutanese majority feared that the Nepalese minority would have grown demographically over the ensuing decades to take over the country. So, for the past 20ish years the roughly 100,000+ refugees were living in UN camps mostly located in Nepal.

This last year I was teaching English to a Bhutanese man (ethnically Nepalese) who had been settled in Spokane, WA. Often refugees are placed for settlement in clusters, in other words areas where there are 1) refugee services, 2) sizable populations of people from their country. I would add that many of these refugees see themselves as Bhutanese first and Nepalese second, but there definitely is a bit of an identity crisis within the population.

Here's a link to a Wiki about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutanese_refugees

By Jan. 2011 35,000 Bhutanese had been resettled in the US. And that number is over a year old, the US has committed to resettling 60,000 refugees.

I doubt few, if any of the Bhutanese are coming directly from Bhutan.
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minionofmidas
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« Reply #9 on: July 21, 2012, 05:08:21 AM »

Ah, right. Yeah, I remember hearing of those expellations (to fulfill the definition of "ethnic cleansing" there'd need to be some kind of effort to remove the group entirely) back when they happened and also in later articles about Bhutan (such as the situation of the remaining Nepalese there), but I never knew anything about what became of the people who left. Thanks for clearing that up for me!
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