Accurate Count Sought for Asian Immigrants

Years ago in Vietnam, the census meant the government wanted to keep a close eye on you--to make sure you carried the proper identification, lived where you were supposed to and could be easily found for the military draft.

It’s a cultural carry-over that still evokes fear among some Vietnamese in this country when they are asked to fill out census forms.

Mindful of these fears, the U.S. Census Bureau was careful to avoid the Vietnamese words for census that translate as “investigation of population,” said Xuan Nhi Van Ho, a Census Bureau community partnership specialist. Instead, the gentler “Thong ke dan so” (“survey of population”) is now used on census forms.

Such are the nuances involved in convincing some Asians to take part in the 2000 census.

Those subtleties are being woven into the first nationwide education and media campaign in Asian communities to improve census participation and prevent an undercount. The Census Bureau estimated that its 1990 count missed about 2.3% of Asians nationwide.

“It’s a challenge for us,” said Karen Narasaki, executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium in Washington, D.C., which organized the largely grass-roots project and expects to contribute about $1 million toward it.

“We have a lot of people in households with no one over the age of 13 who can speak English,” she said. “We have people from countries like Vietnam where the census was used to identify men for the military. And you have a wave of anti-immigrant legislation that makes the community afraid to participate.”

Advocates consider next year’s census especially critical in Southern California: The Census Bureau recently estimated that Los Angeles County has nearly 1.2 million Asians and Pacific Islanders, the most of any county in the country, while Orange County ranks third with about 344,000. Honolulu County was second with nearly 600,000.

Those numbers are crucial because they help determine federal funding for community services. Strength in numbers is also the first step toward political empowerment, which is still coalescing in Asian communities.

Economically, the 1990 undercount hit communities hard, said attorney Bonnie Tang of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles, which is leading the state’s Asian American agencies in the census effort. Millions of dollars were lost for schools, senior services, child care and health centers.

But the undercount did spur the national outreach and media campaign, “the largest Asian American education effort on a single issue,” Narasaki said.

Unlike the Latino community, united primarily by Spanish, Asians are a polyglot of both culture and language.

Because the diverse Asian community isn’t served by a few dominant media outlets--”We don’t have Univision or BET,” Narasaki pointed out--delivering the census message will involve dozens of sources, from a Thai cable TV station to a Cambodian newspaper.

And every Asian group has different ways of being coaxed and encouraged to take part in the census.

“If you ask [Koreans] why did they come here, they say it was for their kids,” said Casey Chung, chief executive of NEO Media International, a video production company. A Korean public service ad should highlight the long-term benefit of the census for future generations, he suggested.

Dreaming of the perfect ad pitch, Chung mused about the desirability of landing a Korean celebrity, such as Dodger pitcher Chan Ho Park or golf phenom Se Ri Pak, for a public service spot.

Chung was in his Koreatown office last week brainstorming with the Census Bureau’s Jennie Choo, a Korean community partnership expert, and Lynne Choy Uyeda, a media partnership specialist. Chung plans to donate his services to produce a video, with help from corporate sponsors and Korean cable TV stations.

Similar meetings are taking place in Asian communities from Little Saigon to Monterey Park.

In addition to the media campaign, an education program at the community level is also in the works: setting up booths at events like next weekend’s Lotus Festival, a popular Southeast Asian event in Echo Park, and visits to temples, churches and community organizations.

Data from next year’s census hold far-reaching implications.

“We’re at a point where the Asian and Pacific Islander community is becoming empowered,” Tang said, and the first step toward that empowerment--voting--is closely tied to census numbers.

The federal Voting Rights Act mandates that when a voting population meets certain standards of size and English illiteracy, voting materials must be provided in the needed language.

“We anticipate after the 2000 census, Chinese and Korean will be required in Orange County,” Tang said. Vietnamese and Spanish are already mandated.

The Cambodian community--the largest population outside Cambodia--may also be close to meeting that language requirement, she said.

The Southland’s Cambodian community, centered in Long Beach, is sizable enough to be represented on the City Council, said census community specialist Ruben Treviso, a Vietnam veteran who speaks Vietnamese, some Cambodian and Jarai Montagnard--the language of the Montagnard, a Vietnamese hill tribe.

“The ones I’m talking to escaped prison camp at [age] 5 or 6,” Treviso said. “I tell these young men and women: ‘This is your future.’ ”

The 1990 census counted about 18,000 Cambodians in Long Beach, but the city did its own survey and reported 36,000, said Sovann Tith, executive director of the United Cambodian Community. In Los Angeles County, the count was 29,806, but Tith said many estimates put the number closer to 60,000.

With memories of the Khmer Rouge’s reign of terror and a high rate of English illiteracy, many families are fearful of government forms or simply can’t read them, Tith said.

The Filipino community has always been plagued by an undercount, partly because its members were identified by their Spanish surnames, said Joel Jacinto, executive director of Search to Involve Pilipino Americans.

“In the year 2000, we are likely to be the largest [Asian Pacific Islanders] group in the nation,” Jacinto said.

In Los Angeles County, the 1990 census identified Filipinos as the second-largest Asian ethnic group, after the Chinese.

Uyeda cautioned, however, that although Filipinos can claim to be the largest Asian population, politicians will always say “Show me the numbers.”

Many Filipino Americans, like many Japanese Americans and Chinese Americans, have lived in Los Angeles County for generations.

These groups often differ from newer immigrants because they are familiar with the decennial census and are English speakers.

But census workers say that even some longtime Asian American residents distrust the government tally.

Some Japanese Americans who are first and second generation still harbor fears that census numbers were used to identify them for placement in internment camps during World War II, Tang said.

Convincing perennially reluctant residents will not be easy.

“I talked to one older Filipino couple at a festival, and they had been living in the Valley for 50 years and never filled out the forms,” said Susan Ng, a Census Bureau community specialist for the Asian community. “That’s amazing--they missed about five censuses.”