Asking Asian Americans to Trust Census

In Vietnam years ago, 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 live and could be found easily 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 to “investigation of population,” said Xuan Nhi Van Ho, a Census Bureau community partnership specialist. Instead, the kinder, gentler phrase, Thong ke dan so (survey of population) is employed.

Such are the nuances in educating and convincing Asians to take part in next year’s 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 $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, which 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, and ranked Orange County third with about 344,000. Honolulu County was second with 560,000.

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. Millions of dollars were lost for schools, senior services and child care and health centers.

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

“We don’t have Univision or BET,” Narasaki said, adding that delivering the census message will involve dozens of sources, whether it’s a Thai language cable TV station or a Cambodian newspaper.

And every ethnic 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 officer 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.

Chung was in his Koreatown office brainstorming last week with the Census Bureau’s Jennie Choo, a Korean community partnership expert, and Lynne Choy Uyeda, a media partnership specialist.

Similar meetings are being repeated in Asian communities from Little Saigon to Monterey Park as groups recognize that data from next year’s census will 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, English and Spanish are already mandated.

The Cambodian community--the largest population outside of 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 and some Cambodian and Jarai Montagnard--the language of the Montagnard, a Vietnamese hill tribe.

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

The Filipino community has always been plagued by an undercount, partly because members were identified by their Spanish surnames, said Joel Jacinto 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 Chinese.

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

These groups often are familiar with the decennial census and are English speakers, but census workers say that even longtime Asian American residents distrust the government tally.