State’s Asian Population Climbs 35%

Southern California’s Vietnamese population grew sharply in the 1990s despite ebbing immigration, drawing newcomers from elsewhere in the state and nation into a powerful cluster that now exceeds 230,000, census information released today shows.

That includes 135,548 in Orange County alone, where the Vietnamese American community surged almost 89% and won demographic bragging rights over rival centers in the San Jose area and Texas.

The latest cache of census data gives the most nuanced picture yet of the last decade’s changes in California’s large, increasingly heterogenous Asian population.

Overall, the number of Asian residents rose 35.2%, to almost 3.7 million (not counting the about half a million people who identified themselves as multiracial and part Asian), but did so unevenly, both numerically and geographically.

The 2000 census reflects the continued suburban diaspora of Chinese Americans, who neared the 1-million mark in pushing past Filipinos to become the state’s largest Asian group. Though the Chinese population dropped 6% in the city of Los Angeles, it grew more than 34% in the county and strongly throughout the rest of the region.

Mirroring a national trend, California’s Japanese American population fell almost 8% in the 1990s, affected by intermarriage and a low birth rate. Regionally, the sharpest drop occurred in the city of Los Angeles, where the number of Japanese fell 18.5% to under 37,000.

The new economy left its stamp as well, fueling a 97% advance for Asian Indians, particularly in Northern California, where a host of highly skilled immigrants answered the technology industry’s need for computer programmers and engineers.

In the quarter-century since the first Vietnam War refugees arrived at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, Southern California has been transformed from an entry port to a final stop for Vietnamese Americans.

After the tsunami of the 1980s, when the state’s Vietnamese population more than quadrupled, international immigration largely dried up, shrinking in Orange County from 10,510 in 1992 to 1,017 in 1998, INS records show.

But a wave of domestic migration appears to have taken up the slack somewhat, creating what Van Tran, an attorney and Garden Grove’s first Vietnamese City Council member, calls “the mecca of all things Vietnamese in the United States.”

Tran regards himself as one of many “new Pilgrims” to Orange County. He settled first in Grand Rapids, Mich., then was lured westward in 1980 by beach and sun.

“We really did conquer the United States by U-Haul,” he said. “We packed whatever furniture we had and drove across the country in five days and four nights. We ended up in Santa Ana.”

The Southern California Vietnamese community’s hub is still Westminster--known as Little Saigon--where the population grew 138% to exceed 27,000, and the adjoining city of Garden Grove, where the group gained 136% and reached 35,406. But the 2000 census also showed Vietnamese extending into historically white cities such as Huntington Beach (a 53% increase), Fountain Valley (152%) and Tustin (73%).

The location and dimensions of Vietnamese and Chinese gains in California may hint at the changeable, subjective nature of the census, analysts said.

“This identity is very fluid,” UCLA demographer Paul Ong said. “For many of Chinese descent, sometimes they claim Vietnamese identity and other times Chinese.”

After recording astronomical growth in the 1980s, California’s deep-rooted Chinese American community got another shot of adrenaline in the 1990s, jumping 39%, to 980,642. Driven by both immigration and native births, the number of Chinese in California has more than tripled since the 1980 census.

In the heyday of Los Angeles’ Chinatown, Southern California’s Chinese were tightly centralized and more homogenous. But since the mid-1970s, the Chinese population has become increasingly suburban, dispersing into the San Gabriel Valley and elsewhere.

When Los Angeles political consultant David Lang moved to Rowland Heights in 1986, his emerging neighborhood lacked a single Asian supermarket. Today there are four.

“Drive along Azusa Boulevard,” he said. “Why do I need to go to Chinatown or fight for a parking space in Monterey Park?”

In the 1990s, the Chinese community shot up almost 136% in Walnut and more than 42% in Cerritos, helping to establish Asian majorities in those cities. In Monterey Park, the first Chinese suburb and the only other Southern California city with an Asian majority, the group grew by almost 13%.

Chinese suburban newcomers are gradually translating population into political heft. In the 1990s, Chinese Americans won seats on the Walnut and Diamond Bar city councils, as well as on several San Gabriel Valley school boards.

“Ten or 15 years ago, when a Chinese American ran for office, they were regarded as a rare commodity,” Lang said. “We’d all jump up and down. Now it’s not big news, although it’s very encouraging. The community has become more sophisticated; it doesn’t necessarily support Chinese American candidates just based on the color of their skin.”

Like Chinese, Korean Americans moved steadily into the suburbs in the ‘90s, while increasing their numbers by one-third statewide to 345,882. Orange County’s Korean population grew about twice as fast as that of Los Angeles County, which slightly outpaced its urban core, including Koreatown.

Some demographers suspect that Los Angeles’ somewhat muted Korean increase relates to tensions between African Americans and Korean Americans that surfaced during the 1992 riots.

But others said the movement corresponds to broader patterns.

“The suburbanization of Asians is mimicking that of whites and, to a lesser extent, of blacks,” said James Allen, a cultural geographer at Cal State Northridge.

The census cataloged the wax and wane of the disparate groups that are united--uncomfortably at times--under the Asian umbrella.

The Filipino population rose by 25.6% statewide, to 918,678, and 27% in Southern California, to 371,421, experiencing especially large increases in Orange County and the Inland Empire, but it fell well short of predictions.

Demographers and community leaders suggested that improving economic conditions in the Philippines may have drawn some older Filipinos back where their dollars go further.

By contrast, economic opportunity attracted Asian Indians--those who identified themselves as such or as Bengalese, Bharat, Dravidian, East Indian or Goanese--to the state in unprecedented numbers.

Many came to the United States on special high-tech visas, settling in communities in the South Bay and East Bay, demographer Ong said. The number of Asian Indians rose 31% in Santa Clara County and 180% in Alameda County.

Southern California experienced a milder version of the same trend: The Asian Indian population grew by more than 70% in Orange, Riverside and Ventura counties and made solid gains elsewhere.

The 2000 figures for Central California’s breadbasket showed the stilling of a trend from the 1980s, when thousands of Southeast Asian refugees settled in the San Joaquin Valley. Fresno became home to more Hmong than any other U.S. city.

But when the agricultural sector took especially long to recover from the early ‘90s recession, thousands of Hmong started migrating east to Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The 2000 census provides the best evidence yet of their secondary movement: Numbers of what the census calls “other” Asians--which includes Hmong, Laotians, Cambodians and Thais--rose just 2.6% in San Joaquin County and 4.5% in Fresno after posting hefty gains a decade ago.

In Stockton, the Asian population inched up 2.4% after skyrocketing 225% in the 1980s.

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Times staff writer Ray Herndon contributed to this story.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

VIETNAMESE GROWTH SINCE 1990

California:59.5%

Southern Calif.: 57.6%

L.A. County: 24.8%

Orange County: 88.7%

Ventura County: 33.1%

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SOUTHLAND ASIANS

Chinese: 24%

Filipino: 22%

Korean: 15%

Vietnamese: 14%

Japanese: 9%

Asian Indian: 6%

Other: 10%

Source: 2000 Census

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William Don gives daughter Lisa a lift in Westminster, a center of Vietnamese American population.

MARK BOSTER/Los Angeles Times

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

New 2000 census figures show a marked increase in the Vietnamese American population during the 1990s.

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Asian makeup of city of L.A., 2000

Filipino: 27.4%

Korean: 24.8%

Chinese: 17.1%

Japanese: 10.0%

Asian Indian: 6.7%

Vietnamese: 5.3%

Other: 8.7%

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Asian makeup of L.A. County, 2000

Chinese: 29.0%

Filipino: 22.9%

Korean: 16.4%

Japanese: 9.8%

Vietnamese: 6.9%

Asian Indian: 5.3%

Other: 9.8%

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States With the Largest Vietnamese Populations

1. California: 447,032

2. Texas: 134,961

3. Washington: 46,149

4. Virginia: 37,309

5. Florida: 33,190

6. Louisiana:24,358

7. New York: 23,818

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Source: 2000 census

Note: Some figures may not total 100% because of rounding.