Who are your new neighbors?
Can you tell ethnic differences among Asian-Americans? Come to CPACS, the Center for Pan Asian Community Services, to get a glimpse of your new neighbors and how they want to contribute to the New South. CPACS serves some 2,600 people a month. One of the first things you will notice at CPACS is multiracial and multilingual people across generations who utilize the facility all day long.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Asian-Americans are the country’s fastest-growing racial group, with a growth rate of 46 percent between 2000 and 2010. In Georgia, the Asian-American population grew by 83 percent in the same decade, and in Gwinnett County, by more than 300 percent.
Nationally, approximately 60 percent of Asian-Americans were born outside of the U.S., but close to 80 percent of Asian-Americans in Georgia are foreign-born. Roughly one of every three Asian-Americans arelimited-English proficient, or LEP, and one in five Asian-American households is linguistically isolated.
Historically, metropolises like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York City functioned as major reception areas for immigrants. Since the 1990s, especially after hosting the 1996 Olympic games, Atlanta has become the new hub of first-generation migrants from California, New York, Illinois and Texas. Most recent Asian-Americans are refugees from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma and Bangladesh — people who spent years in refugee camps prior to resettlement. Their needs, obviously, are different from other first and subsequent generation immigrants.
Here are three of the most urgent needs facing the local Asian-American community:
* Education: The LEP population needs to learn English to access better jobs, social resources and citizenship. Their children need to be educated in affordable, quality schools. Since approximately 65 percent of Asian-Americans are working-age adults between 18 and 64, more resources must be invested to educate this workforce, a benefit to the region and nation.
* Affordable, quality health care: Asian-Americans are one of the highest uninsured and under-insured people. Regionally, 45 percent of Koreans and 40 percent of Vietnamese are uninsured, based on a CPACS survey conducted with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nationally, 4 percent of Asian-Americans have not seen a health professional in more than five years.
* Comprehensive, family friendly immigration reform. Along with Hispanic Americans, Asian-American families are most likely to be mixed-status families that include a number of “dreamers.” The fate of aspiring new Americans hinges on fixing a broken immigration system that can remind us that we are all members of the family, not just isolated individuals.
The term “Asian-American” is contentious, as are the individual words “Asian” and “American.” Faces of Asians and, thereby, of Americans, are changing. What remains as constant is that they and all of us are in this together — making and remaking the New South to be a more hospitable and equitable home.
Jung Ha Kim, a Georgia State University professor, is a board member at the Center for Pan-Asian Community Services.
