Op-Ed: What Asian immigrants, seeking the American dream, found in Southern California suburbs
(AP Photo)
Asian-American families moved to California in record numbers during the 1980s and 1990s, when a wave of Asian and Asian-American immigrants seeking the American dream started moving into the nation’s suburbs.
From the mid-1970s to the early 2000s, Asian and Vietnamese immigrants were moving into the suburbs in waves, and some of them settled in cities. There was one difference, though: In those cities, the Asian immigrant population tended to be wealthier, with more education and more upwardly mobile.
These days, many of the Asian immigrants are not wealthy and tend to be less educated. Like many Asian immigrants to the United States in the past, their lives have become more difficult and their aspirations diminished. Some have left California altogether and left behind their American dreams for their home countries.
They are not only the first wave of Asian immigrants to California, but they are also the first generation of those immigrants to be born and raised in the United States. Because of this, the Asian immigrant population in California has a much different makeup from other Asian immigrant populations, such as in the 1980 and 1990s.
Asians in Northern and Central California are more likely to be Asian immigrants than Asian Americans in Southern California.
Some have moved to cities because the suburbs were not yet developed. They started out in the 1960s and 1970s in rural communities where there was no such thing as the “Asian-American” community and no Asian immigrant population.
For those who did not want to live in the suburbs, the new Asian immigrants began to gravitate to cities. And as those cities became more diverse, they began to welcome the first generation of Asian immigrants in the United States.
They also became a large part of the Asian immigrant population.
From the 1980s to 2004, more than 4,000 Asian immigrants settled in Los Angeles County cities, with most settling in the suburbs. Today, there are 20,000 Asian immigrants in Los Angeles County cities and a growing Asian immigrant population of almost 100,000 in suburbs.
In these suburban areas, Asians