It should be no surprise by now where the largest populations of South Asians are.  According to the report, metropolitan areas with the largest South Asian populations are New York City, Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco-Oakland and in over the past ten years, the Washington DC metropolitan area overtook the Los Angeles metropolitan area as the area with the third largest South Asian population.

But to me what was surprising to see is where exactly the growing South Asian populations live (as seen in the map above). The South Asian population grew the most in Charlotte, NC, increasing 187% over the past ten years. This was followed by Phoenix; Richmond VA; Raleigh, NC, San Antonio, Seattle, and Stockton, CA; Jacksonville, FL; Harrisburg, PA; and Las Vegas. Among the ten fastest growing South Asian metropolitan areas, only the Seattle and Phoenix metropolitan areas had more than 30,000 South Asians in 2010, while the smallest of the top 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas was the Harrisburg, PA metropolitan area with close to 6,500 South Asians. These are all regions without a significant history of South Asian American migration and I wonder what has happened in these regions that led to such a rapid growth in these cities.

And of course, as the electoral geek of Sepia Mutiny (sorry Abhi), I was most impressed by the new data reflecting the updated voting power of the South Asian community.

• South Asians are becoming an increasingly powerful segment of the American electorate – with U.S. citizens of voting age increasing between 100% and 414% since 2000.
• The population of non-U.S. citizens of voting age has also increased since 2000. While not currently eligible to vote, this population includes green card holders who may become U.S. citizens in the future and will add to the growing electorate.

In addition to the data listed above, there are the additional counties that now have South Asian bilingual needs as reported on the APALC report I blogged about here.

• Los Angeles County, California – Asian-Indian
• Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) – Asian-Indian
• Queens County, New York – Asian-Indian
• Hamtramck City, Michigan – Bangladeshi

To me, this civic engagement data is particularly important because despite this incredible growth in voting population in the South Asian community, there still does not exist one civic engagement/electoral organization building on the power of these voters. We have South Asian candidates running for office, people donating a ton of money to them via PACs, Indian-American lobbying organizations and policy advocacy organizations. But since South Asian American Voting Youth dissolved in 2008, there hasn’t been another national organization to capitalize on this non-partisan political niche. With the 2012 elections right around the corner and such an incredible growth in South Asian voting and non-voting populations, it’s time that the community gets galvanized to build upon these numbers. And it’s time for the South Asian community to fund and support these community efforts.

Please check out the report from SAALT & AAF by clicking on this link and spread the report out to key stakeholders that will be interested in these demographic numbers. Though a great effort, I’m interested to see how else the South Asian community data disaggregated by regions will look like and what else that data will tell us, particularly around multilingual, class, and income levels. If you are working on crunching the Census data for the Desi community, please do send it my way!

The report covers a wide range of topics such immigration, employment, housing and health. I would like to address in particular the population and civic engagement components that the report discovered in the South Asian community. One of the largest findings is that South Asians are the fastest growing Asian American community; the Indian population is at 3,183,063; the Pakistani population is at 409,163; Bangladeshi population at 147,300; Nepalese population at 59,490; Sri Lankan population at 45,381; and Bhutanese population at 19,439. That brings the South Asian American population close to 4 million with an exact total of 3,863,836 people. The Bangladeshi and Pakistani population literally doubled between 2000 and 2010.

The citizenship rate of foreign-born Asian Americans has also increased, from 50% in 2000 to 57% now. India has one of the greatest number of legal permanent residents eligible to become citizens and 57% of foreign-born Pakistanis have been naturalized. Yet, there are still language and cost barriers associated with citizenship and this remains a hurdle to full civic engagement.

These results and more can be found in the report. But as an electoral advocate, these findings are the most fascinating in how they pertain to civic engagement. As part of the federal Voting Rights Act, Section 203 requires bilingual voting assistance to be required to particular populations, based on Census data. 2002 was the last time an assessment was determined. Due to the results of the 2010 Census, Section 203 now covers Asian American populations located in 22 counties, boroughs, census areas or cities, including 17 new population areas. For the first time South Asian languages are included as a mandatory language for particular counties. The South Asian  jurisdictions covered by Section 203 now include:

• Los Angeles County, California – Asian-Indian
• Cook County, Illinois (Chicago) – Asian-Indian
• Queens County, New York – Asian-Indian
• Hamtramck City, Michigan – Bangladeshi

As can be inferred from the above charts, the increase in South Asian populations as well as the higher proportion of naturalized South Asians means that more South Asian Americans are eligible to vote. Providing bilingual assistance will allow the South Asian community to get fully engaged in a process which they wouldn’t have otherwise.

As we know, “Asian-Indian” isn’t a language. So what language will be chosen in these three counties? In all likelihood, the language will be Hindi though it will be up to the local governing body (such as the Registrar of Voters office) to make the final decision. I’m sure there will also be local community organizations that will be advocating on language preferences for the community. What I was intrigued by was how the largely Punjabi city of Yuba City, CA (13.7% of total population is Asian-Indian) or the silicon-ed Fremont, CA (18.1% of total population is Asian-Indian) were not included in Section 203. For more on California specific Asian Indian population, you can check out the google map here. Though I know Section 203 is focused around “limited English proficiency” which is slightly different than straight “race/ethnic population”, I wonder how accurate people report their language capabilities in Census surveys.

There’s a lot more in the report that I’ve yet to dig into – but being the nerd that I am, I can’t wait. I’m really interested to see how else these results will potentially influence policy affecting South Asian Americans (such as with redistricting). Mutineers, what are your thoughts on the ethnic/race specific data pulled from the 2010 Census?

* All chart images are from A Community of Contrasts; Asian Americans in the United States: 2011 report.