MPR: Faces of Minnesota: The Asian Population

Faces of Minnesota: The Asian Population
By Art Hughes, Minnesota Public Radio
March 29, 2001
Part of MPR's online coverage of Faces of Minnesota.

RealAudio

People of Asian decent now outnumber African-Americans in St. Paul, according to 2000 Census data. Nearly nine percent of Ramsey County's population is Asian. Many of the counties surrounding the Twin Cities also had significant growth in Asian populations in the past decade.

A FACE OF MINNESOTA
Yang Dao came to Minnesota - unable to speak English - from France, where he attended graduate school. Fighting in Southeast Asia twice forced him to leave Laos before he finally landed here. He laughs easily when he talks about teaching his Hmong children English using a French dictionary. He says it wasn't long before his kids were teaching him. Listen.

THE OVERALL POPULATION GROWTH RATES since 1990 in both the Twin Cities are in the modest single digits. But the rate of increase for Asians in Hennepin and Ramsey Counties hit at least 81 percent. Direct comparisons of racial data between the 1990 and 2000 census are difficult because of changes in how they are collected. If you add Asians, combined with another race, the percentage goes to 108 percent.

In St. Paul the total number of Asians increased to 35,000, making them the largest minority in the city. Among them is Yang Dao, assistant director in the multi-language communications office for the St. Paul Schools. He says Hmong and other Asians come to Minnesota because of good schools and abundant opportunity.

"Whoever wishes to work, he or she is able to find a job immediately in the state of Minnesota," he says.

Yang himself came to Minnesota - unable to speak English - from France, where he attended graduate school. Fighting in Southeast Asia twice forced him to leave Laos before he finally landed here. He laughs easily when he talks about teaching his Hmong children English using a French dictionary. He says it wasn't long before his kids were teaching him. Yang says immigrants recognize Minnesota as a place of possiblity.

"The true reason is this: The local population in Minnesota has always been very, very welcoming," he says.

Yang says when he first started with St.Paul schools, the district had 8,000 Hmong students. Now it has 11,000.

State Demographer Tom Gillespy says Minnesota is not a primary destination for Asian immigrants, but many are moving here from other parts of the country.

"There's no longer as much immigration there as it is secondary migration from other areas such as California; from Fresno area a couple years ago there was a big change," he says.

BY THE NUMBERS
See a mapshowing the Asian population in Minnesota.

Asians outnumber African-Americans in all but 30 of Minnesota's 87 counties. Only two counties outside the Twin Cities-metro area have Asian populations that exceed four percent of all residents. Olmsted County's Asians make up 4.3 percent of the population, and Nobles County in southwestern Minnesota, which saw an overall increase of just over 700 people in the past 10 years, is now 4.1 percent Asian.

Many of the state's strongest growing counties also saw significant increases among Asians. Since 1990, the number of Asian people in Scott County grew at least 264 percent - to nearly 2,000 individuals.

The census showed that several counties with marginal Asian populations to begin with, lost numbers. Stevens, Pipestone, Fillmore, Kochiching, Wilkin and Jackson Counties all had noticable declines in the number of people of Asian descent.

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