Freshman biology major Lok-Man Yeung and his family left Hong Kong when he was 6 years old and moved to Montgomery County. His parents moved to Maryland because his aunt and grandmother already lived there. His aunt and grandmother chose to live in Maryland because of its proximity to the district and its excellent job opportunities.
Like Yeung and his family, many Asian immigrants have chosen the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area as their new home.
Studies show that the D.C. area is poised to become the next California with a recent boom in the Asian Pacific American population. The increasing amount of Asian immigrants creates more ethnically and culturally diverse communities in the district.
“Lately, I noticed that Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese restaurants have mushroomed in this area,” said Paris Huang, a Taiwanese journalist from Voice of America in D.C. In 2006, Maryland established the Office of Asian-Pacific American Affairs within the governor’s Office of Community Initiatives.
“Even the police departments in Virginia and Maryland began to ask for Chinese police officers who can help deal with problems within Asian communities,” she said. “All of these evidence the gradual increase in Asian population in the two states.”
Statistics provided by the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau indicated a higher concentration, compared to the national average, of APAs in counties like Fairfax, Montgomery, Loudoun and Howard. Among the four, Fairfax had the highest APA population, with a total of 189,661 APA residents, followed by Montgomery’s 135,451 residents, Loudoun’s 46,033 and Howard’s 41,221.
Most people living in the district have been curious about this phenomenon and long for explanations. Sophomore physics major Eliot Bohr gave his observation on the trend. “These years, in some school districts of Virginia and Maryland, [non-Asian] Americans are no longer the majority” he said. “Take my high school, Centennial High, as an example; about 40 percent of the students there were Asians, meaning Asians dominated almost one-half of the entire student body.”
Bohr then surmised that a possible reason for this population growth is because the weather of the district area is very similar to that of Asian countries like China and Korea. “China and Korea both have four seasons all the year round, just like the D.C. area,” he said. “Therefore, Koreans and Chinese might find the weather here easier to adapt to than in other states, where the seasonal difference isn’t that obvious and the humidity is usually lower.”
Thomas Fan, an attorney specializing in immigration and who has lived in Potomac, Md., for over 20 years, provided another opinion.
“The Asians who came to the D.C. area in recent years are mostly from China and India,” Fan said. “China’s economic growth is amazing. Many Chinese have made so much money that they can go overseas to search for more opportunities, and of course these people’s top preferences are the big cities and well-developed regions in the country, including the D.C. area.”
Fan added that the area’s technological market appeals to those from India. “For Indian immigrants, most of them already have an information technology degree; they chose to stay in the two states because of Virginia’s thriving computer industry and Maryland’s good health care programs.”
