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HOUSTON AREA ASIAN SURVEY: DIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATION AMONG ASIANS IN HOUSTON February 2013 Kinder Institute for Urban Research Rice University, MS 208 6100 Main Street Houston, TX 77005 Telephone: (713) 348-4132 http://www.kinder.rice.edu For additional copies of this publication and for further information, please contact the Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research at [email protected]. Copyright © 2013 by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. All rights reserved. On the Cover: Clockwise from top, left - “George Fujimoto,” “Ratna G. Sarkar,” “Rathna Kumar,” “Rachel Soyon Otto,” “Eric Shin” and “Huan Le.” All photos courtesy of the Houston Asian American Archives – Chao Center for Asian Studies, Woodson Research Center, Rice University. *The copyright holder for this material is either unknown or unable to be found. This material is being made available by Rice University for non-profit educational use under the Fair Use Section of US Copyright Law. This digital version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. DIVERSITY AND TRANSFORMATION AMONG ASIANS IN HOUSTON: Findings from the Kinder Institute’s Houston Area Asian Survey (1995, 2002, 2011) By Stephen L. Klineberg, Principal Investigator Co-Director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research Jie Wu, Research Project Manager Houston AREA Asian Survey SPonsors Asia Society of Texas Center Dr. and Mrs. George C. Yang / Asia Chemical Corporation Chinese Community Center Southern News Group Mr. Barry D. Warner / Saigon Tex News Ms. Grace Lynn Mr. David Leebron and Ms. Y. Ping Sun Thanks also to the following for their support of the Houston Area Asian Survey research effort: Gordon Quan, Donna Cole, Dr. Long S. Le, Dr. Beverly Gor, Glen Gondo, Dr. Patrick Leung, Kim Szeto, Chao Center for Asian Studies at Rice University, Rice University Office of Public Affairs, and the Woodson Research Center, Rice University Fondren Library. Special thanks to the Asia Society of Texas Center, Richmond Printing, and Rogene Calvert and Mustafa Tameez of Outreach Strategists for facilitating the survey release. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION .........................................................................5 Houston, from 1900 to 1982 ..............................................................5 THE DEMOGRAPHIC REVOLUTION ........................................................6 Figure 1 The U.S. Census Figures for Harris County, 1960 to 2010 Figure 2 The Geographic Distribution of Harris County’s Ethnic Populations, from the U.S. Census of 1980 and of 2010 The Houston Numbers ...................................................................9 Figure 3 The U.S. Census Figures for Fort Bend and Montgomery Counties in 1990, 2000 and 2010 Figure 4 The Geographic Distribution of the Asian Populations in Harris and Fort Bend Counties, from the U.S. Census of 2010 The Immigration Reform Act of 1965 that Changed America. 11 Table 1 Harris County’s Asian Populations in the U.S. Census of 1990, 2000 and 2010 Conducting the Surveys .................................................................13 Figure 5 Harris County’s Asian Populations by Country of Origin, in the U.S. Census and in the Three Asian Surveys Combined ETHNIC DIFFERENCES IN MIGRATION PATTERNS, AGE AND EDUCATION .................15 Migration Patterns in Four Communities ..................................................16 Table 2 Age and Migration Patterns in Four Ethnic Communities Age and Ethnicity in Houston ............................................................16 Figure 6 Ethnicity by Age in Harris County, from the U.S. Census of 2010 A Bifurcated Immigration into a Bifurcated Economy .........................................18 Figure 7 Distributions by Education in Five Communities The “Model Minority” Myth ..............................................................19 DIFFERENCES IN LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES AMONG THE ASIAN COMMUNITIES ..............20 Figure 8 Distributions by Education among the Four Largest Asian Communities Income Differences among the Asians ......................................................21 Figure 9 Distributions by Household Income among the Four Largest Asian Communities The Primary Reasons for Coming to America ...............................................22 Figure 10 The Most Important Reasons Given for Immigrating to America among the Four Largest Asian Communities Still a “Glass Ceiling”? ..................................................................23 Figure 11 Distributions by Education and Income among Anglos and Asians in Harris County The Houston Area Asian Survey 3 Ethnic Divides in Perspectives on Immigration and Intergroup Relations .........................24 Figure 12 Distributions by Beliefs about Immigration and Ethnic Diversity among the Four Major Ethnic Communities Figure 13 The Average Ratings Given by Asians to Relations with the Three Other Ethnic Communities on the 10-Point Scale CONTRASTS IN RELIGIOUS AND POLITICAL PERSPECTIVES. .27 Figure 14 Distributions by Religious Preference in Four Asian Communities and among all Asians Political Affiliations ......................................................................28 Figure 15 Political Party Affiliation among Harris County’s Three Largest Asian Communities in 1995, 2002 and 2011 Figure 16 Distributions on Attitudes toward the Role of Government among the Four Major Ethnic Communities SOME FURTHER GLIMPSES INTO THE FUTURE ............................................32 The Changing Waves of Vietnamese Immigration .............................................32 Table 3 Selected Differences among Successive Streams of Vietnamese Immigrants The Rise of the Second Generation ..........................................................33 Figure 17 Distributions by Immigrant Generation and by Time in the U.S. among Harris County’s Asian Populations in 1995, 2002 and 2011 Figure 18 Distributions by Education and Income among the First and Second Generations of Asian Immigrants in Harris County SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ...........................................................36 REFERENCE ...............................................................................40 APPENDIX: DISTRIBUTIONS OF RESPONSES AMONG THE FOUR ETHNIC COMMUNITIES ON SELECTED ITEMS FROM THE KINDER INSTITUTE’S 2011 HOUSTON AREA SURVEY ......41 4 Kinder Institute for Urban Research INTRODUCTION This report presents some of the most important Drawing on the three Asian surveys spanning findings from three expanded versions, in 16 years (from 1995 to 2011), we document particular, of the Kinder Institute’s annual the distinctiveness of the Asian experience in “Houston Area Survey” (1982-2012). In all but comparison with Harris County’s Anglos, blacks one of the years between 1994 and 2012, the and Latinos; we explore the most important basic random samples of Harris County residents differences in life circumstances, attitudes have been expanded to reach large representative and beliefs among the area’s four largest Asian samples, numbering about 500 each, from the communities – Vietnamese, Indians/Pakistanis, county’s Anglo, African-American and Hispanic Chinese/Taiwanese and Filipinos; and we consider populations. In 1995, 2002 and 2011, generous some of the implications of the survey findings for additional contributions from the wider Houston the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. community made it possible to include equally large representative samples of the region’s Houston, from 1900 to 1982 varied Asian communities, with one-fourth of the interviews being conducted in Vietnamese, Throughout most of the twentieth century, and Cantonese, Mandarin or Korean. especially in the years after World War II, Houston was America’s quintessential “boomtown.” This In the pages that follow, we first describe the was basically a “one-horse” industrial city, with 82 remarkable demographic trends that have percent of all its primary-sector jobs tied to the oil transformed this Anglo-dominated biracial business, focused on refining hydrocarbons into southern city of 30 years ago into what is today the gasoline and petrochemicals and on servicing the single most ethnically diverse large metropolitan oil and gas industry (Thomas and Murray 1991). region in the country (Emerson et al. 2012). “Gene’s Food Market, Houston, Texas, interior view, 1958.” Photographer unknown. Gene & Hedy Lee Chinese language newspapers & photographs, 1976-1985 (MS 556), Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University.* *The copyright holder for this material is either unknown or unable to be found. This material is being made available by Rice University for non-profit educational use under the Fair Use Section of US Copyright Law. This digital version is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. The Houston Area Asian Survey 5 While the rest of the country was languishing in The global recession in that year had suppressed the national recession known as the “stagflating demand for oil just as new supplies were coming 70s,” Houston had already become the energy onto world markets. The price of Texas crude fell capital of the world, widely regarded as the from around $32 per barrel to less than $28 at the “Golden Buckle of the Sun Belt,” its prime end of 1983. The all-important rig count entered industrial products growing many times more into the “free fall” that took it from a peak of 4,530 valuable with no lessening of world demand. rigs drilling for oil on U.S. territory down