The Asian Invasion is on! Thanks to the wonders of the 2000 census, we can now know which of America's cities are the most Asian. This list ranks every city (defined as having a population over 100,000) with an Asian population of more than ten percent. Major cities (over 250,000 population) are boldfaced.

To make this node more all-American, Canada's largest Asian cities are also included. Joy! I'm currently looking into Latin American cities as well, so if you know of any numbers, by all means, /msg me.

These statistics count all people of Oriental, Indian Subcontinent, and Middle Eastern descent as "Asian." They do not incorporate the group called "Pacific Islander," which is mostly made up of ethnic Hawaiians. (Incorporating the Pacific Islander group would not skew these statistics too much, aside from making Honolulu the most Asian city in America by about fifteen percentage points.)

Canada is about 5% Asian, and the United States of America is currently around 3.3%. Peru and Brazil also have significant Asian populations—around one percent each.

THE LIST

  1. Honolulu, Hawaii (55.9%)
  2. Daly City, California (50.7%)
  3. Fremont, California (37.0%)
  4. Sunnyvale, California (32.3%)
  5. Garden Grove, California (30.9%)
  6. San Francisco, California (30.8%)
  7. Irvine, California (29.8%)
  8. Santa Clara, California (29.3%)
  9. Torrance, California (28.6%)
  10. Vancouver, British Columbia (27.3%)*
  11. San Jose, California (26.9%)
  12. Vallejo, California (24.2%)
  13. West Covina, California (22.7%)
  14. Toronto, Ontario (20.2%)*
  15. Stockton, California (19.9%)
  16. Hayward, California (19.0%)
  17. El Monte, California (18.5%)
  18. Queens, New York (17.6%)**
  19. Bellevue, Washington (17.4%)
  20. Sacramento, California (16.6%)
  21. Lowell, Massachusetts (16.5%)
  22. Berkeley, California (16.4%)
  23. Jersey City, New Jersey (16.2%)
  24. Fullerton, California (16.1%)
    Glendale, California (16.1%)
  25. Oakland, California (15.2%)
  26. San Diego, California (13.6%)
  27. Seattle, Washington (13.1%)
  28. St. Paul, Minnesota (12.4%)
  29. Anaheim, California (12.0%)
    Long Beach, California (12.0%)
  30. Ann Arbor, Michigan (11.9%)
  31. Cambridge, Massachusetts (11.9%)
  32. Norwalk, California (11.5%)
  33. Fresno, California (11.2%)
    Spring Valley, Nevada (11.2%)
  34. Chula Vista, California (11.0%)
  35. Carrollton, Texas (10.9%)
  36. Plano, Texas (10.2%)
  37. Los Angeles, California (10.0%)
    Pasadena, California (10.0%)
* Data for Canada is from 1996. Vancouver stats from http://www.cometobc.com/96popstats.html, Toronto stats from http://www.utoronto.ca/ethnicstudies/SOC336_Table1.pdf. Other very Asian cities in Canada include Calgary (9.0%) and Edmonton (7.4%).

** OK, so Queens isn't technically a city; it's a borough of New York City. However, the Census counts the boroughs separately along with the whole of NYC, so I have included the figure for Queens, just for shits and giggles.

U.S. census figures and national population estimates taken from The New York Times Almanac, 2003.

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