I am Latino and Asian. The population that ignores the census

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Asian Latinos are a growing ignored but demographic, new analysis shows

The number of people of both Latino and Asian American or Pacific Islander heritage has more than doubled in the last 20 years yet it remains an often ignored demographic, researchers at UCLA said Wednesday.

The UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute analyzed Census Bureau data within the last two decades. This included the 2000 census count as well as American Community Survey 5-year estimates on population characteristics from 2010 and 2022. Their analysis indicates people in the United States who identify as Latino and Asian American or Pacific Islander, or “AAPI Latinos,” rose from 350,000 to 886,000 in that period.

“We looked at people who identify themselves as Latino, who are of Latino ethnicity and then among all these people, we looked at when they fill out the race question, which race did they specify,” said Jie Zong, a senior research analyst. “If they specify they are of (an) Asian race, we consider these individuals AAPI and Latinos.”

This shows mixed-race Asians and Latinos are a more typical occurrence now, said Kevin Kandamby, a graduate student in Chicano/a and Central American Studies and a member of the research team. Part of the reasoning in pursuing this was because this population remains understudied.

“This is still a very niche topic. I’m happy to see that there’s more and more people now understanding that this community is growing,” said Kandamby, who is Mexican and Sri Lankan.

Asian or Pacific Islander Latinos primarily tended to be either Asian immigrants from Latin America or American-born citizens with both Latino and Asian American or Pacific Islander parents, the analysis found.

The population’s trajectory has roots in a lengthy history of Latino and Asian or Pacific Islander citizens interacting while meeting a labor demand in the U.S., according to Kandamby. There are records of Chinese immigrants, targeted by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, settling in towns on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border and Punjabi and Mexican farmworkers intermarrying in California’s Imperial Valley in the early 1900s.

In fact, grouped by state, a third of Asian Latino Americans resides in California, the data brief states. Texas and Hawaii are the next highest.

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