I'm not sure if I agree with this. CA seems to have tons of working class Asians. I mean, half of northern OC and much of the IE is working-middle class Asian, usually mixed in with Mexican areas. Also, heavily Asian places in the Bay Area (East Bay, particularly) are an Asian-Hispanic working class mix.

NYC Asians may have slightly lower educational attainment/income because a higher proportion of NYC Asians are first generation immigrant. But comparing immigrant-to-immigrant I doubt there's a difference. NYC has a ton of first generation Asian immigrants, even compared to LA.

The Torontonians-to-New Yorkers comparison has got me wondering -- who's ethnic minorities are socioeconomically better off -- the diverse parts of the GTA or NYC metro?

If you were someone from a poor country (Pakistan, Guyana, Jamaica), I'm wondering if you're more likely better off joining your relatives in Queens, the Bronx, even parts of New Jersey in the US, or Scarborough, Brampton, Markham in Canada.

On the one hand the US is clearly often the first choice for immigrants, but on the other hand, NYC is a pretty competitive place and probably more hardscrabble than the economically smaller (but still obviously diverse) GTA.

But you previously mentioned that parts of NYC (like Queens) are an outlier so much so that Asian-Americans are poorer than other minorities like African Americans and Hispanics. I can't imagine that scenario to be the case in many Californian cities.

How does the non-immigrant Asian-American socio-economic status compare between the NY'ers and Californians (second generation and later)?

The black population in Queens is fairly prosperous. Queens doesn't have a big AA population, and it tends to be Caribbean second-third generation civil servants. They're homeowners living in semi-suburban surroundings. City and transit jobs in NYC pay very well. I don't think CA has a West Indian population, anywhere.

Also, there are some black areas of LA that have pretty high incomes, probably higher than Asian parts of the SGV and places in Northern OC. Baldwin Hills, Ladera Heights and the like.

Black Californians seem to be much more domestic migrants (African Americans from the US South from the past generations) than immigrants. It seems like black immigrants seem to prefer the East coast (eg. NYC, Miami) over the West (maybe with the East Africans in Seattle an exception). Though California is a big immigration magnet still for many groups of Asians and Hispanics, Africans/Caribbeans don't choose it as much. Even places like Texas are known for African immigrants like Nigerians more than CA.

I wonder if that's just a geography thing (NYC and Miami on the East coast closer to the West Indies, Caribbean, even west Africa), while California traditionally had more Asians (east across the Pacific) and Hispanics (the Mexican connection south of the border).

For some reason, whites and blacks moving to California seem to be "rooted in other parts of the US" through domestic migration (eg. African Americans from the Great Migrations, Midwestern Protestants to LA), with few black or white immigrants (both recently and comparatively in the past few generations) relative to the East coast. I know California historically had many people with Irish pride, but from my perception (maybe I'm wrong) most white and black Californians seem like they don't identify with an ethnicity the way east coasters do (eg. "I'm Italian", "I'm Greek" for white Chicagoans or NY'ers, or "I'm Haitian", "Jamaican" etc. for black NY'ers).

Does a working class Asian American community exist in southern/sunbelt cities? From what I've heard, Houston, Atlanta, even places like Las Vegas, Phoenix etc. are growing in Asian population (though obviously in some of these cases, Asians aren't the largest racial/ethnic minority in raw numbers). Small towns in those areas don't seem to have a large Asian presence but some are growing in bigger cities in the areas and in college towns (and if we're talking immigrants, some are refugees like Vietnamese in Houston, Louisiana historically the past few decades, and even farther back the Mississippi Delta Chinese etc.)

But I have no idea if it's well off Asian Americans or Asian immigrants directly moving to the sunbelt or not relative to those like NY or CA, perhaps Asian Americans already in expensive areas like those states moving away domestically to the Sunbelt could be a factor.

San Francisco had sizeable Irish and Italian populations, but European ethnicity is not all visible there in the way you'll find in the Northeast. L.A. whites were never that "ethnic", historically it had a lot of Midwestern Protestants who dominated the city for years.

Why is that? Colonial stock (Anglo) white Americans were the ones who were more frontiers-oriented (relative to immigrants who settled closer to their gateway cities), making it to California?

But other parts of the American West clearly had more direct European influence like Germans in Texas, Scandinavians in the Upper Midwest/Plains, Dakotas, even Mormon converts from across the Atlantic in Utah. Even in the PNW, you got Scandinavian influence.

Why'd the 19th/20th century immigrant European influence skip out SoCal?

There is great variation among Asian immigrants. Generally Chinese and Indians are professional class, Filipinos and Southeast Asians are more working class. In other words the class composition of the aggregate Asian category depends on the makeup of the wider Asian American population.

Seems like country of origin explains a lot of socio-economic difference for the Asian American aggregate category.

But not as much in Canada, right? In Canada, Chinese or South Asian alike could be working class or professional class in Toronto or Vancouver.

For Asian Canadians, they make up such a large share of the big metros that there isn't only one socioeconomic stereotype associated with even one place of origin -- you can have the nouveau-riche McMansion owned by a mainland Chinese immigrant or a poor "towers-in-the-park" rented by a Chinese immigrant. You can have the professional South Asian doctor or engineer or the South Asian grocery store clerk or mall security guard.

I feel like relative to the US, Torontonians and Vancouverites have a much reduced "model minority" stereotype (it's still there, no doubt but weaker), since they're much more likely to encounter some Asian guy driving the bus, or cleaning the windows or something to stereotype them as "all" professional. It's something I've noticed comparing the two countries' Asian population. Maybe NY'ers are like Torontonians and Vancouverites in being used to both rich and poor Asians alike.

And in California where working class Asians are ubiquitous.

College degree (Asian Americans)

Atlanta 56.2%
Boston 62.2%
Chicago 65.1%
Detroit 64.6%
Houston 57.4%
Los Angeles 53.1%
New York 53.1%
Philadelphia 57.3%
San Francisco 54.1%
Seattle 54%
Washington 65%

Interesting how it's high in the Midwest.

For Asian Americans, it seems like educational attainment is actually higher where there's fewer of them, because fewer means they're more highly selected in moving there (whether from abroad or domestically).

Is that only true for Asians or for other groups too?

Like, are black or Hispanic Americans' educational attainments higher in places where they are a smaller minority, because those who self-selected to willingly move to places where they are a minority are often the educated? (For many Black Americans, selectivity in migrating to places where there are few blacks might be more domestic migration, unlike the effect for many Asian Americans and maybe for Hispanic Americans who became Americans by directly migrating there from abroad, but I wonder if the principle applies).

Seems like for Black Americans, the places with strong educational attainment or socio-economic status might be places with more of their community around, like Washington, and Atlanta.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...blacks/432099/

But I think it could be that Washington has all-around high educational attainment for all groups.

Delete.

Yes, in the U.S. I would guess that relative Asian educational attainment + relative income/wealth is negatively correlated with relative % Asian. In other words, places like Toledo and Tulsa will have small, highly educated professional populations, while the big gateway cities on the coasts will have a large spectrum of education/income/wealth.

It's probably because Asians are only drawn to places like Toledo for specialized employment, like recruited by a hospital, university, or technical position. They aren't otherwise natural draws.
I think for immigrants, possibly. Anecdotal, but there seem to be lots of Latin American engineers working in the Detroit auto industry. Highly educated people from poorer countries are drawn to professional opportunities in the U.S., wherever the location. You can live very well as an doctor or managerial level engineer in Toledo, but many similarly educated Americans flock to more desirable metros.

Yeah, Washington is a special case. Everyone needs a degree there. The govt. jobs all require at least a bachelors, and frequently masters.

I've noticed looking at race/income maps of Los Angeles that basically all of the remaining black neighborhoods (which basically run in a line from Baldwin Hills South/Southwest to the area around CSU-Dominguez) are wealthier than the Hispanic neighborhoods surrounding them - with some bordering on upper-middle class. It seems like in the case of Los Angeles black flight is basically exclusively poor black flight, and in another generation or so the remaining black population of LA will be almost entirely upper-middle class.

It’s not surprising if you’ve been anywhere in the Midwest recently. Outbound migration of working class people is high. That said, I think Illinois and Minnesota are the only two Midwestern states not experiencing “brain drain.”