Asian American demographics by city

[CaliNative]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

One thing I've regularly wondered about -- why is the US so good at resettling refugees in rural/small town areas, compared to Canada. Like the Somalis and Hmong in Minneapolis, but tons of other examples too. You'll find of cases all over, from Seattle to Houston, from the Midwest to the South.

In Canada, the big issue is overcrowding immigrants and newcomers into the same expensive cities, and even when immigrants are settled into small towns, they leave and head for Toronto or Vancouver.

But in the US, it seems like this is less of a problem. Burmese, or Eritrean, Cambodian or Hmong refugees deciding to pack up and head to New York or LA or Chicago isn't as heavily talked about, but refugees in, say, Nova Scotia or somewhere, packing up and moving to the GTA is.

Ironically, the US seems to have more mobility among its domestic-born population than Canada (more people move and work between states than between provinces), yet refugee communities are really good at staying put and growing a local community so that kids and grandkids of small town 70s-era refugees are still around growing the community, not packed up and left for the nearest big metro.

All immigrants initially tend to cluster in a few cities where they can gain a foothold. Ethnic enclaves facilitate assistance within the group, and language issues are not a problem. Once the assimilation takes place, they move to new areas. Where the foothold is may just be a matter of chance. For example, when the Vietnamese refugees came to America in the mid 1970s, they were initially settled in camps on U.S. military bases, for example Camp Pendleton south of Orange County CA. It therefore was easy to resettle in suburban Orange County, and that area still probaby has the largest number of Vietnamese Americans.