Let’s jump right into Asian heritage neighborhoods. As before, I’ll list the census tract that had the highest concentration of each heritage; the list is sorted by this concentration.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Chinese except Taiwanese | 611.02 | San Francisco | California | 88.8% | 1.57% |
The highest density Chinese neighborhood is Chinatown in San Francisco. Close behind are the three Chinatowns in New York: at the tip of Manhattan (the original Chinatown, near Five Points); in Queens (Flushing Chinatown, from the 1970s), and Brooklyn (starting in the 1980s):
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Filipino | 87.07 | Honolulu | Hawaii | 84.4% | 1.34% |
| Asian Indian | 141.59 | Dallas | Texas | 82% | 1.44% |
For Asian Indians, the tract in the Dallas-Forth Worth area tops the list, but close behind is a tract in Edison, New Jersey. The Dallas area saw Indian immigration start in the 1960s, then accelerate in the 90s. The Indian immigration in New Jersey is more recent, mostly starting in the 90s. There are plenty of other neighborhoods with a high concentration of Indians (across the nation, there are nearly 100 census tracts with 40% or more), but those two areas stand out.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Vietnamese | 889.04 | Orange | California | 76.1% | 0.69% |
| Japanese | 80.13 | Honolulu | Hawaii | 65.7% | 0.48% |
| Korean | 412 | Bergen | New Jersey | 62.6% | 0.6% |
The exodus after the fall of South Vietnam brought tens of thousands of Vietnamese to the US. For a variety of reasons, Orange County became the preferred destination. Hawaii dominates the list of Japanese enclaves – you have to get to 85th on the list before you find a tract outside of that state. As for Korean heritage, the three largest pockets are: 1) Palisades Park, New Jersey, 2) near downtown Los Angeles, and 3) the Fullerton area of Orange County, California. The LA “Koreatown” came first, in 1960s. The communities in New Jersey and Orange County took off in the 1990s.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Cambodian | 3117 | Middlesex | Massachusetts | 46.2% | 0.11% |
Historically, Lowell, Massachusetts has been a magnet for immigrants working its textile mills – Irish, Greek, French Canadian, and Portuguese. The city has a history of welcoming immigrants, which likely explains why Cambodians escaping the Khmer Rouge ended up here.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Burmese | 3810.03 | Marion | Indiana | 44.8% | 0.08% |
In the last 25 years of so, Indianapolis has become a magnet for the Chin people, an ethnic subgroup of Burmese. So much so, that an area in the southern part of the city is know as “Chindianapolis“.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Hmong | 307.03 | Ramsey | Minnesota | 39.3% | 0.1% |
Why Hmong in St. Paul, Minnesota? The best guess is that the state has active voluntary organizations, who, working the the US State department, settled Hmong fleeing Laos in the 1970s and 1980s. Also, in the early 80s the University of Minnesota established farming programs for Hmong. That was enough to kickstart the immigration to this area.
| Heritage | Tract | County | State | Pct | National |
| Bangladeshi | 454 | Queens | New York | 35.9% | 0.08% |
| Nepalese | 141.46 | Dallas | Texas | 35% | 0.07% |
| Pakistani | 66 | Hudson | New Jersey | 27.4% | 0.21% |
| Afghan | 62.03 | Sacramento | California | 26.6% | 0.06% |
There are actually two pockets of Bangladeshi in Queens, less than four miles apart.
With most immigration patterns, once a location is popular for a given heritage, it makes perfect sense why new immigrants would come there. But why it became popular in the first place, that’s a tougher question. For the Nepalese in Irving, Texas, this article suggests maybe the local college may have played a part.
And here we reach my arbitrary 20% cutoff. Next time, Black and Sub-Saharan African heritage.
