DarkRange55
I am Skynet
- Oct 15, 2023
- 1,853
Why are there so many Asians in WA?
Washington State is a lot closer to Asia for one thing, with many ports of entry for Asian people over the last two centuries.
In the 1970's the governor at the time, Dan Evans, agreed to take in about 30,000 Vietnamese refugees from the war, some of which had been living in tent camps at Camp Pendleton in CA. The California governor, Jerry Brown, had said that refugees weren't welcome in his state, to which Evans replied, "Re-read what it says on the base of the Statue of Liberty."
Since then Washington state, and particularly King County, have actively welcomed immigrants into its community.
Asians are clustered a lot more in coastal cities than the midwest. East coast, west coast and large cities in Texas. It has to do with the kind of jobs Asians do and where they are more of those jobs. They tend to work more as knowledge workers so have a higher penetration in Finance, Pharma and Tech. A HUGE influx of educated East Asian and Indian migrants for tech jobs since 2000. Walk through SLU.
Remember the railroads and infrastructure were built using Chinese immigrant labor (they were indentured labor who were not given status). Also, being the closest port to Asia, we were the landing point for multitudes of immigrants from Asia. The dispersion was higher prior to WWll. Then, of course, Japanese internment displaced people from their home and their lands and property were stolen. And then as Asians were becoming too prosperous and numerous they were red zoned and lawed out of the US. (I can do a whole thread on this for Seattle China and Japan Towns). Japantown is 2-6 blocks today vs 72 blocks in the 1930's, Japanese incarceration during WW2 destroyed the neighborhood. See: Historical Redlining.
Washington also has a pretty big population of the Hmong. They run many of the shops in the Pike Place Market.
(You wanna talk about people who have been kicked out of everywhere, and under appreciated that's one to Google).
They didn't just drive them out with violence, they created a playbook. "The Tacoma Method."
It was also adaptable to target other groups besides Asians. Hitler was a BIG fan.
en.wikipedia.org
Bellingham, Washington up north had a huge anti-asian issue as well.
The Yakima Valley in Washington once had a much larger Japanese population who were farmers. They had to strong Korean presence in small businesses - this has been replaced with Palestinians. The lower valley still had a strong Filipino presence - some of which mixed in the natives.
Fastest growing demographic is east Africans, most Chinatowns have a few Chinese business fronts but the inhabits are way less Chinese now.
Little Saigon in Seattle isn't part of the registered historical district and many of the Vietnamese community now are just the business owners, not the community inhabitants so Covid accelerated the gentrification. Historic district status: buildings must be built to very strict standards mirroring the surrounding buildings.
There has been a very strong Filipino presence in Seattle and they worked in a lot of canneries and things like that, but they didn't really have the same rights of ownership in the beginning so it was hard for them to actually have a nucleus to fully form around so we never got a Manilla-town but now there is a much stronger Filipino presence in the south of Seattle because that's where they were able to eventually end up.
You will usually find a lot of Filipinos living nearby military bases. Especially naval bases. In Washington State most Filipinos are clustered around Olympia/Tacoma (JBLM base area).
Less than 100 years ago, downtown Bellevue was all strawberry fields farmed by Japanese.
Washington State is a lot closer to Asia for one thing, with many ports of entry for Asian people over the last two centuries.
In the 1970's the governor at the time, Dan Evans, agreed to take in about 30,000 Vietnamese refugees from the war, some of which had been living in tent camps at Camp Pendleton in CA. The California governor, Jerry Brown, had said that refugees weren't welcome in his state, to which Evans replied, "Re-read what it says on the base of the Statue of Liberty."
Since then Washington state, and particularly King County, have actively welcomed immigrants into its community.
Asians are clustered a lot more in coastal cities than the midwest. East coast, west coast and large cities in Texas. It has to do with the kind of jobs Asians do and where they are more of those jobs. They tend to work more as knowledge workers so have a higher penetration in Finance, Pharma and Tech. A HUGE influx of educated East Asian and Indian migrants for tech jobs since 2000. Walk through SLU.
Remember the railroads and infrastructure were built using Chinese immigrant labor (they were indentured labor who were not given status). Also, being the closest port to Asia, we were the landing point for multitudes of immigrants from Asia. The dispersion was higher prior to WWll. Then, of course, Japanese internment displaced people from their home and their lands and property were stolen. And then as Asians were becoming too prosperous and numerous they were red zoned and lawed out of the US. (I can do a whole thread on this for Seattle China and Japan Towns). Japantown is 2-6 blocks today vs 72 blocks in the 1930's, Japanese incarceration during WW2 destroyed the neighborhood. See: Historical Redlining.
Washington also has a pretty big population of the Hmong. They run many of the shops in the Pike Place Market.
(You wanna talk about people who have been kicked out of everywhere, and under appreciated that's one to Google).
They didn't just drive them out with violence, they created a playbook. "The Tacoma Method."
It was also adaptable to target other groups besides Asians. Hitler was a BIG fan.
Tacoma riot of 1885 - Wikipedia
Bellingham, Washington up north had a huge anti-asian issue as well.
The Yakima Valley in Washington once had a much larger Japanese population who were farmers. They had to strong Korean presence in small businesses - this has been replaced with Palestinians. The lower valley still had a strong Filipino presence - some of which mixed in the natives.
Fastest growing demographic is east Africans, most Chinatowns have a few Chinese business fronts but the inhabits are way less Chinese now.
Little Saigon in Seattle isn't part of the registered historical district and many of the Vietnamese community now are just the business owners, not the community inhabitants so Covid accelerated the gentrification. Historic district status: buildings must be built to very strict standards mirroring the surrounding buildings.
There has been a very strong Filipino presence in Seattle and they worked in a lot of canneries and things like that, but they didn't really have the same rights of ownership in the beginning so it was hard for them to actually have a nucleus to fully form around so we never got a Manilla-town but now there is a much stronger Filipino presence in the south of Seattle because that's where they were able to eventually end up.
You will usually find a lot of Filipinos living nearby military bases. Especially naval bases. In Washington State most Filipinos are clustered around Olympia/Tacoma (JBLM base area).
Less than 100 years ago, downtown Bellevue was all strawberry fields farmed by Japanese.
