Many of California’s Hmong immigrants arrived as refugees from war and genocide and have struggled, remaining one of the poorest ethnic groups in the state. By contrast, Taiwanese immigrants typically came to California with more money and education, and they now rank among the state’s most affluent groups.
About 70% of California’s Indian Americans older than 25 hold bachelor’s degrees, but that’s true for just 10% of California’s Laotian Americans. Differences like these are what motivated legislators to propose a bill that would have asked state colleges and universities and a health agency to collect more detailed data on at least a dozen specific Asian nationalities, rather than lumping them together in a single category.
Read more in the Los Angeles Times.