CSB Grad featured in Star Tribune story

Asians, whites nearly even in earnings:

Educated Hmong and Indian immigrants are driving the success of Asians in Minnesota, according to a census report

By David Peterson, (Star Tribune, Nov. 13, 2006)

At the same time, Asians from India, with household incomes nearly twice as high as Americans as a group, are growing rapidly in number. 

That group includes people like Radhika Lal Snyder, who chose the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minn., out of a book in the late 1990s from her home near New Delhi, and now works as an analyst for Target Corporation in Minneapolis. There's also Aneet Kumar, who works down the street as a certified public accountant at Xcel Energy Corporate Finance and who has noticed growing clusters of his countrymen at companies like American Express and Wells Fargo.

 "We used to have to buy some of the groceries we liked on trips to Chicago," he said. "Now there are eight or nine places we can go right here."

 In almost every state with a substantial Asian population, Asians earn more than whites. Until recently, the exceptions were Minnesota and Wisconsin, two states with major Hmong concentrations. Asians in Wisconsin still earn markedly less than whites.

The Hmong began arriving in force in the 1970s, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. They were allies of the CIA during the war, and were promised resettlement and assistance if the other side prevailed. More than other Southeast Asians, they had been a rural people with little schooling.

"Thirty years ago, when we entered this country, there was one Hmong Ph.D. in the entire world," said Lee Pao Xiong, who now directs the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul. "Now we have lots of Hmong Ph.D.'s and medical doctors." 

Hmong families of eight to 12 children were common. Partly for that reason, per capita income was at rock bottom for the first couple of decades in America. Parents often were on welfare or held low-status jobs, while kids were not yet in the workforce. 

Today that's changing -- fast. Krysti Yang, 32, working as a receptionist for her husband, is typical of many of those interviewed: She comes from a family of nine, the youngest now 13 and the eldest, 38. 

"Two of my brothers co-own Avis franchises in Maplewood and Brooklyn Park," she said. "Almost all of the kids have at least a bachelor's degree." 

It's still more common for the Hmong to hold factory and service jobs, the Census figures indicate, but they're earning a lot more than they did while they were in school. 

Asians drew statistically even with whites in Minnesota in 2005 in median household income, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey found. Per capita income is still lower than that of whites because Asian families are bigger and extended families are likelier to live together. And poverty rates are higher, partly due to the many older people with modest skills. 

Most other communities of color aren't doing as well as Asians. Whatever success they are experiencing is being hidden in official figures by large numbers of recent arrivals who are pulling down the averages. 

'African American' category 

More perhaps than in any other state, for instance, the statistical category "African American" in Minnesota is now distorted by the fact that more than 50,000 are immigrants or the children of immigrants. All but a handful have arrived in the past 15 years. 

The statistics suggest that the most recent arrivals are the least positioned to do well economically at first: The college graduation rate for African immigrants in Minnesota, for instance, has fallen since 2000.  

The reason is that the most recent arrivals have been in refugee camps for years, disconnected from formal schooling, said Hussein Samatar, a Somali immigrant who is now executive director of the African Development Center of Minnesota in Minneapolis. 

"They are extremely less educated than those who came earlier," he said. "I graduated from college four days before the [Somalian Civil] war began. Those who were even one or two years younger than I was were stuck." 

He worries that, after Sept. 11, there is a chillier attitude toward immigrants. "We're a new community that needs help to help themselves," he said.

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