Los Angeles – Los Angeles County and Asian American/Pacific Islander (API) communities have both historically been hard to count during the Census – combined, the L.A. API community faces great challenges in ensuring an accurate count during Census 2010. Today, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and leaders from many API organizations joined together to urge Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders to fully participate in the upcoming Census.
In 2000, L.A. County accounted for approximately 35 percent of the California’s households that were undercounted, hard-to-count, or non-responsive. L.A. County had five times the non-response rate of San Diego County, which was the second-hardest county to collect data from during Census 2000. An undercount of any community will significantly affect distribution of government and other funding for the next decade, because such funds are heavily based on Census numbers.
“Funding for the basic services Angelenos rely on –schools, public safety, health care and transportation—are at stake,” Mayor Villaraigosa said. “We must mobilize our community to ensure a complete count of all residents, and the participation of Asians and Pacific Islanders is a crucial piece of getting our fair share for the city, county, and state.”
APIs are the fastest growing ethnic minority in Los Angeles County and face very different needs across different ethnic groups, making it urgently important to accurately count this specific demographic. Leading the effort locally to ensure an accurate count of APIs in Los Angeles is the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council (A3PCON), which is working in collaboration with organizations from 13 different API communities throughout the county (spanning diverse ethnic groups from Chinese and Korean to Thai, South Asian and Pacific Islander) as well as the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC).
APALC is spearheading the California Asian Pacific Islander 2010 Census Network (“API Count”), which is anchoring a network of seven regional organizations around the state, each one coordinating a grassroots network in its own region. Through API Count, APALC and its partners like A3PCON are reaching deep into API community statewide, to help ensure a full count of California’s APIs by conducting direct outreach and education and providing in-language support and materials specifically targeted to increase Census 2010 participation amongst the hardest-to-count API populations.
“The Asian and Pacific Islander community is very rich in its diversity,” said Executive Director Stewart Kwoh. “Each API community has its own unique challenges in the effort to outreach and educate people about the importance of participating in the Census. They may be concerned about how confidential their responses are, or how Census data is used. They may have distrust in the government, or may not understand how filling out their Census questionnaires can benefit them and their community. We believe it is essential to partner with organizations and leaders that have experience with the specific cultures and customs of each ethnicity to make our efforts effective.”
Activities organized by L.A. API Count network will include outreach efforts as well as work with city officials, complete count committees, and Census Bureau staff to ensure that Census efforts are linguistically and culturally accessible and that the API community is fully included.
“The Census Bureau is very fortunate to have community partners that have come together like API Count,” said James Christy, Regional Director of the Los Angeles Census Bureau office. “At the Census Bureau we realize that the API community may be concerned about the confidentiality and security of the information that they provide through the Census questionnaire. The Census is safe, easy, and important. The trusted community leaders in API Count are playing a critical role in helping us get the message out and are doing the outreach so that the hard-to-count population get counted.”
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