Asian American leaders worry that U.S. Census Bureau’s refusal to reclassify groups could harm access to resources

A group of Asian American lawmakers in Minnesota wrote a letter last year to U.S. Census Bureau Director Robert Santos, asking that the bureau “expeditiously recategorize” the Hmong, Lahu, and Tai Dam as Southeast Asians and the Urdu as South Asians.

Santos came to Minnesota last month specifically because of those concerns, and said the Census Bureau recognized that those census classifications “do not align with how many members of these communities in the United States identify.”

However, the Census Bureau has decided not to revisit its 2020 U.S. census classifications. According to Santos, the Bureau considered changing the classifications but ultimately decided it couldn’t.

“Our resources require us to be focused on preparations for the 2030 census,” Santos said, and retabulating the 2020 Census at this point would result in discrepancies with other official tabulations.

“What we really want is a correction, and we keep getting told, ‘It’s not going to happen, it can’t happen,’” said May yer Thao, president and CEO of the Hmong American Partnership in St. Paul. “So that’s very frustrating for those of us who have been working on it for over a year and a half now.”

Leading up to the 2020 federal census, the Bureau decided to classify Hmong people as “East Asian” and Lahu, Tai Dam and Urdu speakers as “Other Asian.” Members of each group said the classifications didn’t accurately reflect their lived experiences and risked misleading policymakers, who rely on census data to help them decide where and how to allocate resources.

Though the Hmong, Lahu and Tai Dam have roots in China, they came to the United States mainly as refugees from Southeast Asian countries during and after the Vietnam War. They struggle with economic insecurity at higher rates than East Asian groups that have been in the U.S. longer.

The economic effect of the federal census is enormous. Hundreds of federal assistance programs use census data to distribute billions of dollars for items such as public housing and community development grants. States and counties distribute more money, some of it targeted to specific communities, including in Minnesota.

Thao said she appreciated that Santos and his team showed up in person to hear their concerns. But their unwillingness to revisit the 2020 classifications may have a significant effect, she said.

“If we are misclassified as East Asians, there’s very much a likelihood that we could potentially be losing out on resources that our community still needs,” Thao said.

Santos met at the State Capitol in late July with representatives from the Council for Minnesotans of African Heritage, the Minnesota Council on Latino Affairs, COPAL (Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action), Deaf Equity and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council, as well as a host of Hmong legislators and community members.

Santos became Census Bureau director in 2022 after a long career at the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He was not in charge of the process that determined classifications for the 2020 census.

Santos noted that the Census Bureau is planning on seeking broad input on its race and ethnicity code list and classifications in coming months, and is preparing to review the feedback it’s received on the regional classification of Asian groups.

In addition to the meetings in Minnesota, Santos said that he and his staff are meeting with Asian American community groups and leaders in Wisconsin and California, states that also are home to sizable Hmong communities.

“One of my key messages in Minnesota was that we are making plans for the 2030 Census even now,” Santos said. “There will be several distinct opportunities earlier in the decennial-planning decade — including this year — to gather community input to help inform decisions for future censuses and surveys.”

Thao said the Census Bureau hasn’t provided a timeline for when it expects to make a decision on classifications for the 2030 census, but added that she’s optimistic the issue will be addressed due to the community’s “relentless” advocacy.

The 2020 census marked the first time the Census Bureau released the data sets that provided disaggregated data for hundreds of racial or ethnic groups such as the Hmong, Urdu, Lahu, and Tai Dam, which were classified previously only as Asian.

Now, Thao said, the next step may be to do away with regional groupings like “Southeast Asian” altogether and instead just release more specific data on different ethnic groups like Hmong.

May Yang, senior manager of policy and partnerships at the Minnesota Council on Foundations, said the level of discussion between the Census Bureau and local stakeholders during the visit demonstrated the extent to which community members want to be involved in the Bureau’s work. “They have lots of ideas for how to make things culturally relevant,” she said.

Among the other issues brought up to Santos and his staff, members of Deaf Equity reiterated their request to add American Sign Language as a language to the census to ensure better data collection on Deaf communities. Other organizations strategized on how to ensure that historically under-resourced communities are counted in the next census.

Undercounts, like misclassifications, can affect where resources are directed. According to a 2018 report from Grassroots Solutions, a 7,123-person population decline across two north Minneapolis ZIP codes, whether the result of an undercount or not, cost Minnesota, Hennepin County and Minneapolis over $100 million in federal funding.

Thao said that, given the challenges they’re facing, advocacy work and expert input should be especially important to the census team.

“A lot of these folks are data people, and I don’t know that the lens they’re looking through is necessarily from a community level because they’re so analytical,” Thao said. “That’s just how they’re wired. So that’s where their community engagement comes into play.”

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This story comes to you from Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for a free newsletter to receive Sahan’s stories in your inbox.