The Asian American community in Pennsylvania has a rich and diverse history, marked by resilience, perseverance, and contributions to the state’s cultural fabric.
From the early waves of immigration to the present day, Asian Americans have played pivotal roles in shaping Pennsylvania’s landscape. Today, the Asian American communities in Pennsylvania continue to thrive, with vibrant cultural festivals, businesses, and organizations contributing to the state’s dynamic tapestry.
Looking to the future, Asian American communities in Pennsylvania are poised to make even greater strides, fostering a more inclusive future for generations to come.
Why We’re Proud Of Our Community
Pennsylvania’s Asian community is 604,000 people strong and has enormous potential.
We constitute roughly 4.6% of our state’s residents and are its fastest growing demographic. Pennsylvania’s Asian American population has doubled since 2000, and 26% of API voting age citizens are under 30. We’ve seen the impact of this population surge in our cities’ social fabric in numerous ways: Pittsburgh’s population would have declined without us and we now have such saturation in Philadelphia to ensure language access at the ballot box.
In 2020, we saw the Asian American vote spike to unprecedented levels.
Not only did Asian Americans have the highest vote-by-mail sign-up rate of any racial community in the Commonwealth, we had the second highest mail-in-ballot return rate. Through civic engagement and education, our community partner organizations doubled the Asian American vote share in Pennsylvania.
But our community pride doesn’t just stem from our civic engagement victories.
Philadelphia’s Chinatown has served as a safe haven to Asian Americans since its founding 150 years ago. It’s a place for Asian immigrants and their descendants to uphold ancestral heritage and pass on centuries of tradition, and a hard fought refuge from the racism and violence we’ve experienced since first immigrating to this country. In Philadelphia, that tradition includes decades of resistance, where we’ve faced one big development project after another, including the current proposed Sixers arena.
As we work to protect the neighborhoods and spaces where our communities currently live and gather, we are also working to honor and preserve our history.
The city of Pittsburgh destroyed much of the city’s Chinatown in the 1920s, but that has not stopped the community from taking pride in our history. In 2022, after 12 years of advocacy and work, the community celebrated when Pittsburgh’s Chinatown was officially recognized as a historic landmark.
And we show up for each other where our institutions continually fail our communities.
When Christian Hall, a Chinese American teenager experiencing a mental health crisis in Monroe County, PA in December 2020 was shot and killed by Pennsylvania State Troopers, our leaders and partner organizations reached out to the Hall family and began work to get justice for Christian’s preventable death. Together, we are educating our members and the public on how police and state violence impacts our Asian American communities and the necessity of language-accessible and culturally competent mental health support as an alternative to armed police officers.
The API Platform for PA is the first-ever statewide, policy platform of its kind, one that aims to reflect the issues most affecting our communities.
After conducting more than 1,500 community conversations in more than 15 languages across our communities in Pennsylvania in 2021 and 2022, we formed a policy platform representing the perspectives, values, and needs of our diverse Asian Pacific Islander communities in the commonwealth.
Community Resources
Community Resources Coming Soon!
Civic Engagement & Voter Resources
https://www.pavoterservices.pa.gov/Pages/VoterRegistrationApplication.aspx
Register to Vote using the Vietnamese form and returning it to your local election office:
https://www.vote.pa.
Register to Vote using the Chinese form and returning it to your local election office:
https://www.vote.pa.gov/Resources/Documents/Voter_Registration_Application_SimplifiedChinese.pdf
