Asian And Pacific Islander American Groups Join Together; Urge Governor To Sign AB 295

A coalition of Asian and Pacific Islander American (APIA) groups today joined Assemblymember Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) to urge the Governor to sign Lieu’s AB 295, which would add 10 APIA groups to the list of ethnicities tracked by the State of California.  The legislative proposal has brought together a long list of supporters, including organizations representing the many diverse APIA ethnic groups and community leaders

“For too long, the Asian and Pacific Islander American Communities have been seen as one monolithic group,” Lieu said.  “This masks the true diversity of our cultures, and can cloud our ability to see very serious problems facing some of our people.”

Under current law, the State of California tracks data for 11 APIA groups, forcing others to mark “Other Asian.”  The Federal US Census, however, tracks data for 21 separate APIA ethnicities.  Many of the communities included in this aggregated data suffer from serious educational, health, and employment problems.  But resources are never targeted to them, because they’re invisible to the State.

Assembly Member Ted Lieu, 53rd Assembly District was joined at this morning’s press conference by Dr. Ninez Ponce, Associate Professor, UCLA Dept. of Health Services; Vaka Faletau, Tongan American Youth Foundation; Gautam Dutta, Public Policy Chair, South Asian Bar Association; and Amone Bounkhoun, President, UCLA Thai Smakom.

“This isn’t just good for the APIA Communities, this is good government,” Lieu added.  “With better data we will be able to target limited public resources to where they’re needed most.  I honestly believe that this will make our government programs cheaper and more effective.”

Since AB 295 was introduced, it has been joined by a separate effort, the “Count Me In” Campaign, organized at UCLA.  This campaign calls on the UC Board of Regents to track additional APIA ethnic groups in their data collection.  Members of the “Count Me In” Campaign joined Assemblymember Lieu at the press conference this morning.