Asian Americans largest minority in Plano Texas

Excerpts from the Dallas Morning News article, More Asians calling northern Plano home: Ethnic market becomes a social hub for city’s largest minority group

Asians eclipsed Latinos as Plano’s largest minority group nearly a decade ago, and in 2005 they made up 16 percent of the city’s population. That’s up from about 10 percent in 2000 and 4 percent in 1990. Nationally, the Asian population increased to 4.3 percent from 2.9 percent during that period.

Many of Plano’s approximately 36,000 Asians live in the city’s north-central subdivisions – an area bordered by McDermott Road to the north, Legacy Drive to the south, Central Expressway to the east and Preston Road to the west – where about one in four residents identified themselves as Asian during the last census.

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The data shows that Plano’s Asian population, at 16 percent, is higher than the 13.6 percent in Richardson, a city known for its array of ethnic markets and neighborhoods.

“I saw the trend, the move to the north,” said Mr. Chen, who still lives in Richardson.

Like the population at large, Asian-Americans have flocked to brisk-growing suburbs in search of good schools, more space and a lower cost of living, said Melany de la Cruz, assistant director of the Asian American Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Sun Belt suburbs like Plano, Allen, Frisco and McKinney, she said, have replaced traditional immigrant gateways such as New York and Los Angeles, in part, because newer generations of immigrants have grown more comfortable with America’s heartland.

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