Asian American

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) defines "Asians" as people having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, or the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

According to the US Census Bureau, on the 2010 Census, the Asian population category includes people who indicated their race(s) as “Asian” or reported entries such as “Asian Indian,” “Chinese,” “Filipino,” “Korean,” “Japanese,” and “Vietnamese” or provided other detailed Asian responses.

In 2011, the population of Asians, including those of more than one race, was estimated at 18.2 million in the U.S. population.

In 2010, those who identified themselves only as Asianconstituted approximately 4.8 percent of the American population—14.7 million individuals.

Jerry Jang, co-founder of Yahoo.

The three largest Asian groups in the United States in 2011 were Chinese (4 million)(except Taiwanese descent),Filipinos (3.4 million), and Asian Indians (3.2 million). These were followed by Vietnamese (1.9 million), Koreans (1.7 million) and Japanese (1.3 million).

The Census Bureau projects that by the year 2050, there will be more than 40.6 million Asians living in the United States, comprising 9.2 percent of the total U.S. population.

Jeremy Lin, Los Angeles Lakers basketball player.

The Asian population is represented throughout the country. States with the largest Asian populations (including those with more than one race) in 2011 were California (5.8 million)and New York (1.7 million). Hawaii had the largest concentration or percentage of the total population as Asians (57% of Hawaiian population reported being of Asian descent(including those of more than one race)).

Asians have a long history in the United States:

Ever since Chinese sought out the "Gold Mountain" in the California gold rush, Asians have been coming to America in significant numbers. Once America opened its doors—although at times halfheartedly or reluctantly—to Asianimmigration, Americans of Asian descent experienced lives as diverse as their backgrounds. Many live in communities with such names as Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Tokyo, and Little Saigon. From western railroads to New York City's Chinatown, from Alaskan canneries to hospitals in New York and New Jersey, from California's Silicon Valley assembly lines to high-technology laboratories of Route 128 in Massachusetts—people of Asian descent have contributed much to the building of society and the development of culture in America.

Chinese workers working in the railroad.

Chinese and Filipino mariners of the Spanish galleons jumped ship at Acapulco during the 1600s, and this may have initiated the first immigration toward what would become the United States. Filipinos made their way to present-day Louisiana and established settlements in the Barataria Bay area. The first wave of migration began in the mid-nineteenth century with the arrival of 195 Chinese contract laborers in Hawaii and more than 20 thousand Chinese in California. Gold is what drew Chinese to California in 1848, and work in the sugar plantations attracted Chinese contract laborers to Hawaii beginning in 1851, thanks largely to the efforts of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. The Chinese were followed by 149 Japanese laborers shipped to Hawaii in 1868 and dozens of Japanese seeking their fortunes in California to work in the Wakamatsu Tea and Silk Colony. Large numbers of Japanese laborers, contracted under the Irwin Convention, came to Hawaii in 1885 and continued to do so until 1894. The newcomers were welcomed coldly in other parts. The 1878 ruling in the case of Ah Yup determined the ineligibility of Chinese for citizenship. In 1894 the circuit court in Massachusetts confirmed the ineligibility of the Japanese for U.S. citizenship; this finding did not, however, prevent Shinsei Kaneko from becoming the first to be naturalized in California in 1896.

My sources:

http://www.cdc.gov/minorityhealth/populations/REMP/asian.html

http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/view?aid=384&from=search&query=asian%20american&link=search%3Freturn%3D1%26query%3Dasian%2520american%26section%3Ddocument%26doctype%3Dall