Hong Kong Americans
Hong Kong Americans (Cantonese: 香港裔美國人、港裔美國人、美籍香港人、美港人), include Americans who are also Hong Kong residents who identify themselves as Hong Kongers (who see Hong Kong as their home and are culturally associated with Hong Kong, especially through descent, growth, birth, long term residence, or other types of deep affiliations with Hong Kong), Americans of Hong Kong ancestry, and also Americans who have Hong Kong parents.
Not to be confused with Americans in Hong Kong.
Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China and before that it was a British colony from 1841 until the Transfer of sovereignty to China in 1997.
Many of the Hong Kong Americans hold both United States citizenship and right of abode in Hong Kong. Other than the US passport, many of them also hold a HKSAR Passport or the British National (Overseas) passport.
Most of Hong Kong Americans were born in Hong Kong, United States, or Guangdong.
History[edit]
After the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, an influx of Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong immigrants settled in Chinatown, San Francisco, California, Chinatown, Los Angeles, California, and Chinatown, Manhattan, New York. In Chinatown neighborhoods, many Hong Kong immigrants opened businesses such as Chinese restaurants and supermarkets.[4][5][6][7]
During the 1980s and the 1990s, a large number of high-skilled Hong Kong immigrants settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, where many were employed by high-technology companies in Silicon Valley. Many of the Hong Kong immigrants in the Bay Area resided in suburban communities, such as Burlingame, South San Francisco, San Mateo, Fremont, and in the Richmond District and Sunset District in San Francisco. [8][9] Many also settled in the New York Metropolitan area.
Many Hong Kong immigrants also immigrated to Greater Los Angeles's San Gabriel Valley in the 1980s and 1990s, most of them settling in Monterey Park, Alhambra, San Gabriel, Temple City, and Rosemead.
Population[edit]
As of 2012, there are 219,231 people in the United States who are born in Hong Kong. 96,281 of people born in Hong Kong live in the state of California.[10] 39,523 of the people born in Hong Kong live in New York.[11] New Jersey, Texas and Washington have 9,487, 8,671, and 8,191 Hong Kong-born residents, respectively. There is also a sizable community of Hong Kongers in the Greater Boston Area, especially in Quincy, Massachusetts. Massachusetts has 7,464 residents who were born in Hong Kong.[12] All these numbers would have excluded those who were born elsewhere than Hong Kong (mainly the United States or Guangdong, China) as well as their descendants.