Glenn D. Magpantay is a staff attorney at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and director of their programs in census and voting rights. He has been at the forefront of advancing policy concerns regarding the impact of the census on Asian Americans and has worked with top officials in The White House, Congress, the Department of Commerce, and the Census Bureau. A graduate of New England School of Law, Mr. Magpantay has also served as a grassroots organizer on national healthcare reform and as the Executive Director of the Student Association of the State University of New York.

For more information on the results of the 2000 U.S. census, read the AsiaSource special report Asian Americans and Census 2000.

Let’s talk a little about the results of the 2000 census. Were there any surprises?

For us, there were not many. We work in the Asian American community on a regular basis, so I think we have a good sense of the community. I think the results did surprise a lot of people. We had been claiming for years that there is a growing South Asian population in Queens. The census only confirmed that the Indian population had grown by almost 100 percent. They’re settling not just in Flushing and Elmhurst, but also in Richmond Hill, Jamaica, Floral Park, and Astoria. That was tremendous. It was great for the census to confirm what we had been saying all along; that there are over 800,000 Asian Americans in New York City.

The one thing that was not surprising, but notable, is that seven out of ten Asian Americans in New York state live in just three New York City boroughs-- Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens.

There was one surprise, actually. We knew that New York state had the nation’s second largest Asian population in the country, but we found it surprising that New York City has the largest Asian population of all the municipalities in the country. Our Asian population is larger than that of San Francisco and Los Angeles. That is not something that we expected.

Was undercounting a big problem among some Asian American groups?

Absolutely. We had a census program for over three years because we wanted to make sure that Asian Americans would receive their fair share of resources and political representation. We found that there were a series of problems preventing Asian Americans from being counted in the census even if they tried. After walking around Chinatown, we found it was easier to apply for a credit card than it was to fill out a census form. Immigrants had to speak English to find a help center to get assistance in their own language. Our work included litigation at the Supreme Court, community outreach, and advocacy. We wanted to be sure that the data given to the census bureau would be confidential and shielded from the INS. We secured a very good opinion from the justice department insuring that confidentiality.

How can we get better results in the future?

We’re continuing our census project and our work with the Census Bureau, Congress, and the White House to use the most modern scientific techniques to insure accuracy. One idea that the scientific community has put out there to mitigate both the undercount and the overcount is the use of statistical sampling to correct the data. Long Island, Westchester, and some other suburban white communities have been overcounted and that’s unfair as well.

What do the results mean for Asian Americans? What type of resources will now become available?

We don’t know. Maybe none-- that’s a problem. We believe the census is a first step towards resources and representation, but we also believe that Asian Americans need to become citizens and registered voters. They need to speak out and express what their needs are. I said all along during the census that there’s no guarantee that these numbers will produce results unless we continue to be engaged in the process.

Do you think it’s more effective to organize Asian American communities along pan-Asian American lines or within specific ethnic communities?

Both need to be done. I don’t think you can do one and not do the other. We had a Chinese American census task force, an Indo-Caribbean census task force, a Korean American census task force, a Bangladesh committee, a Filipino committee, but we also had the Asian American census task force. We also had a coalition between Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans. And that’s just in New York. We also had a pan-Asian American meeting of people from different parts of the country. We also had a multiracial civil rights coalition.

What are the key issues that are important to Asian American communities across the board? What are the commonalities?

I think we all have an interest in an accurate count of Asian Americans. We all lose funding for our schools and teachers [without that accuracy]. We all have an interest in translated ballots and voting materials. We all have an interest in the redrawing of voting district boundaries in a way that meaningfully represents our communities. The only differentiating factor is race. We need to work both cross-culturally, with blacks and Latinos, and inter-ethnic ally with all Asian Americans. A lot of the issues we were dealing with were not unique to Asian Americans. Confidentiality of census information was not an issue that was unique to Asian Americans. Asians took the lead on that and we were the ones who put it out there, but we had tremendous support from the Latino community and the African and Caribbean communities. I not only went to Chinatown to do census work, I went to Bed-Stuy. I was also in Benson Hurst talking to Russian Jews and they were very interested in this issue as well.

I think we have common issues in education, health care, affordable housing, language access, anti-Asian discrimination in voting and in employment.

My final questions is: what challenges do you face in organizing the Asian American community?

I think that we need to work in a pan-Asian model. We need to represent all communities. We lose when we’re divided; we’re stronger when we’re united. When Korean, Chinese, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Filipino and Vietnamese communities stand together we are much more influential and powerful than when any one of us stand alone. There are certainly unique needs from each population and we try to cater to those needs, but as a community, particularly in the census and voting rights, we have to be united and we have to support each other.

Second, I think we need to work cross-racially. We do do that and try to encourage that. Asians, African Americans and Latinos work together for our common interests. The issue is not just to improve the quality of life for Asian Americans, but our goal is to improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers. Our work is the Asian piece.

The final challenge, in my own personal opinion, is that we need to figure out how we can get young people to contribute more to their community. There are so few people under 35 doing public interest work for Asian Americans on this side of the country. I see a lot of kids going to corporate law firms or [investment firms], and that’s fine; they should do well. The question is: Do they also do good? Are they members of an organization that advocates for our community? Do they speak out against violence and discrimination? Do they speak out against sweatshops? Very few young Asian Americans consider public interest law, organizing for social change, or advocacy as a career. I think that’s the biggest challenge we have on the East Coast. So many people who want to do this work want to move to the West Coast…. The work isn’t needed in California; the work is needed here.

Interview conducted by Michelle Caswell, AsiaSource.