Ripon Roy moved from New York City to Albany in 2012, and quickly fell in love with the Capital Region for its affordability, community feel and the space he was able to find for his vegetable garden.
But Roy, who is from Bangladesh, felt something was missing. Soon after his move, he began recruiting other Bengali families — an ethnic group defined by their shared language and culture — to move to the Capital Region. It's now a passion project for the 43-year-old, whose day job is working in information technology for the state.
Over the past two years, Roy has helped around 100 Bengali families move from New York City to the Capital Region. He also got his real estate license so he could help Bengalis buy homes in the area. He has sold 15 in the past six months, he said.
“The Capital Region is more flexible and easier to live in than New York City,” Roy said.
The growing yet tight-knit Bengali community in the Capital Region has helped newcomers find jobs at the postal service, local hotels, hospitals, Amazon, Walmart and in state government, Roy said.
It has also contributed to a new trend: From 2010 to 2020, the area had some of the largest population growth among Asian Americans anywhere in New York.
The growing population has meant a more diverse workforce and student pool, increased political representation and new grocery stores, restaurants, sports leagues and even media outlets. The Capital Region has presented struggles, too, including instances of hate and discrimination described by some community leaders.
In Albany County, the number of people self-identifying as Asian in census data released in August increased from 5 percent of the total population in 2010 to 8 percent in 2020 — a 68 percent increase.
In Schenectady County, the Asian American population also leapt 68 percent to land at 5 percent of the county's overall population. In Saratoga County, Asian Americans saw a 92 percent increase and in 2020 comprised 3 percent of the population. In Rensselaer County, the Asian population grew 65 percent to reach 4 percent of the population.
In all four counties, the Asian American population grew faster than any other race or ethnicity, except for the population identifying as two or more races.
“The size of the increase is more than I expected,” said Inbong Kang, chair of the board of directors for the Korean Association of Albany. “This is welcome news.”
Diverse origins
According to the 2019 American Community Survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, Chinese are the largest Asian group by population in Albany, Rensselaer and Saratoga counties, followed by Indians. In Schenectady county, Indians are the largest group by population. The area is also called home by numerous Pakistanis, Filipinos, Burmese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Bangladeshis or Bengalis, Nepalese, Sri Lankans and people identifying with other Asian groups.
In addition, mixed-race Asians comprise a slice of people who identified as two or more races on their census — a population that has exploded in growth since 2010.
Many Asians in the Capital Region are professionals working in the technology and medical fields. Several Asian community leaders pointed to the growth in the Malta-based semiconductor manufacturer Global Foundries as a key factor driving Asian population growth in the region. The town of Malta had a 234 percent increase in its Asian population from 2010 to 2020, a group that is now 4 percent of the town population, census data shows. The adjacent town of Ballston saw a 243 percent increase in Asians.
Feng Chen works at Global Foundries and is actively engaged in the Chinese community, serving as principal of the Chinese Community Center in Latham.
The increase in the Asian American community has pushed enrollment from 350 to 400 students this year, he said.
Another indicator of the increasing Asian American population — albeit an unscientific and anecdotal one — is the growth of Chinese restaurants in the area, Chen said.
With a more muscular presence, he sees more room for participation in civil society. People have a lot to offer.
“As long as we figure out how to promote (our skills), we can build a better future together,” said Chen, who emigrated from China 17 years ago.
The city or town whose Asian population swelled most, by percentage, was Green Island with a 324 percent increase; Asians now comprise 7 percent of the population.
At over 9,300, Colonie is home to the most Asian Americans of any city or town in the Capital Region, followed by Albany and then Schenectady.
Schenectady's former mayor famously recruited Guyanese Americans from Queens to move to his city in 2002. That group has only grown in the past two decades.
Stepping into politics
As the population has grown, Asian American community leaders have been in discussions with the Albany County Legislature about starting a legislative group focused specifically on their interests. County Legislative Chairman Andrew Joyce confirmed that such a group is under consideration, and the legislature is working to appoint and hire more Asian Americans into local political jobs.
In Albany County, four Asian Americans currently serve as elected officials, along with three each in Saratoga and Schenectady counties and one in Rensselaer, according to Mike Fondacaro, who has tracked political representation for Asian Americans in New York since 2019. In New York at large, 75 to 80 Asian elected officials serve in entities ranging from local fire districts to Congress.
Niskayuna resident Jennifer Zhao, who is Chinese, said Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) issues have come under an increased spotlight over the past year, including in schools, local government and workplaces, due to racial tropes surrounding COVID-19 and a shooting spree in March in Atlanta, Ga., in which six Asian American women were killed at local spas.
Governing bodies must continue to evaluate their policies on inclusivity in public discussions, offering language translation, teaching Asian American history in schools and promoting AAPI leaders in government as well in the corporate world, said Zhao, a member of the Niskayuna School Board.
Sita Subbaram, who is Indian and was appointed to serve on the Albany Redistricting Commission, said one of her goals is to represent the growing Asian American community as the commission uses the 2020 census data to redraw local political lines.
“I’ve seen over the last so many years since my son was in elementary school, there has been tremendous growth in the Asian population in the schools. We have a lot of refugees and immigrants in the city school district,” Subbaram said. “For me, the important thing is: one, representation and two, equity. We want to make sure people are counted and have the best possible representation.”
Participation among Asian Americans in the 2020 census was encouraged by the efforts of the Albany chapter of Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA) and other community groups. Leaders of those groups said they had to overcome hesitancy from noncitizens who worried about how their information would be used by the federal government.
About six in 10 Asian Americans were born in another country, according to the Pew Research Center. People from Asia made up about 14 percent of the 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in 2017.
Aliya Saeed, a psychiatrist and school board member in Niskayuna, a town with one of the largest Asian populations in the area, said even with APAPA’s efforts she believes the 2020 census data represents an undercount of local Asian Americans.
“The last census was held under unusual circumstances,” said Saeed, who is South Asian. “I believe that some of the factors that may have contributed to the underestimation were the threats from Washington, D.C., at the time to misuse the data for immigration status assessments, the fear of visibility experienced by many Asian communities as anti-Asian violence surged in the country, as well as language/cultural knowledge barriers that Asian immigrants can often experience.”
Data that allows demographers to assess the accuracy of the 2020 census count will not be available until at least 2022.
Serving consumers and faiths
Regardless of the count, the clear population growth has rendered visible changes in the region.
Multiple community leaders celebrated the fact that more grocery stores selling Asian foods have opened over the past decade. When Gurinder Garacha moved from Utica to Albany in 1986, there were only two Indian grocery stores in the area.
“We used to drive to New Jersey or New York City to buy our Indian groceries,” he said. Now he has a choice of 10 or so in the area.
Ashok Adikoppula played major league cricket when he lived in India, but when he moved to the Capital Region in 2011, the closest league was in New York City. So in 2015, Adikoppula formed the Capital District Cricket Association, which has blossomed to include nine hard-ball teams, 12 soft-ball teams and roughly 300 participants, many of whom identify as Asian. Adikoppula is also working on promoting cricket in local schools and youth programs and incorporating the sport into the state’s athletic curriculum.
At the start of the pandemic, with cricket on hold, Adikoppula helped launch a Facebook page and publication called the Asian American Herald, which published video interviews with local Asian American community leaders on a variety of topics.
“We just wanted to (start) an outlet that brings the Asian Americans on the grassroots level and give them the exposure and limelight so that the other community members who are Asian American would know their community members who are also on the front line,” Adikoppula said.
For many Koreans in the Capital Region, the hub of community life is their church, Kang said. Kang has attended the Korean Apostolate of the Roman Catholic of Albany for about 20 years. When he first went, almost all the attendees were longtime residents of the area.
“But now 75 or 80 or 90 percent of Sunday regulars are relatively newer immigrants,” Kang said. He can count the multi-decade parishioners like him on two hands, he said: “The influx of new immigrants in recent years in that sense is striking.”
Hate on the rise
For some Asian Americans, life in the Capital Region has delivered a variety of struggles, including an increase in hate crimes and discrimination during the pandemic.
After the Atlanta spa killings, APAPA coordinated a rally against Asian hate in Albany attended by more than 500 people.
H.P. Wang, president of APAPA and a speaker at the event, said in an interview a lamppost on his property was smashed with a baseball bat in what he believes was an act of hate.
“When I walk around my street ... once in a while people yell at me with all kinds of racial slurs,” said Wang, who is Chinese. “The problem is stereotyping. … We don’t know how to handle the pandemic, and then we blame someone else.”
Kang said in July 2020, he was waiting to rent a car when a white woman, who was not wearing a mask in the store, turned to him and asked, “Where do you come from?”
“She said, ‘Wherever you came from go back to your country,’” Kang recalled. “I told her I have been here in this country for 35 years. I asked the staff to call the police and take care of the situation, and the staff asked her to leave immediately.”
Trade wars and sparring between the U.S. and Chinese governments has trickled down to the local level, Chen said, a development he called “destructive and depressing.”
But that can be ameliorated with a sustained focus on grassroots relationship-building. Chinese culture can be insular, he acknowledged. “But if you have an established challenge to promote, people are willing to speak out and be engaged.”
Local media, too, can play a role by telling stories from the broader Chinese community.
“I think coverage of the Chinese community would be great to promote culture, friendliness and promote engagement with my community and local government,” Chen said. “We need our voices to be promoted in those kinds of forums.”
Saeed, the school board member, said nationwide Asian students were least likely to return to in-person learning school in person during the pandemic when that became an option.
“I want to see how our Asian students do with the return to in-person learning this year,” Saeed said. “Asian students are often subjected to stereotyping and unchecked implicit and explicit biases in their school; this places an additional burden on what are emotionally challenging years for all students.”
Efforts to dispel the “model minority” myth must continue, added fellow school board member Zhao, referring to the trope that depicts the AAPI community as a monolithic bloc of overachievers.
“AAPI women, as well as the LGBTQ-plus community especially, need increased support to allow them to contribute to our society to their fullest potential,” Zhao said.
Kang said, “Americans need to be more understanding of the difficulty people have in adapting themselves to this new society and new cultures, and the importance of helping them to adjust better to the new life so we all benefit from the diversity.”
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Census shows big growth in the Capital Region's Asian American community - Times Union
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