Asian Americans

Asian Americans are Americans with ancestry from the continent of Asia (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of those immigrants). According to annual estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2024, the Asian population was estimated at 22,080,844, representing approximately 6.49% of the total U.S. population, making them the fastest growing and fourth largest racial and ethnic group in the United States after African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, and non-Hispanic White Americans.

Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peoples of the continent of Asia, the usage of the term "Asian" by the U.S. Census Bureau denotes a racial category that includes people with origins or ancestry from Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. It excludes people with ethnic origins from West Asia, who were historically classified as "white" and proposed to be categorized as Middle Eastern Americans starting from the 2030 census. Central Asian ancestries (including Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek) were previously not included in any racial category but have been designated as "Asian" as of 2024. It is also explicitly stated on the Census that racial categories reflect social definitions of race based on the American general public. They are not meant to define race biologically, anthropologically or genetically.

The "Asian" census category includes people who indicate their race(s) on the census as "Asian" or reported entries such as "Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi, Filipino, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Pakistani, Thai, and Other Asian". In 2020, Americans who identified as Asian alone (19,886,049) or in combination with other races (4,114,949) made up 7.2% of the US population.

Chinese, Indian, and Filipino Americans make up the largest share of the Asian American population with 5.5 million, 5.2 million, and 4.6 million people respectively. These numbers equal 23%, 20%, and 18% of the total Asian American population, or 1.5%, 1.2%, and 1.2% of the total US population. Vietnamese Americans are the 4th largest Asian American population, and Korean Americans are the 5th largest with both populations making up 8% of the Asian American population respectively.

Although migrants from Asia have been in parts of the contemporary United States since the 17th century, large-scale immigration did not begin until the mid-19th century. Nativist immigration laws during the 1880s–1920s excluded various Asian groups, eventually prohibiting almost all Asian immigration to the continental United States. After immigration laws were reformed during the 1940s–1960s, abolishing national origins quotas, Asian immigration increased rapidly. Analyses of the 2010 census have shown that, by percentage change, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the United States.