By Alex Robinson
While the poverty rate rose significantly throughout the city in the last recession, Queens’ Asian community was hit especially hard, a new city study has revealed.
From 2008-12, the poverty rate in the city’s Asian community rose 6.6 percent to 29 percent, the highest of any demographic group, according to the CEO Poverty Measure, an annual report by the mayor’s office.
Queens’ poverty rate jumped by 5.5 percent to 21.9 percent during the recession compared to Manhattan’s poverty rate, which only rose by 1.5 percent to 15.4 percent and Staten Island’s, which climbed by 3.2 percent to 14.5 percent.
The borough’s numbers are consistent with the spike in the Asian community’s poverty rate, as more than half of the city’s Asian population lives in Queens, according to the study.
Language barriers are largely to blame for the disparity in the borough’s Asian community, the report said.
Nearly half of all the city’s working-age Asian immigrants have limited proficiency in the English language and three out of four Asian seniors have the same problem. Speakers of Korean and South Asian languages suffer particularly poor language access at city agencies and therefore are unable to tap vital services which would alleviate their financial troubles, the report said.
“If we want to seriously address issues of poverty and unemployment, we need to look at needs and one of the practical needs is English language resources for new immigrants so they can become fully integrated into our economy,” said John Choe, director of One Flushing, an economic development center that provides language and job services to new immigrants in Flushing, the epicenter of the Asian population in Queens.
Choe said there is a perception among some that new Asian immigrants do not want to learn English, but this is far from the truth. Flushing’s Library’s Adult Learning Center holds a lottery ever quarter for the limited slots in their English language classes because they get hundreds of applications, Choe said.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration recently expressed a commitment to expanding access to language services for the Asian community to help bridge the gap and to better integrate immigrants.
Choe said there is a misconception that all Asian Americans are well-off. This concept of a model minority arose in the 1960s and ’70s when only the well-educated or those with enough capital were capable of emigrating, Choe said.
But new Asian immigrants have not had the financial means of their predecessors.
“It is a very distorted view that doesn’t take into consideration patterns of immigration,” Choe said.
A report by the state comptroller’s office showed that while job growth has been strong since the recession ended in Queens, average private sector salaries declined by 8.1 percent from 2007-12. This was a result of a loss of higher-paying jobs in the information and manufacturing sectors, the report said.
Reach reporter Alex Robinson by e-mail at arobinson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
