LI's surging Asian diaspora

Daily Point

Island's Asian population grew by 45% over a decade

Long Island’s Asian population has grown over the last decade and at a much faster rate than the region’s overall population. That has implications for politicians seeking votes in tight races, as was seen in the recent special election in the 3rd Congressional District.

The number of Asian residents on Long Island increased from about 161,000 in 2010 to an estimated 233,559 in 2021, making up roughly 8% of the Island’s population. That’s a 45% jump from a decade ago in the number of people who identified as Asian, alone or in combination with another race, compared with a 2.9% increase in the Island’s overall population during the same period. As Newsday recently reported, this trend has continued in 2022 and 2023.

The term “Asian” includes various ethnicities like Chinese, Sri Lankan, Pakistani, Filipino, Korean, Indian, Japanese, and others. Pockets of communities with different language speakers like Indians in Hicksville and Chinese in Jericho have grown across Long Island. Changing demographics in neighborhoods with different wealth levels indicates there are different economic layers within the diaspora, too.

The data in this piece compares the 2017-2021 five-year American Community Survey population estimates to the 2006-2010 estimates.

The biggest group of residents identifying as Asian was in the Town of Hempstead, with an estimated 63,463, or about 8% of the town’s population. Neighboring North Hempstead had the second-highest population with around 50,000 residents who identified as Asian in 2021, compared with around 32,000 in 2010. Oyster Bay Town has seen a 74% jump in Asian residents in the last decade from around 26,000 in 2010 to more than 45,000 in 2021, making up nearly 15% of the town’s population. Over 70% of Long Island’s Asian residents live in Nassau County.

To view the chart in full screen, click here. Data was unavailable for Riverhead, Shelter Island, Southold and East Hampton towns due to small sample sizes and large margins of error.

The largest growth was in the number of people between the ages of 20 and 40, who comprised 28.5%, the biggest fraction, of Asian residents on Long Island; a decade ago, the largest group was 40-to-60-year-olds. The number of under-20-year-olds has also increased to an estimated 68,500 compared to around 50,200 in 2010, indicating a growing population of school-goers and young voters.

The surge in Asian population was pivotal in the CD3 special election in February, when Democrat Tom Suozzi flipped many election districts ​​won by Republican George Santos in 2022. Asian American leaders credited Suozzi’s direct outreach to Asian communities in the North Hempstead-Queens district with driving up his winning margin in those communities, an important factor in his overall victory.

As this growing population continues to change the demographics of Long Island, political campaigns will also need to continue to adapt to the growing influence of Asian voters.

— Karthika Namboothiri karthika.namboothiri@newsday.com

Pencil Point

Going nowhere

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Reference Point

Closing the gates to death on LIRR tracks

In the first year after Newsday’s founding, an editorial appeared with two photos. The first showed a quiet Long Island Rail Road grade crossing in Mattituck. The second showed a mangled car at that same crossing. The title of the editorial was “Death and the LIRR.”

The piece that appeared on July 11, 1941, recounted a horrific accident in which six people from Brooklyn on a holiday outing were killed when their family sedan was struck by an LIRR train on the evening of July 4.

“Just why the driver of the car did not see the oncoming train is not clear,” Newsday’s editorial board wrote. “Trees might have obstructed the view, but no official opinion has been given. It is clear, however, that had there been some safeguard, the lives of six persons might have been saved.”

The board noted that the same Mattituck crossing had been the site of at least two other fatal accidents in the previous 20 years.

“Those accidents were a long time ago,” the board wrote. “But they did show that the crossing was dangerous — as any grade crossing is dangerous. Elimination of all grade crossings takes time. But, as Newsday has stressed before, there are other steps that can — and should — be taken.”

Even 80-plus years ago, Newsday’s board was advocating for lights and gates as necessary safety measures before the eventual elimination of grade crossings, a campaign it continued for decades.

Three months later, the board examined a proposal on that November’s statewide ballot that would divert $60 million already approved for the elimination of grade crossings to be spent instead on state highways and parkways. The proposal was approved by voters and the money to get rid of grade crossings — equivalent to about $1.3 billion today — was lost.

Nowadays, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority pegs the cost of a single grade-crossing elimination at around $50 million, and even after the elimination of a bunch of crossings via the Third Track project there are still nearly 300 left in the LIRR system.

Back in 1941, Newsday’s board wrote that by installing lights and gates until crossings could be eliminated, “the LIRR could cheat death.” But while both have long been required at grade crossings, death did not take a holiday. As recently as 2019, three people were killed at the School Street crossing in Westbury when an SUV fleeing a minor traffic accident drove around a safety gate that was down and was hit by two trains traveling in opposite directions.

That grade crossing was eliminated the following year.

— Michael Dobie michael.dobie@newsday.com, Amanda Fiscina-Wells amanda.fiscina-wells@newsday.com

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