Asian immigrants are doing well, but African immigrants are doing poorly in Minnesota

Associated Press:

Asians living in Minnesota, thanks in part to an emerging Hmong middle class, have pulled nearly even with whites in economic success, according to a U.S. Census Bureau survey.

The trend is also being fueled by a surge in the number of well-educated immigrants from India, the Census Bureau planned to report Tuesday.

However, other large racial and ethnic groups, especially African immigrants, are sliding backward, apparently because a strong tide of newcomers just starting out is diluting strides being made by those who have been in Minnesota longer.

Here is some data on the African immigrants:

The statistical category "African American" in Minnesota is distorted because more than 50,000 are immigrants and refugees or their children. All but a handful have arrived in the past 15 years.

The statistics suggest that the most recent arrivals are the least positioned to do well economically at first: The college graduation rate for African immigrants in Minnesota, for instance, has fallen since 2000.

Many of the African newcomers are refugees from Somalia, which hasn't had a functioning government since the early 1990s.

Most recent arrivals have been in refugee camps for years, disconnected from formal schooling, said Hussein Samatar, a Somali immigrant who is now executive director of the African Development Center of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

"They are extremely less educated than those who came earlier," he said.

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