Central Asians in the United States are Americans with ancestry from Central Asia. They include Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek individuals. People of Afghan, Baloch, and Uyghur descent are also sometimes classified as Central Asians. The United States census does not mention Central Asians under any category.[2]
Kazakhs began to emigrate to the United States after World War II. Shortly after of the war, some Kazakh Soviet citizens, who were captured during World War II, after their liberation by Allied troops migrated to the United States.[3]
The emigration of Kyrgyz to the United States began in the 70s, when hundreds of Afghan Kyrgyz were forced to urgently evacuate from Afghanistan during the Afghan war. However, mass emigration to the United States began in the 1990s after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and political instability in the post-Soviet space.
The number of Kyrgyz immigrants living in the United States is estimated at 30,000 to 50,000. However, the exact number is difficult to determine because some Kyrgyz Americans may be undocumented migrants.
Turkmen Americans are a very small ethnic group in the United States. The exact number of Turkmen Americans is not well-documented, and they are not as prominent or numerous as some other ethnic groups in the country.
Tandoori Food and Bakery, a kosher Bukharan Jewish Uzbek restaurant in Rego Park, Queens, June 2018
Excluding Afghan Americans, Uzbek Americans are the largest Central Asian population in the United States. 62,713 Uzbeks live in the United States,[1] with the largest community existing in the New York City metropolitan area. The New York area Uzbek community is diverse and has 3 main sub-communities: Uzbek Muslims who first came to the United States in the 1980s as political refugees from the Soviet Union living in Morris County, New Jersey, many of whom are staunchly anti-communist and upwardly mobile; newer Uzbek Muslim immigrants to New York City who have benefitted from the green card lottery, 20,000 of whom have settled in Brooklyn since the 2000s; and the Bukharan Jews who mostly live in Queens, many of whom have done well in real estate and the Diamond District.[5]
The United States has the largest community of Bukharan Jews in the world outside of Israel. 70,000 Bukharian Jews reside in the United States, with 50,000 living in the New York City borough of Queens alone. The Bukharan Jews are concentrated in the neighborhoods of Rego Park, Queens and Forest Hills.[6][7]
A 2015 eight-part documentary by VSH News, the first Balochi language news channel, called Balochs in America, shows that Baloch Americans live in different parts of the United States, including Washington D.C., New York, Texas, North Carolina, and Washington. Many Baloch Americans come from Pakistan, particularly Karachi and the province of Balochistan. Others come from the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan. Many Baloch Americans work at nonprofits, information technology companies, and in the public sector.
Uyghur Americans are Americans of Uyghur ethnicity. Most Uyghurs immigrated from Xinjiang, China, to the United States from the late 1980s onwards, with a significant number arriving after July 2009.
The Uyghur American population is small, but growing. Northern Virginia has one of the largest Uyghur populations in the United States.[20] Around 1,500 Uyghurs live in the Washington metropolitan area, with the majority living in Fairfax County, Virginia.[21] A small but notable community of around 150 Uyghurs live in the Boston area.[22]
Uyghurs' history in the United States dates back to the 1960s with the arrival of a small number of immigrants. In the late 20th century, after a series of Xinjiang conflicts, thousands of Uyghurs fled from their homeland of Xinjiang (China) to Kazakhstan, Turkey, Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other countries and places. A 2010 estimate put the Uyghur population in the United States at one thousand, however, the Uyghur American Association has said that more have moved to the United States in the 2010s because of the crackdown in China in July 2009. Several thousand Uyghurs are said to be living in the Washington, D.C. area, which has the largest population of Uyghurs in the United States. There are also small populations of Uyghurs in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Houston.
As for 2019, the Chinese government was reported to routinely carry out harassment and abuse of Uyghurs in the United States in an attempt to control the speech and actions of the estimated 8,905-15,000 persons of Uyghur ethnicity living in the United States. Section 8 of the Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 requires a report on "efforts to protect United States citizens and residents, including ethnic Uyghurs and Chinese nationals legally studying or working temporarily in the United States, who have experienced harassment or intimidation within the United States by officials or agents of the Government of the People's Republic of China" to be produced within 90 days.
^Zeweri, Helena (2011). "Afghan American: Identity". In Jonathan H. X. Lee (ed.). Encyclopedia of Asian American Folklore and Folklife. ABC-CLIO. pp. 117–120. ISBN978-0-313-35066-5. Some of Afghan ancestry might choose Middle Eastern as a way to self-identify, while others might pick Asian based on geographical understand of their ancestral lineage, and still others might pick white (non-Hispanic) because it rings truer to them from a racial classification point of view.
