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According to Minnesota State, 2000, statistics, 95 percent of the Hmong population live in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, making this the largest urban concentration of Hmong anywhere in the U.S. Too the Hmong Community is, by far, the fastest growing segment of the state’s population. By the year 2000, the Hmong met expectations to become the single largest Southeast Asian minority group in the Twin Cities. Within the last year, several thousand more Hmong people have made Minnesota their new home, moving here from other states, generally California and North Carolina. Additional thousands of Hmong refugees also arrived recently in Minnesota following the closing of refugee camps in Thailand and consolidation of the families.

Accordingly, initial figures from the U.S. Bureau of Census reported by the State of Minnesota Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans describe our Greater Metro Seven County area current population numbers for all Asian-Pacific Islanders as 107,678.

More recent figures for Hennepin County compiled in 2000 from housing, health and employment statistics and reported in 2001 continue the population growth trend, setting the new figure for all Asian Pacific Islanders at 54,086. HAMAA has consistently referred to our Hmong population amounting to approximately 75,000 residing in “St. Paul” or “Minneapolis,” we accept these figures as basically accurate with reservations. It is indeed true that our Hmong families are now tending to relocate to the first ring suburbs and this may account for the large “Asian” population change from 1990 to 2000. However it must be noted that during the Census 2000 reporting period, many of our Hmong families – by our estimate up to 25 percent as reported at Community Center meetings -- admitted that they had either marked their race as “Asian” or not marked their race. Thus while reports projecting API figures will include some of our otherwise non-specifically demarked Hmong families, a more detailed report may lose a significant portion as otherwise unidentified. We will suggest then that while Hennepin County may reflect figures of nearly 50 percent Hmong families, the growth in adjacent Counties may reflect new cultural Hmong families arriving at perhaps 80 percent of the influx. Hmong family groups and structure are changing with the times as well, as second generation members adopt the traditional smaller family unit. While initial family size in the 1980s and 1990s remained close to the nuclear family of ten, we see today our new Hmong families adopting nuclear units of six as reported by recent state records, with only 33 percent of families retaining the seven-plus structure. Thus we interpret the Hmong cultural family groups within the counties:

Included with our Hmong families for HAMAA planning purposes, especially for community and economic development are the rapidly growing Southeast Asian populations. Today these groups include, without reference to family units, Laotians (estimated at 12,000, most living in the Twin Cities), Vietnamese in Minnesota (estimated at 23,000, with 90% living in the Metro Area) and nearly 7,500 Cambodians now residing in the Twin Cities as well.