Asians have outpaced Hispanics as the largest demographic moving into the U.S. since about 2009, according to a report released on Tuesday by Pew Research Center.
(RELATED: Asians: U.S. Demographic Snapshot)
According to 2010 Census data, Hispanics are by and large the fastest growing ethnic group among the total U.S. population. But the Asian-American population is the fastest growing racial group overall--increasing 46 percent between 2000 and 2010.
The Asian-American community is also largely foreign-born: Almost three-fourths of Asian adults were not born in America.
In spite of this growth, the American public still largely associates the idea of immigration with illegal immigration and Mexican immigrants, according to Karthick Ramakrishnan, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, who spoke at Tuesday's panel discussion series on the results.
"Immigration is more complicated than that, and in the past five years if you were not paying attention to Asian immigration, then you don't know immigration," Ramakrishnan said.
The new report, "The Rise of Asian-Americans," attempts to chronicle this growth by taking a comprehensive look at the 17.3 million Asians living in the U.S. Though this only accounts for about 6 percent of the total population, the findings present a crucial look at a sprawling racial cohort that is becoming a larger portion of the country's growing minority-majority.