Our Cause

In May 2016, OCA-Greater Houston (OCA-GH) received a historic opportunity with a $1 Million Dollar Matching Grant until the 2020 Census by a National Foundation committed to helping the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community build capacity and sustainability to continue OCA-GH’s work developing future AAPI leadership and civic engagement (including Citizenship assistance). OCA-Greater Houston is one of 25 national AAPI organizations selected for this program in recognition of the work the chapter has done for the community since 1979. The Legacy & Leadership Campaign will ensure the capacity building, sustainability, and growth of OCA-GH pro- grams and builds on our current community partner relationships to bring together the power and reach of AAPIs in the Greater Houston Metropolitan area. The Asian American population in Greater Houston is growing at a dramatic rate, and we want to ensure that the civic institutions that serve the diverse Asian American communities will be able to keep pace with the population growth and build capacity for the future.

• More than 430,000 Asian Americans live in Greater Houston

• A majority (70.2%) of them were born in another country and immigrated to the United States and this rate is higher than that of any other racial group (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010–2014)

• 29% of Asian Americans in Greater Houston are not United States citizens and would need to naturalize in order to vote (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010–2014)

• Immigrants from India, Vietnam, and China are the largest groups of noncitizen Asian American LPRs who are eligible to naturalize (AAJC, 2014)

• Among Asian American ethnic groups, Taiwanese (80%), Indian (72%), Chinese (69%), and Pakistani Americans (69%) are proportionately most foreign-born (U.S. Census Bureau, 2010–2014)

• About 35% of Asian Americans in Greater Houston have limited English proficiency, and close to 23% of Asian American households are linguistically isolated (AAJC, 2014)

• Nearly 41,000 Asian Americans in Greater Houston live below the poverty line, and nearly 110,000 are low- income (AAJC, 2014)

• The rates of low-income people exceed 25% for the Cambodian, Korean, Pakistani, Taiwanese, and Vietnamese American communities in Greater Houston (AAJC, 2014)