Thai immigrants
Thai immigrants represent a relatively small yet culturally significant population within the broader Asian American community in the United States. Historically, Thailand (formerly Siam) maintained limited interaction with the West until the mid-20th century, which contributed to a low rate of emigration. The Vietnam War in the 1960s marked a turning point; exposure to American culture led to a gradual influx of Thai immigrants, primarily women who married American military personnel. Despite these beginnings, the Thai American community remained small, with significant immigration occurring only sporadically due to Thailand's political stability and economic growth in subsequent decades.
By the late 20th and early 21st centuries, events like the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and a military coup in 2006 spurred increased immigration, leading to a population of approximately 343,000 Thai Americans by 2019. Although they make up about 0.1% of the U.S. population, Thai immigrants have had a notable influence through their cuisine, with over 10,000 Thai restaurants across the country. Thai culture, while less visible than that of larger Asian groups, has found a niche in American society, contributing to a growing appreciation for Thai food as a distinctly valued part of the culinary landscape. The Thai community is primarily concentrated in areas like Los Angeles, where the only designated "Thai Town" exists, yet many remain dispersed, reflecting the challenges of maintaining strong cultural ties.
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Thai immigrants
SIGNIFICANCE: As one of the most stable of the Southeast Asian states, Thailand has served as a conduit for thousands of immigrants fleeing repressive governments in other countries. However, immigration of Thai nationals to the United States has been limited, making Thais one of the smallest and least noticed Asian American populations.
Prior to the twentieth century, Thailand, or Siam as it was long known, was a political backwater, a country that had avoided colonialism and had limited contact with the West. In absence of significant knowledge about the Western world or the United States, few Thais had compelling reasons to come to the United States. Not until the United States became involved in Vietnam’s civil war during the 1960s did Thais become exposed to American culture. Many of them soon saw the United States as a potential refuge from political and economic turmoil. Thailand was the only Southeast Asian country to escape destruction during the ensuing Vietnam War. Its own military government allied with the United States during the war but managed to keep the conflict from crossing its borders or bringing a destructive communist insurgency like those that devastated its eastern neighbors.
Throughout the Vietnam War, American service members used Thailand as a haven for rest and recreation from the fighting. Thais were thereby introduced to American culture, and a few thousand Thais began immigrating to the United States every year. Among the most numerous Thai immigrants were wives of American soldiers and sailors. They contributed to a growing concentration of Thai Americans around military bases in California, Texas, and Georgia, but this initial immigration wave was too small to create a substantial Thai community in the United States.
Marriages between American military personnel and Thai women produced two of the most accomplished and famous athletes of early twenty-first-century America: baseball player Johnny Damon of the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees and golfer Tiger Woods. The fathers of both served in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War.
The Thai American community remained small through the 1970s, as large numbers of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians were admitted to the United States as political refugees. Because Thailand had a pro-Western government, Thais wanting to go to the United States could not claim refugee status. Consequently, the number of Thais in the United States remained a small fraction of the number of other Southeast Asian immigrants. The already low rate of Thai immigration became even slower during the 1980s and 1990s, as Thailand’s increasing political stability brought democratic reforms and economic growth that promised better lives for most Thais. However, the Asian financial crisis of 1997 and a new military coup in Thailand in 2006 spurred increased immigration to the United States.
Thai Americans
The 2000 U.S. Census reported that more than 110,000 Thais were living in the United States—a figure one-tenth that of Vietnamese residents and barely 1 percent of the total Asian American population. As of the 2010 US census, 237,583 people of Thai heritage lived in the country. By 2019, the US census indicated the number had grown to 343,000. Because of its small size relative to other Asian racial groups, the Thai American community received less attention than most other Asian American demographics. The few Thais living in the United States were also spread too thinly across the country to maintain strong cultural ties. Los Angeles, California, was the only American city to develop a “Thai Town.”
According to the 2019 American Community Survey, 58 percent of Thai and Thai Americans were proficient in English, and just over a quarter attained Bachelor’s degrees. The majority of people of Thai descent continued to live overwhelmingly in the Los Angeles area, with small pockets in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Chicago.
Two specialized forms of Thai immigration were typically associated with underground economies: mail-order brides and undocumented workers. With poverty widespread in parts of rural Thailand, some women saw an attractive path to prosperity in marriages to Americans, which could earn them American citizenship with all its benefits and new lives in the United States. Although the number of Thai women who become mail-order brides were smaller than those of Filipino and Russian women, they nevertheless accounted for a significant number of immigrants. Smuggling workers into the United States to work in sweatshops was also part of the story of Thai immigration.
Despite their relatively small numbers, Thai immigrants and the cuisine they inspired assumed an outsized popularity in the United States. In 2023, Thais numbered around 0.1% of the US population but Thai food restaurants totaled more than 10,000. When the size of a racial demographic is compared to the number of restaurants that serve its namesake style of food, by ratio, ten times more Thai restaurants exist than Mexican.
One account suggests that the popularity of Thai restaurants began in Los Angeles around the early 1980s. Like the American Thai community itself, the Vietnam War and returning service members helped introduce Thai cuisine to the American mainstream. Nonetheless, many people associated Thai restaurants with the already-established Chinese food genre. Many early Thai restaurants were unable to source Thai ingredients, so they substituted Chinese variants instead. Around the turn of the century in 2000, Thai cuisine came into its own. It was no longer associated with Chinese food or as a type of secondary Asian cuisine, but one that had its unique style and merit.
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