What I'd like to find is a graphical representation of crime that correlates with the increase of the mud invasion. I'll bet it follows the same lines.

O.C. minorities in the majority
Political power growing for Vietnamese-Americans and Hispanics.
By ERIN CARLYLE and RONALD CAMPBELL
The Orange County Register
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Thirty years ago, Orange County was home to Disneyland, the California Angels, Huntington Beach surfers – and a lot of white people.

The cultural icons are still in place, but Orange County's primarily white demographics have dramatically shifted. In 1980, white residents were a vast majority, making up 78.4 percent of Orange County's population. In 2007, according to a U.S. Census update released Wednesday, they accounted for just 46.9 percent.

Orange County is typical of Southern California. Four of the five southernmost counties – Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino – have a larger population of ethnic minorities than non-Hispanic whites. San Diego is the only county where white residents are still – barely – in the majority, at 51.4 percent.

Orange County has been home to more ethnic minorities than white residents since 2003. According to the latest census update, it is one of 302 counties nationwide – about 1 in 10 – designated as a minority-majority county, or home to more minorities than white residents.

Though Latinos tend to be at the center of the rhetoric over changing demographics and illegal immigration in Orange County, the fastest-growing minority group here in the past three decades has been Asians.

Since 1980, Orange County has grown by about 1 million residents. Over that period, the number of non-Hispanic whites living here shrank by about 100,000, or 7 percent.

During the same period, the Hispanic population has more than tripled and is nearly 1 million people. In the same time, the Asian population quintupled. Asians made up 16 percent of Orange County's population in 2007.

The changes have played out in local politics. For instance, Little Saigon's contingent of Vietnamese Americans voters helped catapult Van Tran and Janet Nguyen to power.

In 2004, Van Tran, of Westminster, made history by being elected to the state Assembly. Tran and a Texas man were the first Vietnamese Americans to serve in state legislatures.

Tran has been active in Orange County's Vietnamese American political machine, supporting local candidates from the Vietnamese community.

First District Supervisor Janet Nguyen, elected last year, is the first Vietnamese American to win a seat on the county board. While Latinos heavily outnumber Vietnamese Americans in the central-county district, the Vietnamese vote proved much bigger at the ballot box.

“It really goes back in history 35 years ago,” Nguyen said of the strong Vietnamese American vote. “They came over here because of political persecution. They value the democracy; they value their vote.”

However, the growth in the Hispanic population in Orange County has not fully translated to political power, according to Louis DeSipio, chairman of Chicano and Latino studies at UC Irvine.

DeSipio says this is because Latinos who come here illegally cannot vote, and some who were born here and are citizens are not yet old enough to vote.

“The political change is going to be much slower,” DeSipio said. “The political clout of Orange County will remain as it was in 1981 well into the 2030s.”

But Chelene Nightingale of anti-illegal immigration activist group Save Our State says demographics are already influencing local politics. Nightingale lives in Los Angeles County.

“The illegal invasion has definitely changed the demographics of the United States of America,” Nightingale said.

“I think Los Angeles is a perfect example of that. We have Mayor Villaraigosa; our politics is very much pro-illegal.”

The U.S. Census Bureau does not track the immigration status of people who answer its surveys.

The Census Bureau has long acknowledged that it probably does not count all illegal immigrants in its reports.

The census does keep track of the total foreign-born population. According to the most recent data, births and immigration pushed up Orange County's population by 11,107 people between July 2006 and July 2007.

In 2006, there were about 915,000 foreign-born people living in Orange County. Of those, approximately one-third were from Asia, including about 117,000 from Vietnam.

An additional nearly 500,000 people who were born in Latin America lived in Orange County, about 80 percent of them from Mexico.

Census figures for Orange County are more conservative than the state Department of Finance, which places the total Orange County population at more than 3 million people.

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/county-orange-population-2117101-vietnamese-people