ASIAN-AMERICANS NOW 6 PERCENT OF POPULACE

among the many groups that make up the diaspora. People from India and China have higher incomes than those from Southeast Asia because they have higher levels of education on average.

For example, three-fourths of Taiwanese and Indians in America have a bachelor’s degree or higher, said Jennifer Lee, a professor of sociology at Columbia University. Southeast Asian groups from countries like Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, however, lag well behind the average for other Asian-americans.

Jonathan Lee, 30, a Chinese-american who lives in New York and works as a senior designer at Etsy, and his sister, Jessica, are both college graduates, unlike their parents. “My father told us stories of sleeping on an ironing board at his father’s laundromat,” Jonathan Lee said. “My mother came here when she was 19 and took night classes at the Fashion Institute of Technology to become a patternmaker. My father spent his career at Coned. Now they own a home.”

Asian immigrants make up a less monolithic group than they once did. In 1970, Asian immigrants came mostly from East Asia, but South Asian immigrants are fueling the growth that makes Asian-americans the fastest-expanding group in the country, said Lee, the Columbia University sociologist.

Asian-americans, who accounted for less than 1 percent of the population in 1970, are up to 6 percent today. South Asians and Southeast Asians together now outnumber East Asians. Family-sponsored migration remains the largest source of Asian immigration.

Inequality is elastic, of course, adjusting over time because of fluctuating waves of immigration, as seen among the 10 most populous Asian immigrant groups in the United States.

The disparity in income is in part caused by the gap between immigrants who arrived on skillsbased visas and those who did not. “Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, they’re primarily refugee populations,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, director of AAPI Data, which publishes demographic data and policy research on Asian-americans and Pacific Islanders.

The difference becomes even more pronounced over time. “Existing immigrant Indians and Chinese are highly educated, and then they recruit their highly skilled relatives,” Ramakrishnan said. “Family visas tend to go to highly educated people.” So when President Donald Trump and his Republican allies call for an end to family-based immigration, they’re asking to keep the best and the brightest out, he said.

English-language proficiency is also crucial to income, education and access to health care. At the same time, even some highly educated immigrants may experience language barriers. About 35 percent of Asians have limited English proficiency, Lee said.

An article in The New York Times more than 50 years ago referred to the growing success of Japanese-americans within a generation of their World War II internment, helping to solidify the image of Asian-americans as a model minority. But many Asian-americans resist that characterization, saying it is false and dangerous, helping to mask bigger issues among an especially wide diaspora. “Crazy Rich Asians” will only reinforce the myth.

With income growth skewing to the top from 1970 to 2016, it’s true that there are more rich Asians. While the majority of Asian-americans have a higher standard of living than other ethnic groups, and while whites and Asians outearn African-americans and Latinos at all rungs of the income ladder, Asian-american poverty is also increasing.

The trend is occurring in the largest American cities, with their historic Chinatowns, and in newer ethnic centers, like Ramsey County, Minn., which has many Hmong families living in or near poverty.

“I watched my parents struggle to make ends — going to adult school to learn English, working factory jobs and cleaning homes to make ends meet,” said Bo Thao-urabe, 45, of St. Paul, Minn., who came as a refugee from Laos in 1979, after extensive American bombing during the Vietnam War. “As kids, we got up extra early to go dumpster diving for aluminum cans in those early years. In the summer months, we became farm laborers throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa.”

The release of “Crazy Rich Asians” and its allAsian cast is an achievement that will leave many celebrating. But demographers concerned about the difficulties that still face many Asian-americans say the bright lights of Hollywood shouldn’t blind us to their challenges.