Asians Hate Miami
04/17/2014
A+
|
a-
Print Friendly and PDF

About three decades ago, a good friend of mine was sent by his company in Los Angeles to their Miami office for a couple of years. He reported back that the striking difference between the two warm-weather cities was the lack of Asians in Miami. 

That's still true: the 2010 Census found that Miami was 1.0% Asian, while the entire state of Florida was 2.4% Asian. That's the opposite of most places in America where urban areas are more Asian than the state as a whole.

It would be interesting to have a map of Oligarchic Money—i.e., where in America do well-connected overseas insiders buy real estate to launder their money. For example, Latin American drug money gets parked in Miami. In LA, the Shah of Iran's pals started buying into the Hollywood Hills in around 1974, as did Arabs. On the other hand, there are very few rich Mexicans in Los Angeles: rich Mexicans go to Miami and (surprisingly) San Antonio.

Rich Chinese have been buying into San Marino and other places in the San Gabriel Valley since the late 1970s, but there are only a tiny number of rich Japanese (i.e., not Japanese-Americans) in Southern California. The Japanese love to visit Los Angeles—when I was at UCLA a third of a century ago, Japanese tourists bought up most of the souvenirs at the UCLA bookstore—but rich Japanese mostly live in Japan.

A lot of Israelis seem to park their money in Los Angeles. I've mentioned many times all the Eastern Europeans who have moved into Los Angeles, but I can't tell if there are many oligarchs the way wealthy Russians are common in London. Many look more like the flathead boyfriends / managers / bodyguards of blonde aspiring starlets / models / whatevers.

Print Friendly and PDF