Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders represent the fastest growing demographic in Nevada. With more than 250,000 members in Clark County alone, are their needs being heard?
That’s the concern of the 15-member community group being brought back by the Clark County Commission after decades of being dormant. The group represents nearly 50 countries that make up the local Asian-American and Pacific-Islander population.
Clark County Commissioner Tick Segerblom is helping revive the Asian American Pacific Islanders Community Commission. He told KNPR's State of Nevada that it was actually his mother, Assemblywoman Gene Segerblom, who created the original commission in 1995 while she served in the Legislature.
"As quiet and unrepresented as it is now, back then it was really under-the-radar," he said, "The thought was to create a similar commission with the goal of identifying the different communities, the different groups that each community belongs to and raising the visibility."
He said while the original commission only lasted one year, the new commission will have specific objectives for the community.
"What we've done is brought it back, but now we have an official goal of trying to actually create an Asian cultural center, in addition to other things," he said.
Those other things include identifying the different ethnic and cultural groups within the larger Asian-American Pacific-Islander community and unite them to become a force in the larger Las Vegas community.
"They are very under-the-radar, very self-sustaining, but they have a lot of needs, a lot of immigrants," he said, "The county commission, for example, we have lots of boards and commission that we appoint people to, a lot of those don't have Asian Americans on them. It is really raising the visibility of the communities."
He said he would like to see the participation of everybody in the community.
Tick Segerblom, commissioner, Clark County Commission
