Passports and Visas

UPDATED November 26, 2022 (Please see information below under "Other things to consider")

San Diego is America’s 17th-most populous city and is the third-most populous urban area in California.  This metropolis of 3.3 million residents shares a 15-mile border with Mexico, where just to the other side sits Tijuana—Mexico’s sixth-most populous city.  San Diego is well known for its mild Mediterranean climate that attracts over 35 million visitors each year.  This is a city that has nearly year-round perfect weather, plenty of scenic vistas, and miles of spectacular beaches.  The San Diego metropolitan area includes cities such as Carlsbad, Chula Vista, El Cajon, San Marcos, Santee, La Mesa, National City, Oceanside, Vista, and Encinitas.  San Diego is home to the largest Pacific Islander population in the country, including over 200,000 people with ethnic heritage from the Philippines.  Filipinos first set foot in San Diego in the 18^th century as sailors working for the Spanish expeditions.  In the early 20^th century, the first Filipinos joined the U.S Navy where they would make many contributions.  They also played a major role in establishing San Diego’s Filipino American community.  Today many Filipinos live in the Mira Mesa neighborhood of San Diego, which is only a few miles from the old Miramar Naval Air Station.  There are also Filipino communities in National City and Oceanside.

UPDATED January 21, 2024

Atlanta has a population of 6.2 million people, making it the 9th most populous metropolitan area in the United States.  Atlanta is the capital of Georgia, which is the 8th most populous of the 50 states.  The city and surrounding area—known as the Atlanta metropolitan area—is also the commercial capital of the Southeast United States.  The metropolitan area includes the municipalities of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Chamblee, Roswell, Alpharetta, Marietta, Duluth, Norcross, Tucker, Decatur, Mableton, Conyers, and others.  Atlanta has become a diverse and international city that includes a growing Asian population, including about 50,000 Chinese, the majority of whom come from Mainland China.  This number also includes 7,000 international students from China studying at colleges and universities around the state.  Despite the recent tensions between the United States in China over trade disputes involving theft of intellectual property and numerous political issues, including the origins of the coronavirus, China remains the top source of imports for the state of Georgia and its third largest export market.  China and Chinese culture also remain a subject of curiosity for Atlanta students and several high schools, colleges, and universities in the area offer Mandarin language courses.

New York is America’s most-populous city, and its metropolitan area has over 20 million people.  New York City contains the five boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx.  The New York metropolitan area includes New York City, Long Island, and the Mid and Lower Hudson Valley.  It also includes several large cities in New Jersey such as Newark, Edison, Elizabeth, Paterson, Jersey City, and Hoboken, along with cities in Connecticut such as New Haven, Bridgeport, and Stamford.  New York is one of the most important economic regions in the world and has the highest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States.  New York is considered “Capital of the World”, not only due to its economic power, but also as headquarters of the United Nations, it is a center of diplomacy and culture.  It is also one of America’s most important centers of Hispanic culture and influence.  There are an estimated five million Hispanics in the New York metropolitan area, including about 150,000 Cubans (either born in Cuba or having Cuban heritage).  New York and Cuba have a deep history that goes back to the sugar trade starting in the 18^th century.  New York has long been a home for many of Cuba’s thought leaders, businesspeople, athletes, and artists. 

Charlotte is the 23rd-most populous city in the United States and is the most populous city in the state of North Carolina.  The Charlotte metropolitan area is a sixteen-county region that stretches into the state of South Carolina and includes the towns of Concord, Gastonia, Huntersville, Kannapolis, Indian Trail, Mooresville, Monroe, Salisbury, Matthews, Statesville, Rock Hill (SC), and Fort Mill (SC).  Known as the Queen City, this metropolis of 2.6 million people has been one of the country’s fastest-growing cities the past two decades.  Charlotte’s youthful population, low cost of living, and geographic location in America’s Sun Belt, have made it an attractive destination for business investment.  It’s also become a popular destination for relocation from other parts of the United States as well as for immigrants from other countries, including newcomers from East Asia.  There are a few thousand Chinese living in the Charlotte area, some of whom originally immigrated to America from Taiwan.  The city is home to the Charlotte Taiwanese American Association, a cultural and social organization hosting annual events like Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.  There is also the Charlotte Chinese School where children can learn Traditional Chinese, which is still used in Taiwan today.  Charlotte area colleges and universities like Queens University, UNC Charlotte, and Davidson College offer courses in Mandarin.

Seattle is the largest city in the state of Washington and is also the largest city in America’s Pacific Northwest region.  Known as the “Emerald City”, Seattle is situated in a magnificent natural environment along the Puget Sound, surrounded by evergreen forests, mountains, and water.  The Seattle metropolitan area (the fifteenth-largest metropolis in the United States) has a population of 4 million people and includes the cities of Tacoma, Bellevue, Kent, Everett, Renton, Kirkland, and Redmond.  The area is home to several famous companies such as Nordstrom, Costco, Amazon, Microsoft, Expedia, Redfin, Zillow, and Starbucks.  This base of companies makes Seattle an attractive destination for jobseekers from around the world, including workers from India specializing in information technology.  There are now over 75,000 Indians in the Seattle metropolitan area, and they make up nearly half of the city’s foreign-born technology workers.  Indian culture runs deep in Seattle, which is home to several organizations representing the various ethnolinguistic groups of India such as Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Bengali, Marathi, and others.  Ties between Seattle and India will be further cemented with the introduction of a nonstop flight to Bangalore on American Airlines starting October 2022.  

Greater Boston is the eleventh-most populous metropolitan area in the United States with a population of 4.9 million people, and includes towns such as Cambridge, Brookline, Quincy, Brockton, Lynn, Newton, Waltham, and Medford.  Boston is one of America’s oldest cities and has a rich history that attracts over 20 million tourists each year.  Known as the “intellectual capital of the United States”, Boston is a center of education that has more than 350,000 college students from around the world, including students from Vietnam.  Schools like Boston University, Northeastern University, Harvard, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology all have Vietnamese student organizations.  The city of Boston has about 15,000 ethnic Vietnamese and there are well over triple that number living in the Boston suburbs and state of Massachusetts.  There is a “Boston Little Saigon” cultural district in the Fields Corner neighborhood of Dorchester that is a great place for local Bostonians to enjoy Vietnamese restaurants, cafes, and markets.  This area is also home to the Vietnamese American Community Center, which serves as gathering point for civic and cultural activities.  The city plays hosts to Tet in Boston, an annual event celebrating the Vietnamese Lunar New Year that attracts over 10,000 attendees. 

Atlanta has a population of over 6 million people, making it the 9th most populous metropolitan area in the United States.  The city and surrounding area—known as Metro Atlanta—is also the commercial capital of the Southeast United States.  The metropolitan area includes the municipalities of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Roswell, Alpharetta, Marietta, Duluth, Norcross, Tucker, Lithonia, Decatur, Mableton, and others.  Atlanta is a diverse and international city that in recent years has attracted a growing number of immigrants from Latin America, now numbering over 600,000 residents with origins from Mexico, Central and South America, and Spanish-speaking countries in the Caribbean, including Cuba.  There are an estimated 10,000 people living in Metro Atlanta with Cuban heritage.  Although many of these immigrants came to Atlanta as refugees during the early 1960’s, there have also been new arrivals to the city directly from Cuba, as well as arrivals of Cuban Americans relocating from other U.S. cities.  The past decade there has been much excitement and fanfare from Metro Atlanta businesspeople and tourists about the opening of Cuba to Americans, however, travel to the country has waned recently due to the virus situation and renewed political tension between our two countries. 

UPDATED November 26, 2022 (Please see information below under "Other things to consider")

Las Vegas is the largest city in the state of Nevada and is located in the Mojave Desert, bordering California and Arizona.  The Las Vegas metropolitan area, known as the Las Vegas Valley, includes Clark County and the cities of North Las Vegas, Henderson, and Boulder City, as well as several other unincorporated communities.  The Las Vegas Valley has a population of 2.3 million people and has been America’s fastest growing city the past decade.  Although Las Vegas ranks only as the 28th-most populous city in the United States, there could be as many as 300,000 tourists visiting here on any given day.  Las Vegas is known as “America’s Playground” and is one of the country’s most popular tourist destinations.  Las Vegas has become a diverse city with a growing population of Asian residents.  Filipinos are the largest Asian group in Las Vegas and there are now over 150,000 people in the metro area with ethnic heritage from the Philippines.  Filipinos have been in Las Vegas for over 100 years but have been moving to the city in record numbers the past two decades.  They are attracted to the low cost of living (compared to California) and abundance of jobs in Las Vegas’s health care and gaming industries.  This year the city will be hosting the Las Vegas Filipino-American Festival. 

Atlanta has a population of 6.2 million people, making it the 9th most populous metropolitan area in the United States.  Atlanta is the capital of Georgia, which is the 8th most populous of the 50 states.  The city and surrounding area—known as the Atlanta metropolitan area—is also the commercial capital of the Southeast United States.  The metropolitan area includes the municipalities of Dunwoody, Sandy Springs, Chamblee, Roswell, Alpharetta, Marietta, Duluth, Norcross, Tucker, Decatur, Mableton, Conyers, and others.  Atlanta has become a diverse and international city that includes a growing Asian population, which itself includes several thousand Taiwanese immigrants and American-born citizens whose parents migrated from Taiwan starting in the 1970’s.  There are also a few hundred international students from Taiwan studying at Georgia Tech, Emory, Georgia State University, and University of Georgia.  Historically, the Taiwanese community in Atlanta has been centered around Chamblee, home to a shopping plaza on New Peachtree Road known as “Chinatown”, and a Chinese community center, today known as the Culture Center of Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.  Nowadays, Taiwanese Americans in Atlanta have spread northward to Norcross, Duluth, and Johns Creek.

UPDATED November 26, 2022 (Please see information below under "Other things to consider")

Los Angeles is America’s second most populous city after New York.  Greater Los Angeles—which includes Los Angeles County, San Bernardino County, Riverside County, Ventura County, and Orange County—has a population of nearly 19 million people.  If Greater Los Angeles were its own country, it would be the 15th largest economy in the world (its GDP is slightly less than the GDP of Indonesia).  Known for its endless sprawl, Greater Los Angeles is the largest metropolitan region in the United States by land area and includes over 200 cities such as Santa Monica, Pasadena, Culver City, Burbank, Long Beach, Carson, Irvine, Anaheim, and Inglewood.  Los Angeles is one of the most multicultural cities on the planet and attracts people from all over the word.  There are more than 600,000 ethnic Filipinos in Greater Los Angeles, making it the largest “Filipino city” in the United States.  Filipinos are the largest Asian group in Los Angeles and are found all throughout the metropolitan area.  The city of Los Angeles is home to Historic Filipinotown, which has several landmarks, including a WWII memorial recognizing the contributions of Filipino soldiers, and the largest Filipino mural in the country.  Los Angeles is connected to the Philippines by direct flights to Manila on Philippines Airlines.