Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans
Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry that speak the Spanish or Portuguese language natively and/or are from Latin America, respectively. This includes Latino Americans who identify themselves (or were officially classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other US government agencies) as Asian Americans. Latinidad, which is independent of race, is the only ethnic category, as opposed to racial category, which is officially unified by the US Census Bureau. The distinction made by government agencies for those within the population of any official race category , including "Asian American", is between those who report Latino ethnic backgrounds and all others who do not. In the case of Asian Americans, these two groups are respectively termed Asian Latinos and non-Latino Asian Americans, the former being those who say Asian ancestry from Romance-speaking America and the latter consisting of an ethnically diverse collection of all others who are classified as Asian Americans that do not report Latin American ethnic backgrounds. Population. In the 2000 US Census, 119,829 Latino Americans identified as being of Asian race alone. In 2006, the Census Bureau's American Community Survey estimated  them at 154,694, while its Population Estimates, which are official, put them at 277,704. In the 2010 Census, there were 598,146 Asian Latino Americans, including those who are multiracial in origin. Filipino Americans, often have Spanish surnames from the Alphabetical Catalog of Surnames, due to an 1849 decree.