HOUSTON Thomas Nguyens childhood likely mirrors that of many Asian-Americans growing up in the South. Fort Bend County, Texas, was a mostly white community in the 1980s, and many kids had never met an Asian person before, Nguyen recalls. His parents were boat people refugees from the Vietnam War who escaped the fall of Saigon in 1975.

They lived in Chicago, where Nguyen was born, before settling down in Texas. In school, he was quiet, and most kids left him alone. His race was never really an issue until he got to college at the University of Texas at Austin.

We would almost get into a fight every weekend, Nguyen said. It was always because some guy would get drunk. It was the first time he had ever seen an Asian, and he would have to say something stereotypical.

Nguyen said hes often been on the receiving end of stereotypes and mockery for being Asian, enduring everything from slant-eye gestures to sibilant accents.

Similar stories are not uncommon in the Asian-American community the more an ethnic group branches out, the greater the likelihood for discrimination. Asian-Americans have become the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S., and the growth is happening fastest in the South, according to Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Data , a policy research program at the University of California, Riverside.

The number of Asian-Americans in the South increased by 69 percent between 2000 and 2010, according to an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data from the group Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

The growing Asian population in the South includes transplants from other regions of the U.S. and immigrants from Asia, with job opportunities and a lower cost of living drawing people to the region, according to demographers.

The South is the new destination for Asian immigrants, said Karthick Ramakrishnan, the founder of AAPI Data.

In Georgia, for example, the number of Asian-Americans grew 136 percent from 2000 to 2016, and now accounts for 4 percent of the total population . The number of Asian-Americans in Virginia grew 113 percent in the same period.

The effects of the population growth are vast. In areas where Asian-American communities have been firmly established, experts say Asian-Americans have slowly gained the potential to affect school curriculums and influence elections.

Asians are also the only ethnic group in the U.S. with more members born outside the country than inside it, according to AAPI Data, with most Asian immigrants coming in on either employment-based visas or family-based visas. This leads to diverse Asian-American communities, with distinct challenges in navigating majority-white areas and gaining political influence.

Nguyen, now in his 40s, has witnessed those changes at home in Texas, where hes now the co-owner of the popular South African restaurant group Peli Peli in Houston.

Im just amazed at how a city that used to be very vanilla, very conservative, has now grown to be a city of innovation and diversity, Nguyen said. It was steak and potatoes. It was pretty plain Jane, and now Houston is so vibrant to me.