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AUSTIN, Texas — She thrust a flyer into the hand of a tall young man who looked annoyed. She promised to give a woman a gift for hearing her out. And she practically wrapped her arms around another woman who bounded away shaking her head, uninterested and impatient.

With each person, Alice Yi offered the same energetic greeting: “Do you know about the census?”

Ms. Yi is the chairwoman of the Asian Complete Count Committee in Austin, a volunteer group that partners with the Census Bureau to raise awareness about the census among Asian-Americans. And this year, she said, it is more urgent than ever that Asian-American communities like the one in Austin — where Vietnamese-American men and women crowded into a ballroom in the middle of a strip mall last month to celebrate the Lunar New Year — be counted.

Asian-Americans are the fastest growing population in the nation. But organizers and activists like Ms. Yi, 63, worry that Asian-Americans remain largely misunderstood. The population includes people from places as different as Nepal, Iraq, Vietnam and Taiwan, in occupations ranging from store clerk and taxi driver to lawyer and banker. The census, the activists say, is one of the best tools available to help capture that multiplicity, secure better resources and funding and harness untapped political power.