Indian Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The term Asian Indian is used to avoid confusion with
Native Americans and the
indigenous peoples of the Americas, who have historically been referred to as "Indians", also known as "American Indians". With a population of more than four and a half million, Indian Americans make up 2.7% of the U.S. population and they are also the largest group of
South Asian Americans, as well as the second largest group of
Asian Americans after
Chinese Americans. Indian Americans are the
highest-earning ethnic group in the United States.[6]
Terminology
In the
Americas, the term "Indian" had historically been used to describe
indigenous people since
European colonization in the 15th century. Qualifying terms such as "
American Indian" and "
East Indian" were and still are commonly used in order to avoid ambiguity. The U.S. government has since coined the term "Native American" in reference to the indigenous people of the United States, but terms such as "American Indian"
remain among indigenous as well as non-indigenous populations. Since the 1980s, Indian Americans have been categorized as "Asian Indian" (within the broader subgroup of
Asian American) by the
United States Census Bureau.[7]
Beginning in the 17th century, members of the
East India Company would bring Indian servants to the
American colonies.[11] There were also some East Indian slaves in the United States during the American colonial era.[12][13] In particular, court records from the 1700s indicate a number of "East Indians" were held as slaves in Maryland and Delaware.[14] Upon freedom, they are said to have blended into the
free African-American population - considered "Mulattos".[15]
19th century
The first Sikh Gurudwara was established in 1912 by the early immigrant Sikh farmers in Stockton, California.
In 1850, the federal census of
St. Johns County, Florida, listed a 40-year-old
draftsman named John Dick whose birthplace was listed as "
Hindostan", living in city of
St. Augustine.[16] His race is listed as white, suggesting he was of British descent.
By 1900, there were more than two thousand Indian
Sikhs living in the United States, primarily in
California.[17] (At least one scholar has set the level lower, finding a total of 716 Indian immigrants to the U.S. between 1820 and 1900.)[18] Emigration from India was driven by difficulties facing Indian farmers, including the challenges posed by the colonial
land tenure system for small landowners, and by
drought and food shortages, which worsened in the 1890s. At the same time, Canadian steamship companies, acting on behalf of Pacific coast employers, recruited Sikh farmers with economic opportunities in
British Columbia.[19]
The presence of Indians in the U.S. also helped develop interest in Eastern religions in the US and would result in its influence on American philosophies such as
transcendentalism.
Swami Vivekananda arriving in Chicago at the World's Fair led to the establishment of the
Vedanta Society.[18]
20th century
Escaping racist attacks in Canada, Sikhs migrated to Pacific Coast U.S. states in the 1900s to work on the lumber mills of
Bellingham and
Everett, Washington.[20] Sikh workers were later concentrated on the railroads and began migrating to California; around 2,000 Indians were employed by the major rail lines such as
Southern Pacific Railroad and
Western Pacific Railroad between 1907 and 1908.[21] Some white Americans, resentful of economic competition and the arrival of people from different cultures, responded to Sikh immigration with racism and violent attacks.[22] The
Bellingham riots in Bellingham, Washington on September 5, 1907, epitomized the low tolerance in the U.S. for Indians and Sikhs, who were called "
Hindoos" by locals. While anti-Asian racism was embedded in U.S. politics and culture in the early 20th century, Indians were also racialized for their anticolonialism, with U.S. officials, who pushed for Western imperial expansion abroad, casting them as a "Hindu" menace.[23] Although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh.[23]
In the early 20th century, a range of state and federal laws restricted Indian immigration and the rights of Indian immigrants in the U.S. Throughout the 1910s, American nativist organizations campaigned to end immigration from India, culminating in the passage of the
Barred Zone Act in 1917.[22] In 1913, the Alien Land Act of California prevented non-citizens from owning land.[24] However, Asian immigrants got around the system by having Anglo friends or their own U.S. born children legally own the land that they worked on. In some states,
anti-miscegenation laws made it illegal for Indian men to marry white women. However, it was legal for "brown" races to mix. Many Indian men, especially Punjabi men, married Hispanic women, and Punjabi-Mexican marriages became a norm in the West.[25][26]
Bhicaji Balsara became the first known Indian to gain naturalized U.S. citizenship. As a
Parsi, he was considered a "pure member of the Persian sect" and therefore a "free white person". In 1910, judge
Emile Henry Lacombe of the
Southern District of New York gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the
United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create "an authoritative interpretation" of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe's wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that
Parsis are classified as white.[27] On the same grounds, another federal court decision granted citizenship to
A. K. Mozumdar.[28] These decisions contrasted with the 1907 declaration by U.S. Attorney General
Charles J. Bonaparte: "...under no construction of the law can natives of British India be regarded as white persons."[28]
After the
Immigration Act of 1917, Indian immigration into the U.S. decreased. Illegal entry through the Mexican border became the way of entering the country for Punjabi immigrants. California's Imperial Valley had a large population of Punjabis who assisted these immigrants and provided support. Immigrants were able to blend in with this relatively homogenous population. The
Ghadar Party, a group in California that
campaigned for Indian independence, facilitated illegal crossing of the Mexican border, using funds from this migration "as a means to bolster the party's finances".[29] The Ghadar Party charged different prices for entering the US depending on whether Punjabi immigrants were willing to shave off their beard and cut their hair. It is estimated that between 1920 and 1935, about 1,800 to 2,000 Indian immigrants entered the U.S. illegally.[29]
By 1920, the population of Americans of Indian descent was approximately 6,400.[31] In 1923, the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that Indians were ineligible for citizenship because they were not "free white persons".[32] The court also argued that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians.[33] Furthermore, the court ruled that based on popular understanding of race, the term "white person" referred to people of northern or western European ancestry rather than "Caucasians" in the most technical sense.[34] Over fifty Indians had their citizenship revoked after this decision, but
Sakharam Ganesh Pandit fought against
denaturalization. He was a lawyer and married to a white American, and he regained his citizenship in 1927. However, no other naturalization was permitted after the ruling, which led to about 3,000 Indians leaving the U.S. between 1920 and 1940. Many other Indians had no means of returning to India.[32]
Indians started moving up the social ladder by getting higher education. For example, in 1910,
Dhan Gopal Mukerji came to UC Berkeley when he was 20 years old. He was an author of many children's books and won the Newbery Medal in 1928 for his book Gay-Neck: The Story of a Pigeon.[35] However, he committed suicide at the age of 46 while he was suffering from depression. Another student,
Yellapragada Subbarow, came to the U.S. in 1922. He became a biochemist at
Harvard University, and he "discovered the function of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) as an energy source in cells, and developed methotrexate for the treatment of cancer." However, being a foreigner, he was refused tenure at Harvard.
Gobind Behari Lal, who came to the
University of California, Berkeley in 1912, became the science editor of the San Francisco Examiner and was the first Indian American to win the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.[36]
After
World War II, U.S. policy re-opened the door to Indian immigration, although slowly at first. The
Luce–Celler Act of 1946 permitted a quota of 100 Indians per year to immigrate to the U.S. It also allowed Indian immigrants to naturalize and become citizens of the U.S., effectively reversing the Supreme Court's 1923 ruling in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind.[37] The Naturalization Act of 1952, also known as the
McCarran-Walter Act, repealed the Barred Zone Act of 1917, but limited immigration from the former Barred Zone to a total of 2,000 per year. In 1910, 95% of all Indian Americans lived on the western coast of the United States. In 1920, that proportion decreased to 75%; by 1940, it was 65%, as more Indian Americans moved to the East Coast. In that year, Indian Americans were registered residents in 43 states. The majority of Indian Americans on the west coast were in rural areas, but on the east coast they became residents of urban areas. In the 1940s, the prices of the land increased, and the Bracero program brought thousands of Mexican guest workers to work on farms, which helped shift second-generation Indian American farmers into "commercial, nonagricultural occupations, from running small shops and grocery stores, to operating taxi services and becoming engineers." In Stockton and Sacramento, a new group of Indian immigrants from the state of Gujarat opened several small hotels.[38] In 1955, 14 of 21 hotels enterprises in San Francisco were operated by Gujarati Hindus.[39] By the 1980s, Indians owned around 15,000 motels, about 28 percent of all hotels and motels in the U.S.[40]
Since 2000, a large number of students have started migrating to the United States to pursue higher education. A variety of estimates state that over 500,000 Indian American students attend higher-education institutions in any given year.[44][45] As per Institute of International Education (IIE) 'Opendoors' report, 202,014 new students from India enrolled in US education institutions.[46]
According to the
2010 United States Census,[56] the Asian Indian population in the United States grew from almost 1,678,765 in 2000 (0.6% of U.S. population) to 2,843,391 in 2010 (0.9%
of U.S. population), a
growth rate of 69.37%, one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States.[57]
New York City itself also contains by far the highest Indian American population of any individual city in North America, estimated at 246,454 as of 2017.[59]Monroe Township,
Middlesex County, in
central New Jersey, the geographic heart of the
Northeast megalopolis and ranked one of the ten safest cities in the United States,[60] has displayed one of the fastest growth rates of its Indian population in the
Western Hemisphere, increasing from 256 (0.9%) as of the 2000 Census[61] to an estimated 5,943 (13.6%) as of 2017,[62] representing a 2,221.5% (a multiple of 23) numerical increase over that period, including many
affluentprofessionals and
senior citizens, a temperate climate, as well as
charitable benefactors to the
COVID-19 relief efforts in India in official coordination with Monroe Township, as well as
Bollywood actors with second homes. By 2022, the Indian population was approaching one-third of Monroe Township's population, and the nickname Edison-South had developed, in reference to the
Little India stature of both Middlesex County, New Jersey
townships.[63] In 2014, 12,350 Indians legally immigrated to the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA core based statistical area;[64] As of February 2022, Indian airline carrier
Air India as well as United States airline carrier
United Airlines were offering direct flights from the New York City Metropolitan Area to and from
Delhi and
Mumbai. In May 2019,
Delta Air Lines announced
non-stop flight service between
New York JFK and Mumbai, to begin December 22, 2019.[65] And in November 2021,
American Airlines began non-stop flight dservice between New York JFK and Delhi with
IndiGo Aircodesharing on this flight. At least 24 Indian American enclaves characterized as a
Little India have emerged in the New York City Metropolitan Area.
While the table above provides a picture of the population of Indian Americans (alone) and Asian Americans (alone) in some of the metropolitan areas of the US, it is incomplete as it does not include multi-racial Asian Americans. Please note that data for multi-racial Asian Americans has not yet been released by the US Census Bureau.
List of U.S. states by the population of Asian Indians
The United States is host to the second largest
Indian diaspora on the planet
In 2006, of the 1,266,264 legal immigrants to the United States, 58,072 were from India. Between 2000 and 2006, 421,006 Indian immigrants were admitted to the U.S., up from 352,278 during the 1990–1999 period.[69] According to the 2000 U.S. census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 percent. The average growth rate for the U.S. was 7.6 percent. Indians comprise 16.4 percent of the Asian-American community. In 2000, the Indian-born population in the U.S. was 1.007 million. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, between 1990 and 2000, the Indian population in the U.S. grew 130% – 10 times the national average of 13%. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group, following
Chinese Americans and
Filipino Americans.[70][71][72]
A joint Duke University – UC Berkeley study revealed that Indian immigrants have founded more engineering and technology companies from 1995 to 2005 than immigrants from the UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined.[73] The percentage of Silicon Valley startups founded by Indian immigrants has increased from 7% in 1999 to 15.5% in 2006, as reported in the 1999 study by
AnnaLee Saxenian[74] and her updated work in 2006 in collaboration with
Vivek Wadhawa.[75] Indian Americans are making their way to the top positions of many major companies (including IBM, PepsiCo, MasterCard, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Adobe, Softbank, Cognizant, Sun microsystems) A recent study shows that 23% of Indian business school graduates take a job in United States.[76]
Indian Americans continually outpace every other ethnic group
socioeconomically per U.S. Census statistics.[77]Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, in his 2005 book The World Is Flat, explains this trend in terms of
brain drain, whereby a sample of the best and brightest people in India emigrate to the United States in order to seek better financial opportunities.[78] Indians form the second largest group of
physicians after non-Hispanic
Caucasian Americans (3.9%) as of the 1990 survey, and the percentage of Indian physicians rose to around 6% in 2005.[79]
Education
According to
Pew Research in 2015, of Indian Americans aged 25 and older, 72% had obtained a bachelor's degree and 40% had obtained a postgraduate degree, whereas of all Americans, 19% had obtained a bachelor's degree and 11% had obtained a postgraduate degree.[80]
Household income
The median household income for Indian immigrants in 2019 was much higher than that of the overall foreign- and native-born populations. Indians overall have much higher incomes than the total foreign and native-born populations. In 2019, households headed by an Indian immigrant had a median income of $132,000, compared to $64,000 and $66,000 for all immigrant and U.S.-born households, respectively.
In 2019, Indian immigrants were less likely to be in poverty (5 percent) than immigrants overall (14 percent) or the U.S. born (12 percent).[81]
Gujarati,
Telugu,
Marathi,
Punjabi,
Malayalam, and
Hindi radio stations are available in areas with high Indian populations, for example, Punjabi Radio USA, Easy96.com in the New York City metropolitan area,
KLOK 1170 AM in San Francisco, RBC Radio; Radio Humsafar, Desi Junction in Chicago; Radio Salaam Namaste and FunAsia Radio in
Dallas; and Masala Radio, FunAsia Radio, Sangeet Radio, Radio Naya Andaz in
Houston and
Washington Bangla Radio on Internet from the Washington DC Metro Area. There are also some radio stations broadcasting in
Tamil within these communities.[82][83] Houston-based
Kannada Kaaranji radio focuses on a multitude of programs for children and adults.[84]
AVS (Asian Variety Show) and Namaste America are South Asian programming available in most of the US that is free to air and can be watched with a television
antenna.
In July 2005,
MTV premiered a spin-off network called
MTV Desi which targets Indian Americans.[85] It has been discontinued by MTV.
In 2012, the film Not a Feather, but a Dot directed by Teju Prasad, was released which investigates the history, perceptions and changes in the Indian American community over the last century.
The annual New York City India Day Parade, held on or approximately every August 15 since 1981, is the world's largest
Indian Independence Day parade outside of India[86] and is hosted by The Federation of Indian Associations (FIA). According to the website of
Baruch College of the
City University of New York, "The FIA, which came into being in 1970 is an
umbrella organization meant to represent the diverse Indian population of NYC. Its mission is to promote and further the interests of its 500,000 members and to collaborate with other Indian cultural organization. The FIA acts as a mouth piece for the diverse Indian-Asian population in United States, and is focused on furthering the interests of this diverse community. The parade begins on
East 38th Street and continues down
Madison Avenue in
Midtown Manhattan until it reaches
28th Street. At the review stand on 28th Street, the grand marshal and various celebrities greet onlookers. Throughout the parade, participants find themselves surrounded by the saffron, white and green colors of the
Indian flag. They can enjoy Indian food, merchandise booths, live dancing and music present at the Parade. After the parade is over, various cultural organizations and dance schools participate in program on
23rd Street and Madison Avenue until 6PM."[87] The New York/New Jersey metropolitan region's second-largest India Independence Day parade takes place in
Little India, Edison/Iselin in Middlesex County, New Jersey, annually in August.
Sikh Day Vaisakhi Parade
The world's largest Sikh Day Parade outside India celebrating
Vaisakhi and the season of renewal is held in
Manhattan annually in April. The parade is widely regarded as being one of the most colourful parades.[88]
Communities of
Hindus,
Christians,
Muslims,
Sikhs,
irreligious people, and smaller numbers of
Jains,
Buddhists,
Zoroastrians, and Indian
Jews have established their religions in the United States. According to 2014
Pew Research Center research, 51% consider themselves Hindu, 18% as Christian (Protestant 11%, Catholic 5%, other Christian 3%), 9% as
unaffiliated, 10%
as Muslims, 5% as Sikh, and 2% as Jain.[5]
The first religious center of an Indian religion to be established in the US was a Sikh
Gurudwara in
Stockton, California in 1912. Today there are many Sikh Gurudwaras, Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Christian churches, and Buddhist and Jain temples in all 50 states.
From the time of their arrival in the late 1800s,
Sikh men and women have been making notable contributions to American society. In 2007, there were estimated to be between 250,000 and 500,000 Sikhs living in the United States, with largest populations living on the East and West Coasts, together with smaller additional populations in
Detroit,
Chicago, and
Austin. The United States also has a number of non-Punjabi converts to Sikhism.
Sikh men are typically identifiable by their unshorn beards and turbans (head coverings), articles of their faith. Many organisations like World Sikh Organisation (WSO), Sikh Riders of America, SikhNet, Sikh Coalition, SALDEF,
United Sikhs, National Sikh Campaign continue to educate people about Sikhism. There are many "
Gurudwaras" Sikh temples present in all states of USA.
Adherents of
Jainism first arrived in the United States in the 20th century. The most significant time of Jain immigration was in the early 1970s. The US has since become the epicenter of the Jain diaspora. The
Federation of Jain Associations in North America is an umbrella organization of local American and Canadian Jain congregations.[98] Unlike India and United Kingdom, the Jain community in United States doesn't find sectarian differences—both
Digambara and
Śvētāmbara share a common roof.
The large
Parsi and
Irani community is represented by the
Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America.[113]Indian Jews are perhaps the smallest organized religious group among Indian Americans, consisting of approximately 350 members in the US. They form the Indian Jewish Congregation of USA, with their headquarters in New York City.[114]
Efforts have been undertaken in
Millburn,[115] Monroe Township,
West Windsor-Plainsboro,
Bernards Township, and
North Brunswick, New Jersey,[116]Long Island, as well as in New York City (ultimately successfully),[124][125] among other school districts in the metropolitan region, to make Diwali a holiday on the school calendar. According to the Star-Ledger,
Edison, New Jersey councilman Sudhanshu Prasad has noted parents' engagement in making Deepavali a holiday there; while in Jersey City, the four schools with major Asian Indian populations mark the holiday by inviting parents to the school buildings for festivities.[116]Mahatma Gandhi Elementary School is located in
Passaic, New Jersey.[126] Efforts are also progressing toward making Diwali and Eid official holidays at all 24 school districts in Middlesex County.[127] At least 12 school districts on Long Island closed for Diwali in 2022,[128] and over 20 in New Jersey.[129]
Like the terms "Asian American" or "
South Asian American", the term "Indian American" is also an umbrella label applying to a variety of views, values, lifestyles, and appearances. Although Asian-Indian Americans retain a high ethnic identity, they are known to
assimilate into American culture while at the same time keeping the culture of their ancestors.[130]
1680: Due to
anti-miscegenation laws, a mixed-race girl born to an Indian father and an Irish mother is classified as
mulatto and sold into slavery.[11]
1790: The first officially confirmed Indian immigrant arrives in the United States from
Madras, South India, on a British ship.[132][133]
1909:
Bhicaji Balsara becomes the first known Indian-born person to gain naturalised U.S. citizenship. As a
Parsi, he was considered a "pure member of the Persian sect" and therefore a free White person. The judge
Emile Henry Lacombe, of the
Southern District of New York, only gave Balsara citizenship on the hope that the
United States attorney would indeed challenge his decision and appeal it to create "an authoritative interpretation" of the law. The U.S. attorney adhered to Lacombe's wishes and took the matter to the Circuit Court of Appeals in 1910. The Circuit Court of Appeal agrees that Parsis are classified as white.[27]
1913:
A. K. Mozumdar becomes the second Indian-born person to earn U.S. citizenship, having convinced the
Spokane district judge that he was "Caucasian" and met the requirements of naturalization law that restricted citizenship to free White persons. In 1923, as a result of United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, his citizenship was revoked.
1914:
Dhan Gopal Mukerji obtains a graduate degree from Stanford University, studying also at University of California, Berkeley and later goes on to win the
Newbery Medal in 1928, and thus becomes the first successful India-born man of letters in the United States, as well as the first popular Indian writer in English.
1917: The
Barred Zone Act passes in Congress through two-thirds majority, overriding President
Woodrow Wilson's earlier veto. Asians, including Indians, are barred from entering the United States.
1918: Due to
anti-miscegenation laws, there was significant controversy in
Arizona when an Indian farmer B. K. Singh married the sixteen-year-old daughter of one of his
White American tenants.[134]
1918: Private Raghunath N. Banawalkar is the first Indian American recruited into the U.S. Army on February 25, 1918, and serves in the Sanitary Detachment of the 305th Infantry Regiment, 77th Division, American Expeditionary Forces in
France. Gassed while on active service in October 1918 and subsequently awarded Purple Heart medal.[135]
1922:
Yellapragada Subbarao, a
Telugu from the state of
Andhra Pradesh in Southern India arrived in
Boston on October 26, 1922. He discovered the role of
phosphocreatine and
adenosine triphosphate (ATP) in muscular activity, which earned him an entry into biochemistry textbooks in the 1930s. He obtained his Ph.D. the same year, and went on to make other major discoveries; including the synthesis of
aminopterin (later developed into
methotrexate), the first cancer chemotherapy.
1946: President
Harry S. Truman signs into law the
Luce–Celler Act of 1946, returning the right to Indian Americans to immigrate to the United States and become naturalized citizens.
1956:
Dalip Singh Saund elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives from
California. He was re-elected to a second and third term, winning over 60% of the vote. He is also the first Asian immigrant from any country to be elected to Congress.
1962:
Zubin Mehta appointed music director of the
Los Angeles Philharmonic, becoming the first person of Indian origin to become the principal conductor of a major American orchestra. Subsequently, he was appointed principal conductor of the
New York Philharmonic.
1965: President
Lyndon Johnson signs the
INS Act of 1965 into law, eliminating per-country immigration quotas and introducing immigration on the basis of professional experience and education. Satinder Mullick is one of the first to immigrate under the new law in November 1965—sponsored by
Corning Glass Works.
1968:
Hargobind Khorana shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Marshall W. Nirenberg and Robert W. Holley for discovering the mechanisms by which RNA codes for the synthesis of proteins. He was then on faculty at the
University of Wisconsin, Madison, but later moved to
MIT.
1974: Mafat and Tulsi Patel open the first location of
Patel Brothers on
Devon Avenue in Chicago, one of the first Indian grocery chains in America
1975: Launch of India-West, a leading newspaper covering issues of relevance to the Indian American community.
1983:
Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize for Physics; Asian Indian Women in America[138] attended the first White House Briefing for Asian American Women. (AAIWA, formed in 1980, is the 1st Indian women's organization in North America.)
1989: Launch of
RBC Radio, the first South Asian-Indian radio station in the United States.[139]
1990: Shiva Subramanya (an India-born Nuclear Physicist and Space Scientist working at TRW, Inc) became the first South Asian and first Indian American to win the Medal of Merit, the
AFCEA's highest award for a civilian and one of the America's top defense award, in recognition of his exceptional service to AFCEA and the fields of Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence (C4I).[140]
1994: Guitarist
Kim Thayil, of Indian origin, wins Grammy award for his Indian inspired guitarwork on the album Superunknown by his band
Soundgarden.
1994:
Raj Reddy received the ACM Turing Award (with
Edward Feigenbaum) "For pioneering the design and construction of large scale artificial intelligence systems, demonstrating the practical importance and potential commercial impact of artificial intelligence technology".
2008: Treasury Secretary
Henry Paulson appoints
Neel Kashkari as the Interim U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability.
2008:
Raj Chetty appointed as professor of economics at
Harvard University the age of 29, one of the youngest ever to receive tenure of
professorship in the Department of Economics at Harvard.
2010: Year marks the most candidates of Indian origin, running for political offices in the United States, including candidates such as
Ami Bera.
2010: State Representative
Nikki Haley is elected Governor of
South Carolina and becomes the first Indian American woman and second Indian American in general to become Governor of an American state.
2013:
Arun M Kumar appointed as assistant secretary and director general of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service, International Trade Administration in the Department of Commerce.[143]
2016:
Pramila Jayapal,
Ro Khanna, and
Raja Krishnamoorthi are elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. This puts the total number of people of Indian and South Asian origin in Congress at 5, the largest in history.
2019: Seven out of the eight winners of the
Scripps National Spelling Bee (Saketh Sundar, Abhijay Kodali, Shruthika Padhy, Sohum Sukhatankar, Christopher Serrao, Rohan Raja, and Rishik Gandhasri), are Indian Americans. They have broken the spelling bee according to several experts and have dominated this American institution.[145]
In previous decades, Indian Americans were also variously classified as
White American, the "Hindu race", and "other".[158] Even today, where individual Indian Americans do not racially self-identify, and instead report
Muslim,
Jewish, and
Zoroastrian as their "race" in the "some other race" section without noting their country of origin, they are automatically tallied as white.[159] This may result in the counting of persons such as
Indian Muslims,
Indian Jews, and
Indian Zoroastrians as white, if they solely report their religious heritage without their national origin.
In the 1980s, a gang known as the
Dotbusters specifically targeted Indian Americans in
Jersey City, New Jersey with violence and harassment.[160] Studies of
racial discrimination, as well as
stereotyping and
scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years.[161] In particular, racial discrimination against Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with
Indophobia due to the rise in
outsourcing/
offshoring, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring
white-collar labor to
India.[162][163] According to the offices of the Congressional Caucus on India, many Indian Americans are severely concerned of a backlash, though nothing serious has taken place.[163] Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community.[161]
Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of
American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented.[164]
Since the
September 11, 2001 attacks, there have been scattered incidents of Indian Americans becoming mistaken targets for
hate crimes. In one example, a
Sikh,
Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered at a
Phoenix gas station by a
white supremacist. This happened after
September 11, and the
murderer claimed that his
turban made him think that the victim was a
Middle Eastern American.[citation needed] In another example, a
pizza deliverer was mugged and beaten in
Massachusetts for "being
Muslim" though the victim pleaded with the assailants that he was in fact a
Hindu.[165] In December 2012, an Indian American in
New York City was pushed from behind onto the tracks at the 40th Street-Lowery Street station in
Sunnyside and killed.[166] The police arrested a woman, Erika Menendez, who admitted to the act and justified it, stating that she shoved him onto the tracks because she believed he was "a Hindu or a Muslim" and she wanted to retaliate for the attacks of September 11, 2001.[167]
In 2004, New York Senator
Hillary Clinton joked at a fundraising event with South Asians for
Nancy Farmer that
Mahatma Gandhi owned a gas station in downtown
St. Louis, fueling the stereotype that gas stations are owned by Indians and other South Asians. She clarified in the speech later that she was just joking, but still received some criticism for the statement later on for which she apologized again.[168]
On April 5, 2006, the Hindu Mandir of Minnesota was vandalized allegedly on the basis of
religious discrimination.[169] The vandals damaged temple property leading to $200,000 worth of damage.[170][171][172]
On August 11, 2006, Senator
George Allen allegedly referred to an opponent's political staffer of Indian ancestry as "
macaca" and commenting, "Welcome to America, to the real world of Virginia". Some members of the Indian American community saw Allen's comments, and the backlash that may have contributed to Allen
losing his re-election bid, as demonstrative of the power of
YouTube in the 21st century.[173]
In 2006, then
DelawareSenator and current
U.S PresidentJoe Biden was caught on
microphone saying: "In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."[174]
On February 22, 2017, recent immigrants Srinivas Kuchibhotla and Alok Madasani were shot at a bar in
Olathe, Kansas by Adam Purinton, a white American who mistook them for persons of Middle Eastern descent, yelling "get out of my country" and "terrorist". Kuchibhotla died instantly while Madasani was injured, but later recovered.[175]
Punjabi Sikh Americans in
Indianapolis suffered many losses in their community on April 15, 2021, during the
Indianapolis FedEx shooting in which gunman Brandon Scott Hole, with a currently unknown motive, entered a FedEx warehouse and killed eight people, half of whom were Sikh. The Sikh victims were Jaswinder Singh, Jasvinder Kaur, Amarjit Sekhon, and Amarjeet Johal. Ninety percent of the workers at the facility were Sikh according to some accounts.[176] Another Sikh, Taptejdeep Singh, was one of the nine people killed in the
San Jose shooting on May 26.[177]
Immigration
Indians are among the largest ethnic groups legally immigrating to the United States. The immigration of Indians has taken place in several waves since the first Indian came to the United States in the 1700s. A major wave of immigration to California from the region of Punjab took place in the first decade of the 20th century. Another significant wave followed in the 1950s which mainly included students and professionals. The elimination of immigration quotas in 1965 spurred successively larger waves of immigrants in the late 1970s and early 1980s. With the technology boom of the 1990s, the largest influx of Indians arrived between 1995 and 2000. This latter group has also caused surge in the application for various immigration benefits including applications for green card. This has resulted in long waiting periods for people born in India from receiving these benefits.
As of 2012, over 330,000 Indians were on the visa wait list, third only to
Mexico and
The Philippines.[178]
In December, 2015, over 30 Indian students seeking admission in two US universities—
Silicon Valley University and the
Northwestern Polytechnic University—were denied entry by
Customs and Border Protection and were deported to India. Conflicting reports suggested that the students were deported because of the controversies surrounding the above-mentioned two universities. However, another report suggested that the students were deported as they had provided conflicting information at the time of their arrival in US to what was mentioned in their visa application. "According to the US Government, the deported persons had presented information to the border patrol agent which was inconsistent with their visa status," read an advisory published by
Ministry of External Affairs (India) which was published in the Hindustan Times.[179]
Following the incident, the Indian government asked the US government to honour the visas given by its embassies and consulates. In response, the United States embassy advised the students considering studying in the US to seek assistance from Education USA.[179][180]
Citizenship
Unlike many countries, India does not allow
dual citizenship.[181] Consequently, many Indian citizens residing in U.S., who do not want to lose their Indian nationality, do not apply for American citizenship (ex.
Raghuram Rajan[182]). However, many Indian Americans obtain
Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) status, which allows them to live and work in India indefinitely.
Income disparities
Although Indian Americans have the highest average and median household income of any demographic group in America, there exist significant and severe income disparities among various communities of Indian Americans. In
Long Island, the average family income of Indian Americans was roughly $273,000, while in
Fresno, the average family income of Indian Americans was only $24,000, an eleven-fold difference.[183]
Several groups have tried to create a voice for Indian Americans in political affairs, including the
United States India Political Action Committee and the Indian American Leadership Initiative, as well as panethnic groups such as South Asian Americans Leading Together and Desis Rising Up and Moving.[188][189][190][191] Additionally, there are industry groups such as the
Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin.
Dalip Singh Saund was in 1956 the first Asian American, Indian American, and member of a non-Abrahamic faith (Sikhism) to be elected to the
United States Congress.
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