Indian Americans are Americans who are of Indian ancestry. The U.S. Census Bureau popularized the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with "American Indian".
In North America the term Indian has an ambiguous meaning. Historically and currently, Indian was and is commonly used to indicate Native American . If a more specific term was or is needed, American Indian and East Indian were and are commonly used. American Indian is still the most common term, although Native American can be used to refer to the Indigenous peoples of North America. East Indian is still in common use. Currently South Asian is often used instead of East Indian . While some consider it derogatory, people of Indian origin use the term Desi to refer to the diasporic subculture of overseas Indians. The word "desi" means "of the country/homeland" in Hindi and is also used as "countryman" in the U.S..
A number of Indian Americans came to the U.S. via Indian communities in other countries such as Fiji, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the United Kingdom (where over 2.7% of the population is Indian), Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, Canada, Guyana, Mauritius and nations of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia and Singapore. Indian Americans are mostly Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian and Jain and are among the most highly educated in American demographics.
Population
Numbers
According to the American Community Survey of the U.S. Census Bureau, the Asian Indian population in the United States grew from almost 1,679,000 in 2000 to 2,570,000 in 2007: a growth rate of 53%, the highest for any Asian American community, and among the fastest growing ethnic groups in the United States. Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group, after Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.
Settlement
The U.S. states with the largest Indian American populations, in order, are California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois. There are also large Indian American populations in Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Maryland, Virginia, Georgia, and Ohio. The New York metropolitan area, consisting of New York City and adjacent areas within the state of New York as well as nearby areas within the states of New Jersey, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania, is home to approximately 600,000 Indian Americans as of 2009, comprising by far the largest Indian American population of any metropolitan area in the United States. As of August 2009, Indian airline carriers Air India and Jet Airways as well as United States airline carrier Continental Airlines were all offering flights from the New York metropolitan area to and from India. At least seventeen Indian American enclaves characterized as a Little India have emerged in the New York metropolitan area.
Other metropolitan areas with large Indian American populations include San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington/Baltimore, Philadelphia, Boston, Detroit, Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Charlotte, North Carolina and Atlanta. The town of Edison, New Jersey (total population 100,499) is 17.5% Indian American – the highest percentage of any municipality in the United States. But the mostly agrarian Imperial Valley, California near the Mexican border has a long history of Indian Americans (an estimated 21,000 live in Imperial County, California alone) since the first arrivals to the California desert in the early 1900s. The first American Sikh temples were in the Sacramento (Marysville and Yuba City) and San Joaquin Valleys (Lodi and Stockton) to serve the early wave of Sikh Indian workers arrived there. In contrast with East Asian Americans, who tend to be concentrated in California and other areas near the Pacific coast, Indian Americans are more evenly distributed throughout the United States.
Statistics on Indians in the US
In the year 2006, of the entire total 1,266,264 legal immigrants to USA from all the countries, 58,072 were from India. Immigration from India is currently at its highest level in history. Between 2000 and 2006 421,006 Indian immigrants were admitted to the United States, up from 352,278 during the 1990-1999 period. According to the US census, the overall growth rate for Indians from 1990 to 2000 was 105.87 per cent. The average growth rate for the whole of USA was only 7.6 per cent.
Indians comprise 16.4 percent of the Asian-American community. They are the third largest in the Asian American population. In 2000, of all the foreign born population in USA, Indians were 1.007 million. From 2000 onwards the growth rate and the per cent rate of Indians amongst all the immigrants has increased by over 100 percent.
Between 1990 and 2000, the Indian population in the US grew 130% - 10 times the national average of 13%. Source: US Census Bureau
Today, Indian Americans are the third largest Asian American ethnic group following Chinese Americans and Filipino Americans.
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 U.K., China, Taiwan and Japan combined.
A University of California, Berkeley, study reported that one-third of the engineers in Silicon Valley are of Indian descent, while 7% of valley hi-tech firms are led by Indian CEOs. Source: Silicon India Readership Survey
Indians along with other Asians, have one of the highest educational qualifications of all ethnic groups in the US. Almost 67% of all Indians have a bachelor’s or high degree (compared to 28% nationally and 44% average for all Asian American groups). Almost 40% of all Indians in the United States have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness. Thomas Friedman, in his recent book, The World is Flat, explains this trend in terms of brain drain, whereby the best and brightest elements in India emigrate to the US in order to seek better financial opportunities.
Socioeconomic
Education
Indian Americans have the highest educational qualifications of all national origin groups in the United States. According to the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, there are close to 35,000 Indian American doctors . According to the 2000 census, about 64% of Indian Americans have attained a Bachelor's degree or more.(compared to 28% nationally, and 44% average for all Asian American groups). Almost 40% of all Indians have a master’s, doctorate or other professional degree, which is five times the national average. (Source: The Indian American Centre for Political Awareness.) These high levels of education have enabled Indian Americans to become a productive segment of the American population, with 72.3% participating in the U.S. work force, of which 57.7% are employed in managerial and professional specialties.
Economics
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, Indian American men had "the highest year-round, full-time median earnings ($51,094)", while Indian American women had a medium income of $35,173. This phenomenon has been linked to the "brain drain" of the Indian intelligentsia from India (source: Journal of Political Economy - University of Chicago Press). Recently, however, there has been a drop in immigration of Indians from India to the United States. This is generally attributed to the improving economy of India. A large group of Indian Americans are presently second or third generation.
Indian Americans own 50% of all economy lodges and 35% of all hotels in the United States, which have a combined market value of almost $40 billion. (Source: Little India Magazine). In 2002, there were over 223,000 Asian Indian-owned firms in the U.S., employing more than 610,000 workers, and generating more than $88 billion in revenue.
Culture
Food
Indian Americans have brought Indian cuisine to the United States, and it has become established as a popular cuisine in the country, with hundreds of Indian restaurants and eateries nationwide. There are many Indian markets and stores in the United States. Some of the biggest Indian markets are in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York City, the Philadelphia metropolitan area, and Edison, New Jersey. Areas with a significant Indian market presence also include Devon Avenue neighborhood/market in Chicago, Pioneer Blvd. in the Los Angeles region, and University Ave in Berkeley, California. Other predominantly Indian neighborhoods are Journal Square in Jersey City, New Jersey, Jackson Heights in Queens, New York, Hillcroft Avenue in Houston, Texas and Richardson near Dallas, Texas.
Entertainment
Hindi radio stations are available in areas with high Indian populations, for example, RBC Radio in the Tri-state Area of New York city, parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and New York state, Radio Humsafar, Desi Junction in Chicago, Radio Salaam Namaste in North Texas, FunAsia Radio, and Sangeet Radio in Houston. There are also some radio stations broadcasting in Tamil and Telugu wi
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