Indian Americans or Indo-Americans are citizens of the United States with ancestry from India. The United States Census Bureau uses the term Asian Indian to avoid confusion with Native Americans, who have also historically been referred to as "Indians" and are known as "American Indians". With a population of more than four and a half million, Indian Americans make up 1.4% of the U.S. population and are the largest group of South Asian Americans, as well as the second largest group of

Asian Americans Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

after

Chinese Americans Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

. Indian Americans are the highest-earning ethnic group in the United States.Multiple sources: * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Terminology

In the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, 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 Remain may refer to: * ''Remain'' (José González EP) * ''Remain'' (KNK EP) *''Remain'', poetry book by Jennifer Murphy, 2005 *''Remain'', album by Tyrone Wells, 2009 *''Remain'', album by Great Divide, 2002 *''Remain'', album by Them Are Us Too ...

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 Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous people ...

) by the United States Census Bureau. While "East Indian" remains in use, the term "Indian" and " South Asian" is often chosen instead for academic and governmental purposes. Indian Americans are included in the census grouping of " South Asian Americans", which includes Bangladeshi Americans,

Bhutanese Americans Bhutanese Americans are Americans of Bhutanese descent. According to the 2010 census there are 19,439 Americans of Bhutanese descent. However, many Bhutanese came to the U.S. from Nepal as political refugees from that country and are registered ...

, Maldivian Americans,

Nepalese Americans Nepalese Americans are Americans or Permanent Residents of Nepalese ancestry. Immigration from Nepal to the United States began in the 20th century, and many have been able to establish themselves as American nationals. The history of immigrat ...

, Pakistani Americans, and Sri Lankan Americans.

History

Pre-1800

Beginning in the 17th century, members of the East India Company would bring Indian servants to the

American colonies The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies, the Thirteen American Colonies, or later as the United Colonies, were a group of British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America. Founded in the 17th and 18th centur ...

. There were also some East Indian slaves in the United States during the American colonial era. The Naturalization Act of 1790 limited citizenship to "white persons", making Asians ineligible for citizenship.

19th century

The Sikh Temple in Stockton, California, 1915

In 1850, the federal census of

St. Johns County, Florida St. Johns County is a county in the First Coast, northeastern part of the U.S. state of Florida. As of the 2020 United States Census, its population was 273,425. The county seat and largest incorporated city is St. Augustine, Florida, St. August ...

, listed a 40-year-old draftsman named John Dick whose birthplace was listed as "

Hindostan ''Hindūstān'' ( , from '' Hindū'' and ''-stān''), also sometimes spelt as Hindōstān ( ''Indo-land''), along with its shortened form ''Hind'' (), is the Persian-language name for the Indian subcontinent that later became commonly used by ...

", living in city of

St. Augustine Augustine of Hippo ( , ; la, Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Afri ...

. His race is listed as white, suggesting he was of British descent. By 1900, there were more than two thousand Indian

Sikhs Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism (Sikhi), a monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Guru Nanak. The term ...

living in the United States, primarily in California. (At least one scholar has set the level lower, finding a total of 716 Indian immigrants to the U.S. between 1820 and 1900.) 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. 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 Swami Vivekananda (; ; 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902), born Narendranath Datta (), was an Indian Hindu monk, philosopher, author, religious teacher, and the chief disciple of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna. He was a key figure in the intro ...

arriving in Chicago at the World's Fair led to the establishment of the Vedanta Society.

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. 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 The Southern Pacific (or Espee from the railroad initials- SP) was an American Class I railroad network that existed from 1865 to 1996 and operated largely in the Western United States. The system was operated by various companies under the ...

and Western Pacific Railroad between 1907 and 1908. Some white Americans, resentful of economic competition and the arrival of people from different cultures, responded to Sikh immigration with racism and violent attacks. 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. Although labeled Hindu, the majority of Indians were Sikh. 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. In 1913, the Alien Land Act of California prevented non-citizens from owning land. 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 Anti-miscegenation laws or miscegenation laws are laws that enforce racial segregation at the level of marriage and intimate relationships by criminalization, criminalizing interracial marriage and sometimes also sex between members of different R ...

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. 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. On the same grounds, another federal court decision granted citizenship to

A. K. Mozumdar Akhay Kumar Mozumdar (July 15, 1881 – March 9, 1953) was an Indian American spiritual writer and teacher associated with the New Thought Movement in the United States. He became a naturalized American in 1913. However, in 1923, following '' Un ...

. These decisions contrasted with the 1907 declaration by U.S. Attorney General

Charles J. Bonaparte Charles Joseph Bonaparte (; June 9, 1851June 28, 1921) was an American lawyer and political activist for progressive and liberal causes. Originally from Baltimore, Maryland, he served in the cabinet of the 26th U.S. president, Theodore Roosevel ...

: "...under no construction of the law can natives of British India be regarded as white persons." 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 The Ghadar Movement was an early 20th century, international political movement founded by expatriate Indians to overthrow British rule in India. The early movement was created by conspirators who lived and worked on the West Coast of the United ...

, 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". 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. Bhagatsinghthind

By 1920, the population of Americans of Indian descent was approximately 6,400. In 1923, the

Supreme Court of the United States The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

ruled in ''

United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind ''United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind'', 261 U.S. 204 (1923), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States decided that Bhagat Singh Thind, an Indian Sikh man who identified himself as an Aryan, was ineligible for naturalized citi ...

'' that Indians were ineligible for citizenship because they were not "free white persons". The court also argued that the "great body of our people" would reject assimilation with Indians.Zhao, X. & Park, E.J.W. (2013). Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political History. Greenwood. pp. 1142. 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. Over fifty Indians had their citizenship revoked after this decision, but

Sakharam Ganesh Pandit Sakharam Ganesh Pandit (1875–1959), also known as S. G. Pandit, was an Indian Americans, Indian American lawyer and civil rights activist. Pandit immigrated to the United States in 1906 and became a citizen in 1914. In 1923, he represented Bha ...

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. 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''. 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. 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''. 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. In 1955, 14 of 21 hotels enterprises in San Francisco were operated by Gujarati Hindus. By the 1980s, Indians owned around 15,000 motels, about 28 percent of all hotels and motels in the U.S. The

Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, also known as the Hart–Celler Act and more recently as the 1965 Immigration Act, is a federal law passed by the 89th United States Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The l ...

dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional Northern European groups, which would significantly alter the demographic mix in the U.S. Not all Indian Americans came directly from India; some came to the U.S. via Indian communities in other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa, the former British colonies of

East Africa East Africa, Eastern Africa, or East of Africa, is the eastern subregion of the African continent. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 10-11-(16*) territories make up Eastern Africa: Due to the historical ...

, (namely Kenya, Tanzania), and Uganda, Mauritius), the

Asia-Pacific Asia-Pacific (APAC) is the part of the world near the western Pacific Ocean. The Asia-Pacific region varies in area depending on context, but it generally includes East Asia, Russian Far East, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Pacific Isla ...

region ( Malaysia, Singapore,

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and

Fiji Fiji ( , ,; fj, Viti, ; Fiji Hindi: फ़िजी, ''Fijī''), officially the Republic of Fiji, is an island country in Melanesia, part of Oceania in the South Pacific Ocean. It lies about north-northeast of New Zealand. Fiji consists ...

), and the

Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...

(

Guyana Guyana ( or ), officially the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, is a country on the northern mainland of South America. Guyana is an indigenous word which means "Land of Many Waters". The capital city is Georgetown. Guyana is bordered by the ...

, Trinidad and Tobago,

Suriname Suriname (; srn, Sranankondre or ), officially the Republic of Suriname ( nl, Republiek Suriname , srn, Ripolik fu Sranan), is a country on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the north ...

, and Jamaica). From 1965 until the mid-1990s, long-term immigration from India averaged about 40,000 people per year. From 1995 onward, the flow of Indian immigration increased significantly, reaching a high of about 90,000 immigrants in the year 2000.

21st century

The beginning of the 21st century marked a significant wave in the migration trend from India to the United States. The emergence of Information Technology industry in Indian cities as Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad led to the large number of migrations to the US primarily from the states of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in South India. There are sizable populations of people from the states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in the United States. Indians comprise over 80% of all H-1B visas. Indian Americans have risen to become the richest ethnicity in America, with an average household income of $126,891, almost twice the US average of $65,316. 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. As per Institute of International Education (IIE) 'Opendoors' report, 202,014 new students from India enrolled in US education institutions. On January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris, an Indian American, made history as the first female Vice President of the United States. She was elected vice president as the running mate of President Joe Biden in the presidential election the previous November. This was a major milestone in Indian American history, and in addition to Harris, another 20 Indian Americans were nominated to key positions in the administration.

Demographics

According to the

2010 United States Census The United States census of 2010 was the twenty-third United States national census. National Census Day, the reference day used for the census, was April 1, 2010. The census was taken via mail-in citizen self-reporting, with enumerators servin ...

, 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. The

New York-Newark-Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass, at , and one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. The vast metropolitan are ...

, consisting of New York City,

Long Island Long Island is a densely populated island in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of New York (state), New York, part of the New York metropolitan area. With over 8 million people, Long Island is the most populous island in the United Sta ...

, and adjacent areas within

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

, as well as nearby areas within the states of New Jersey (extending to Trenton), Connecticut (extending to Bridgeport), and including Pike County, Pennsylvania, was home to an estimated 711,174 uniracial Indian Americans as of the 2017

American Community Survey The American Community Survey (ACS) is a demographics survey program conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. It regularly gathers information previously contained only in the long form of the decennial census, such as ancestry, citizenship, educati ...

by the U.S. Census Bureau, comprising by far the largest Indian American population of any metropolitan area in the U.S.; Fcc2

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. Monroe Township, Middlesex County, in

central New Jersey Central Jersey is the central region of the U.S. state of New Jersey. The designation of Central New Jersey is a distinct administrative toponym. Geographic area and descriptions While the State of New Jersey is often divided into North and ...

, the geographic heart of the

Northeast megalopolis The Northeast megalopolis, also known as the Northeast Corridor, Acela Corridor, Boston–Washington corridor, or BosWash, is the world's largest megalopolis in terms of economic output and the second most populous megalopolis in the United St ...

and ranked one of the ten safest cities in the United States, 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 to an estimated 5,943 (13.6%) as of 2017, representing a 2,221.5% (a multiple of 23) numerical increase over that period, including many affluent professionals and senior citizens 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 Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invention ...

-South'' had developed, in reference to the Little India stature of both Middlesex County, New Jersey townships. In 2014, 12,350 Indians legally immigrated to the New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA core based statistical area; 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. And in November 2021, American Airlines began non-stop flight dservice between New York JFK and Delhi with IndiGo Air

codesharing A codeshare agreement, also known simply as codeshare, is a business arrangement, common in the aviation industry, in which two or more airlines publish and market the same flight under their own airline designator and flight number (the "airli ...

on this flight. At least 24 Indian American enclaves characterized as a Little India have emerged in the New York City Metropolitan Area. Other metropolitan areas with large Indian American populations include Atlanta,

Austin Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of Texas, as well as the seat and largest city of Travis County, with portions extending into Hays and Williamson counties. Incorporated on December 27, 1839, it is the 11th-most-populous city ...

, Baltimore–Washington, Boston, Chicago, Dallas–Ft. Worth, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Raleigh, San Francisco–San Jose–Oakland, and Seattle. The three oldest Indian American communities going back to around 1910 are in lesser populated

agricultural Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating Plant, plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of Sedentism, sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of Domestication, domesticated species created food ...

areas like

Stockton, California Stockton is a city in and the county seat of San Joaquin County, California, San Joaquin County in the Central Valley (California), Central Valley of the U.S. state of California. Stockton was founded by Carlos Maria Weber in 1849 after he acquir ...

south of Sacramento; the Central Valley of California like Yuba City; and Imperial County, California aka Imperial Valley. These were all primarily Sikh settlements. Census Bureau 2000, Asian Indians in the United States

Census Bureau 2000, Asian Indians in the United States

U.S. metropolitan areas with large Asian Indian populations

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

List of communities by number of Asian Indians (as of the 2010 census): * New York City: 192,209 ** Queens borough: 138,795 ** Brooklyn borough: 25,270 ** Manhattan borough: 24,359 ** Bronx borough: 16,748 **

Staten Island Staten Island ( ) is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Richmond County, in the U.S. state of New York. Located in the city's southwest portion, the borough is separated from New Jersey by the Arthur Kill and the Kill Van Kull an ...

: 6,646 * San Jose, CA: 43,827 * Fremont, CA: 38,711 * Los Angeles, CA: 32,966 *

Chicago, IL (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

: 29,948 * Edison, NJ: 28,286 * Jersey City, NJ: 27,111 * Houston, TX: 26,289 * Sunnyvale, CA: 21,737 * Philadelphia, PA: 18,520 *

Irving, TX Irving is a city in the U.S. state of Texas. Located in Dallas County, Texas, Dallas County, it is also an inner ring suburb of Dallas. The city of Irving is part of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. According to a 2019 estimate from the United ...

: 17,403

Statistics

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. 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 American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

s 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 UK, China, Taiwan and Japan combined. 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 and her updated work in 2006 in collaboration with Vivek Wadhawa. 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.

Socioeconomic status

Indian Americans continuously outpace every other ethnic group

socioeconomically Socioeconomics (also known as social economics) is the social science that studies how economic activity affects and is shaped by social processes. In general it analyzes how modern societies progress, stagnate, or regress because of their local ...

per U.S. Census statistics. 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. 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.

Education

According to

Pew Research The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the wor ...

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.

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).

Culture

Commerce

Patel Brothers is a supermarket chain serving the Indian diaspora, with 57 locations in 19 U.S. states—primarily located in the New Jersey/New York Metropolitan Area, due to its large Indian population, and with the East Windsor/ Monroe Township, New Jersey location representing the world's largest and busiest Indian grocery store outside India. In DFW there is another Indian Grocery chain India Bazar wit
9 locations
Chicago, IL has 4 Patel Brothers including the first ever store.

Media

Gujarati,

Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Punjabi Punjabi, or Panjabi, most often refers to: * Something of, from, or related to Punjab, a region in India and Pakistan * Punjabi language * Punjabi people * Punjabi dialects and languages Punjabi may also refer to: * Punjabi (horse), a British Th ...

, 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. Houston-based Kannada Kaaranji radio focuses on a multitude of programs for children and adults. ''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 Antenna ( antennas or antennae) may refer to: Science and engineering * Antenna (radio), also known as an aerial, a transducer designed to transmit or receive electromagnetic (e.g., TV or radio) waves * Antennae Galaxies, the name of two collid ...

. Several cable and satellite television providers offer Indian channels: Sony TV,

Zee TV Zee TV (stylised as ZEE TV) is a Hindi general entertainment pay television channel in India. It was launched on 2 October 1992, as the first privately owned TV channel in the country. It is owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises. Zee TV also ...

, TV Asia,

Star Plus StarPlus is an Indian Hindi language general entertainment pay television channel owned by Disney Star (formerly ''Star India''), a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company India. The network's programming consists of family dramas, comedies, ...

, Sahara One, Colors, Sun TV, ETV, Big Magic, regional channels, and others have offered Indian content for subscription, such as the

Cricket World Cup The Cricket World Cup (officially known as ICC Men's Cricket World Cup) is the international championship of One Day International (ODI) cricket. The event is organised by the sport's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), e ...

. There is also an American cricket channel called Willow. Many metropolitan areas with large Indian American populations now have movie theaters which specialize in showing

Indian movies The Cinema of India consists of motion pictures produced in India, which had a large effect on world cinema since the late 20th century. Major centers of film production across the country include Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Ko ...

, especially from Tollywood (Telugu), Kollywood (Tamil) and Bollywood (Hindi). In July 2005,

MTV MTV (Originally an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable channel that launched on August 1, 1981. Based in New York City, it serves as the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group, part of Paramount Media Networks, a di ...

premiered a spin-off network called MTV Desi which targets Indian Americans. It has been discontinued by MTV. In 2012, the film ''

Not a Feather, but a Dot ''Not a Feather, but a Dot'' is an hour-long documentary film on the history, perceptions, stereotypes and changes in the Indian American community. The film discusses topics such as the growth of Hinduism in the United States, the origin of the st ...

'' directed by Teju Prasad, was released which investigates the history, perceptions and changes in the Indian American community over the last century. In popular media, several Indian American personalities have made their mark in recent years, including Kovid Gupta, Kal Penn, Hari Kondabolu, Karan Brar, Aziz Ansari, Hasan Minhaj, and Mindy Kaling.

Indian Independence Day Parade

New York city India day parade August 2005

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 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 City University of New York ( CUNY; , ) is the Public university, public university system of Education in New York City, New York City. It is the largest urban university system in the United States, comprising 25 campuses: eleven Upper divis ...

, "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 Madison Avenue is a north-south avenue in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, United States, that carries northbound one-way traffic. It runs from Madison Square (at 23rd Street) to meet the southbound Harlem River Drive at 142nd Stre ...

Midtown Manhattan Midtown Manhattan is the central portion of the New York City borough of Manhattan and serves as the city's primary central business district. Midtown is home to some of the city's most prominent buildings, including the Empire State Buildin ...

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." The New York/New Jersey metropolitan region's second-largest India Independence Day parade takes place in

Little India, Edison/Iselin Little India, Edison/Iselin, also known as Oak Tree Road, is a predominantly South Asian shopping, business, and dining district centered on a road, designated County Route 604, situated in Middlesex County, in Central New Jersey, and set amidst ...

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.

Religion

Communities of Hindus, Christians, Muslims,

, irreligious people, and smaller numbers of Jains,

Buddhists Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and gra ...

, Zoroastrians, and Indian Jews have established their religions in the United States. According to 2014

Pew Research Center The Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan American think tank (referring to itself as a "fact tank") based in Washington, D.C. It provides information on social issues, public opinion, and demographic trends shaping the United States and the w ...

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. The first religious center of an Indian religion to be established in the US was a Sikh Gurudwara in

in 1912. Today there are many Sikh Gurudwaras, Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, Christian churches, and Buddhist and Jain temples in all 50 states.

Hindus

As of 2008, the American

Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...

population was around 2.2 million.

s form the majority religious group amongst the Indian American community. Many organizations such as ISKCON,

Swaminarayan Sampraday The Swaminarayan Sampradaya, also known as Swaminarayan Hinduism and Swaminarayan movement, is a Hindu Vaishnava sampradaya rooted in Ramanuja's Vishishtadvaita, characterized by the Bhakti, worship of its Charismatic authority, charismati ...

, BAPS Swaminarayan Sanstha, Chinmaya Mission, and Swadhyay Pariwar are well-established in the U.S. and Hindu Americans have formed the Hindu American Foundation which represents American Hindus and aim to educate people about Hinduism.

brought Hinduism to the West at the 1893 Parliament of the World's Religions. The Vedanta Society has been important in subsequent Parliaments. In September 2021, the State of New Jersey aligned with the World Hindu Council to declare October as Hindu Heritage Month. Today, many Hindu temples, most of them built by Indian Americans, have emerged in different cities and towns in the United States. More than 18

million One million (1,000,000), or one thousand thousand, is the natural number following 999,999 and preceding 1,000,001. The word is derived from the early Italian ''millione'' (''milione'' in modern Italian), from ''mille'', "thousand", plus the au ...

Americans are now practicing some form of Yoga.

Kriya Yoga ''Kriyā'' (Sanskrit: क्रिया, 'action, deed, effort') is a "completed action", technique or practice within a yoga discipline meant to achieve a specific result. Kriya or Kriya Yoga may also refer to: * Kriya Yoga school The K ...

was introduced to America by Paramahansa Yogananda. A.C Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada initiated the popular ISKCON, also known as the Hare Krishna movement, while preaching Bhakti yoga.

Sikhs

From the time of their arrival in the late 1800s,

Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...

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 additional populations in Detroit, Chicago, and

. 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.

Jains

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. Unlike India and United Kingdom, the Jain community in United States doesn't find sectarian differences—both Digambara and Śvētāmbara share a common roof.

Muslims

Hasan Minhaj, Fareed Zakaria, Aziz Ansari, and Pir

Vilayat Inayat Khan Vilayat Inayat Khan (19 June 1916 17 June 2004) was a teacher of meditation and of the traditions of the East Indian Chishti Sufi order of Sufism. His teaching derived from the tradition of his father, Inayat Khan, founder of The Sufi Orde ...

are few well known Indian American Muslims. Indian Muslim Americans also congregate with other American Muslims, including those from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal,

Sri Lanka Sri Lanka (, ; si, ශ්‍රී ලංකා, Śrī Laṅkā, translit-std=ISO (); ta, இலங்கை, Ilaṅkai, translit-std=ISO ()), formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an ...

, Bhutan, and

Myanmar Myanmar, ; UK pronunciations: US pronunciations incl. . Note: Wikipedia's IPA conventions require indicating /r/ even in British English although only some British English speakers pronounce r at the end of syllables. As John C. Wells, Joh ...

when there are events particularly related to their faith and religious believes as the same can be applied for any other religious community, but there are prominent organizations such as the Indian Muslim Council – USA.

Christians

There are many

Indian Christian Christianity is India's third-largest religion with about 27.8 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the population as of the 2011 census. The written records of the Saint Thomas Christians state that Christianity was introduced to th ...

churches across the US;

India Pentecostal Church of God The Indian Pentecostal Church of God (IPC) is the largest Pentecostal Christian Denomination in India. It has over ten thousand congregations around the world. Its organisational headquarters is at Hebronpuram, Kumbanad, Kerala, India. IPC chu ...

Assemblies of God in India The General Council of the Assemblies of God of India is a Pentecostal Christian denomination in India. It is affiliated with the World Assemblies of God Fellowship. The headquarters is in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. History The General Council of the ...

Church of God (Full Gospel) in India {{Infobox Christian denomination , name = Church Of God (Full Gospel) in India (COG) , image = Church of God Emblem.svg , imagewidth = 140px , caption = Cross with wave of the Holy Spirit , abbreviation = COG in India , main_classification = Prote ...

Church of South India The Church of South India (CSI) is a united Protestant Church in India. It is the result of union of a number of mainline Protestant denominations in South India after independence. The Church of South India is the successor of a number of Pr ...

Church of North India The Church of North India (CNI) is the dominant united Protestant church in northern India. It was established on 29 November 1970 by bringing together the Protestant churches working in northern India. It is a province of the worldwide Anglica ...

, Christhava Tamil Koil,

The Pentecostal Mission The Pentecostal Mission (TPM) or New Testament Church (NTC) in the United States or Universal Pentecostal Church (UPC) in the United Kingdom is a Pentecostal denomination which was founded in Colombo, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1923. The intern ...

, Sharon Pentecostal Church, Independent Non Denominational Churches like Heavenly Feast,

Plymouth Brethren The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and non-conformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where they originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes ...

. Saint Thomas Christians ( Syro-Malabar Church,

Syro-Malankara Catholic Church The Syro-Malankara Catholic Church, also known as the Malankara Syrian Catholic Church, is an Eastern Catholic '' sui iuris'' particular church in full communion with the worldwide Catholic Church possessing self-governance under the Code of Ca ...

Chaldean Syrian Church The Chaldean Syrian Church of India ( Classical Syriac: ܥܕܬܐ ܕܡܕܢܚܐ ܕܐܬܘܖ̈ܝܐ; Malayalam: / ''Kaldaya Suriyani Sabha'') is an Eastern Christian denomination, based in Thrissur, in India. It is organized as a metropolitan provi ...

Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church The Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (MOSC) also known as the Indian Orthodox Church (IOC) or simply as the Malankara Church, is an autocephalous Oriental Orthodox church headquartered in Devalokam, near Kottayam, India. The church serve ...

, Jacobite Syrian Christian Church, CSI Syrian Christians,

Mar Thoma Syrian Church The Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church, often shortened to Mar Thoma Church, and known also as the Reformed Syrian ChurchS. N. Sadasivan. A Social History of India'. APH Publishing; 2000. . p. 442. and the Mar Thoma Syrian Church of Malabar ...

, Pentecostal Syrian Christians and

St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India St. Thomas Evangelical Church of India (STECI) is an Oriental Protestant (Reformed Orthodox) episcopal denomination based in Kerala, India. It derives from a schism in the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church in 1961 and forms a part of the S ...

) from Kerala have established their own places of worship across the United States. The website ''USIndian.org'' has collected a comprehensive list of all the traditional St. Thomas Christian Churches in the US. There are also Catholic Indians hailing originally from Goa, Karnataka and Kerala, who attend the same services as other

American Catholic With 23 percent of the United States' population , the Catholic Church is the country's second largest religious grouping, Protestantism in the United States, after Protestantism, and the country's largest single church or Christian denominatio ...

s, but may celebrate the feast of Saint Francis Xavier as a special event of their identity. The Indian Christian Americans have formed the Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America (FIACONA) to represent a network of Indian Christian organizations in the US. FIACONA estimates the Indian American

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

population to be 1,050,000. The Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Catholic Church, native to India since the 1st century, established St. Thomas Syro-Malabar diocese of Chicago was established in the year 2001. St. Thomas day is celebrated in this church on July 3 every year.

Others

The large Parsi and Irani community is represented by the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America. 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.

Deepavali/Diwali, Eid/Ramadan as school holidays

Momentum has been growing to recognize the

holy day Deepavali (Diwali) as a holiday on school district calendars in the

New York City metropolitan area The New York metropolitan area, also commonly referred to as the Tri-State area, is the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass, at , and one of the list of most populous metropolitan areas, most populous urban agg ...

. New York City announced in October 2022 that Diwali would be an official school holiday commencing in 2023.

Passaic, New Jersey Passaic ( or ) is a city in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 U.S. census, the city had a total population of 70,537, ranking as the 16th largest municipality in New Jersey and an increase of 656 from the 69,78 ...

established Diwali as a school holiday in 2005. South Brunswick, New Jersey in 2010 became the first of the many school districts with large Indian student populations in Middlesex County in New Jersey to add Diwali to the school calendar. Glen Rock, New Jersey in February 2015 became the first municipality in

Bergen County Bergen County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. to recognize Diwali as an annual school holiday, while thousands in Bergen County celebrated the first U.S. county-wide Diwali Mela festival under a unified sponsorship banner in 2016, while Fair Lawn in Bergen County celebrates Holi. Diwali/Deepavali is also recognized by Monroe Township, New Jersey. Efforts have been undertaken in Millburn, Monroe Township, West Windsor-Plainsboro, Bernards Township, and North Brunswick, New Jersey,

, as well as in New York City (ultimately successfully), 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. Mahatma Gandhi Elementary School is located in

. Efforts are also progressing toward making Diwali and Eid official holidays at all 24 school districts in Middlesex County. At least 12 school districts on Long Island closed for Diwali in 2022, and over 20 in New Jersey. In March 2015, New York City

Mayor Bill de Blasio Bill de Blasio (; born Warren Wilhelm Jr., May 8, 1961; later Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm) is an American politician who served as the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New Yor ...

officially declared the

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

holy days

Eid al-Fitr , nickname = Festival of Breaking the Fast, Lesser Eid, Sweet Eid, Sugar Feast , observedby = Muslims , type = Islamic , longtype = Islamic , significance = Commemoration to mark the end of fasting in Ramadan , dat ...

and Eid al-Adha holidays on the school calendar. School districts in

Paterson Paterson may refer to: People * Paterson (surname) * Paterson (given name) Places Australia *Paterson, New South Wales *Paterson River, New South Wales * Division of Paterson, an electoral district in New South Wales *Paterson, Queensland, a lo ...

and South Brunswick, New Jersey observe

Ramadan , type = islam , longtype = Religious , image = Ramadan montage.jpg , caption=From top, left to right: A crescent moon over Sarıçam, Turkey, marking the beginning of the Islamic month of Ramadan. Ramadan Quran reading in Bandar Torkaman, Iran. ...

Ethnicity

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.

Linguistic affiliation

The United States is home to various associations that promote Indian languages and cultures. Some major organizations include, * Telugu Association of North America (TANA) *

American Telugu Association American Telugu Association (ATA) is a non-profit organization of Telugu people living in North America. The primary purpose of the association is to assist and promote literary, cultural, religious, social, educational, economic, health and comm ...

(ATA) * Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America (FeTNA) * Federation of Kerala Associations in North America (FOKANA) * Association of Kannada Kootas of America (AKKA) * North America Vishwa Kannada Association (NAVIKA) * North American Bengali Conference (NABC) * The Odisha Society of the Americas (OSA) * Maharashtra Mandal (MM)

Progress

Timeline

* 1600: Beginning of the East India Company. * 1635: An "East Indian" is documented present in

Jamestown, Virginia The Jamestown settlement in the Colony of Virginia was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. It was located on the northeast bank of the James (Powhatan) River about southwest of the center of modern Williamsburg. It was ...

. * 1680: Due to

, a mixed-race girl born to an Indian father and an Irish mother is classified as

mulatto (, ) is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Spanish and Portuguese is ...

and sold into slavery. * 1790: The first officially confirmed Indian immigrant arrives in the United States from

Madras Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

, South India, on a British ship. * 1899–1914: The first significant wave of Indian immigrants arrives in the United States, mostly consisting of Sikh farmers and businessmen from the Punjab region of British India. They arrive in Angel Island, California via Hong Kong. They start businesses including farms and lumber mills in California, Oregon, and Washington. * 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. * 1912: The first Sikh gurdwara opens in

Stockton Stockton may refer to: Places Australia * Stockton, New South Wales * Stockton, Queensland, a locality in the Cassowary Coast Region New Zealand *Stockton, New Zealand United Kingdom *Stockton, Cheshire *Stockton, Norfolk *Stockton, Chirbu ...

, California. * 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 ''

'', 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

, 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. * 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. * 1918: Earliest record of LGBT Indian Americans—Jamil Singh in Sacramento, California * 1922: Yellapragada Subbarao, a

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 Methotrexate (MTX), formerly known as amethopterin, is a chemotherapy agent and immune-system suppressant. It is used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases, and ectopic pregnancies. Types of cancers it is used for include breast cancer, leuke ...

), the first cancer chemotherapy. * 1923: In ''

'', the

Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...

unanimously rules that Indian people are aliens ineligible for United States citizenship. Bhagat Singh Thind regained his citizenship years later in

. * 1943: Republican Clare Boothe Luce and Democrat Emanuel Celler introduce a bill to open naturalization to Indian immigrants to the United States. Prominent Americans Pearl Buck, Louis Fischer, Albert Einstein and Robert Millikan give their endorsement to the bill. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a Democrat, also endorses the bill, calling for an end to the "statutory discrimination against the Indians". * 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 The Los Angeles Philharmonic, commonly referred to as the LA Phil, is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. It has a regular season of concerts from October through June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, and a summer season at th ...

, 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. * 1964:

Amar G. Bose Amar Gopal Bose (November 2, 1929 – July 12, 2013) was an American entrepreneur and academic. An electrical engineer and sound engineer, he was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 45 years. He was also the found ...

founded Bose Corporation. He was the chairman, primary stockholder, and Technical Director at Bose Corporation. He was former professor of

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. * 1965: President

Lyndon Johnson Lyndon Baines Johnson (; August 27, 1908January 22, 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician who served as the 36th president of the United States from 1963 to 1969. He had previously served as the 37th vice ...

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. * 1981: Suhas Patil co-founded

Cirrus Logic Cirrus Logic Inc. is an American fabless semiconductor supplier that specializes in analog, mixed-signal, and audio DSP integrated circuits (ICs). Since 1998, the company's headquarters have been in Austin, Texas. The company's audio processo ...

, one of the first fabless semiconductor companies. * 1982: Vinod Khosla co-founded

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

. * 1983: Subrahmanyam Chandrasekhar won the Nobel Prize for Physics; Asian Indian Women in America attended the first White House Briefing for Asian American Women. (AAIWA, formed in 1980, is the 1st Indian women's organization in North America.) * 1985: Balu Natarajan becomes the first Indian-American to win the

Scripps National Spelling Bee The Scripps National Spelling Bee (formerly the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee and commonly called the National Spelling Bee) is an annual spelling bee held in the United States. The bee is run on a not-for-profit basis by The E. W. Scri ...

* 1987: President

Ronald Reagan Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...

appoints Joy Cherian, the first Indian Commissioner of the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). * 1988: Sanjay Mehrotra co-founded SanDisk. * 1989: Launch of RBC Radio, the first South Asian-Indian radio station in the United States. * 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). * 1994: Rajat Gupta elected managing director of

McKinsey & Company McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm founded in 1926 by University of Chicago professor James O. McKinsey, that offers professional services to corporations, governments, and other organizations. McKinsey is the oldest and ...

, the first Indian-born CEO of a multinational company. * 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". * 1996: Pradeep Sindhu co-founded Juniper Networks * 1996: Rajat Gupta and Anil Kumar of

co-found the Indian School of Business. Kalpana_Chawla,_NASA_photo_portrait_in_orange_suit

* 1997: Kalpana Chawla, one of the six-member crew of STS-87 mission, becomes the first Indian American astronaut. * 1999: NASA names the third of its four "Great Observatories" Chandra X-ray Observatory after

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (; ) (19 October 1910 – 21 August 1995) was an Indian-American theoretical physicist who spent his professional life in the United States. He shared the 1983 Nobel Prize for Physics with William A. Fowler for "... ...

the Indian-born American astrophysicist and a Nobel laureate. * 1999: Filmmaker

M. Night Shyamalan Manoj Nelliyattu M. Night Shyamalan ( ; born August 6, 1970) is an Indian-American filmmaker and actor. He is best known for making original films with contemporary supernatural plots and twist endings. He was born in Mahé, India, and raise ...

enters film history with his film '' The Sixth Sense'' becoming one of the all-time highest-grossing films worldwide. * 1999: Rono Dutta becomes the president of United Airlines. * 2001: Professor Dipak C. Jain (born in Tezpur – Assam, India) appointed as dean of the

Kellogg School of Management The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University (also known as Kellogg) is the business school of Northwestern University, a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1908, Kellogg is one of the oldest and most p ...

, Northwestern University. * 2002: Professor of statistics

Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao FRS (born 10 September 1920), commonly known as C. R. Rao, is an Indian-American mathematician and statistician. He is currently professor emeritus at Pennsylvania State University and Research Professor at the Univ ...

is awarded National Medal of Science by President George W. Bush. * 2005: Abhi Talwalkar becomes president and chief executive officer of LSI Corporation

* 2006: Indra Nooyi (born in Chennai, India) appointed as CEO of

PepsiCo PepsiCo, Inc. is an American multinational food, snack, and beverage corporation headquartered in Harrison, New York, in the hamlet of Purchase. PepsiCo's business encompasses all aspects of the food and beverage market. It oversees the manuf ...

. * 2007:

Bobby Jindal Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971) is an American politician who served as the 55th Governor of Louisiana from 2008 to 2016. The only living former Louisiana governor, Jindal also served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives a ...

is elected governor of Louisiana and is the first person of Indian descent to be elected governor of an American state. * 2007:

Renu Khator Renu Khator is the fifth chancellor of the University of Houston System (UH System) and the thirteenth president of the University of Houston. In 2008, she became the first female chancellor in the state of Texas and the first Indian immigrant to ...

appointed to a dual-role as chancellor of the University of Houston System and president of the University of Houston. * 2007: Francisco D'Souza appointed as the president and CEO and of Cognizant Technology Solutions. He is one of the youngest chief executive officers in the software services sector at the age 38 in the United States. * 2007: Vikram Pandit (born in Nagpur,

Maharashtra Maharashtra (; , abbr. MH or Maha) is a states and union territories of India, state in the western India, western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. Maharashtra is the List of states and union te ...

, India) appointed as CEO of

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi (Style (visual arts), stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment banking, investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking ...

. He was previously the president and CEO of the Institutional Securities and Investment Banking Group at Morgan Stanley. * 2007: Shantanu Narayen appointed as

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

Adobe Systems Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...

. * 2008: Treasury Secretary

Henry Paulson Henry Merritt Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is an American banker and financier who served as the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009. Prior to his role in the Department of the Treasury, Paulson was the Chairman a ...

appoints Neel Kashkari as the Interim U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Financial Stability. * 2008:

Raj Chetty Nadarajan "Raj" Chetty (born August 4, 1979) is an Indian-American economist and the William A. Ackman Professor of Public Economics at Harvard University. Some of Chetty's recent papers have studied equality of opportunity in the United States an ...

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. * 2008: Sanjay Jha appointed as Co-

Motorola, Inc. Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

. * 2008: Establishment of the

South Asian American Digital Archive The South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization that archives materials associated with the history of South Asian Americans. History SAADA was established in 2008 to preserve, document, and share the re ...

(SAADA) to document the history of the South Asian American community. Satya Nadella

* 2009: President Barack Obama appoints Preet Bharara (born in Firozpur, India; graduate of Harvard College Class of 1990 and Columbia Law School Class of 1993) as United States attorney for the Southern District of New York Manhattan. * Farah Pandith appointed as Special Representative to Muslim Communities for the United States Department of State. * 2009: President Barack Obama appoints Aneesh Paul Chopra as the first American Federal Chief Technology Officer of the United States (CTO). * 2009: President Barack Obama appoints Eboo Patel and

Anju Bhargava Anju Bhargava is a management consultant who was a member of President Barack Obama's inaugural Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnership. Work Bhargava began her career as a banker and has held senior-level positions in corp ...

on President's Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. * 2009: President Barack Obama appoints Vinai Thummalapally as the U.S. Ambassador to Belize * 2009: President Barack Obama nominates Rajiv Shah, M.D. as the new head of United States Agency for International Development. * 2009: President Barack Obama nominates Islam A. Siddiqui as the Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. * 2010: President of Harvard University

Catherine Drew Gilpin Faust Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust (born September 18, 1947) is an American historian and was the 28th president of Harvard University, the first woman to serve in that role. She was Harvard's first president since 1672 without an undergraduate or grad ...

appoints

Nitin Nohria Nitin Nohria (born February 9, 1962) is an Indian-American academic. He was the tenth dean of Harvard Business School. He is also the George F. Baker Professor of Administration. He is a former non-executive director of Tata Sons. Early life an ...

as the tenth dean of

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

. * 2010: President of University of Chicago Robert Zimmer appoints Sunil Kumar as the dean of University of Chicago Booth School of Business. * 2010:

Deven Sharma Deven Sharma (born 1956 in Jharkhand) is an Indian businessman. Biography Early life and education Sharma attended De Nobili School, FRI, Digwadih, Dhanbad. He received his Bachelor's Degree from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India, ...

appointed president of

Standard & Poor's S&P Global Ratings (previously Standard & Poor's and informally known as S&P) is an American credit rating agency (CRA) and a division of S&P Global that publishes financial research and analysis on stocks, bonds, and commodities. S&P is con ...

. * 2010: Ajaypal Banga appointed president and CEO of MasterCard. * 2010: President Barack Obama nominates

Subra Suresh Subra Suresh is an Indian-born American bioengineer, materials scientist, and academic administrator. On 1 January 2018, he was inaugurated as the fourth President of Singapore's Nanyang Technological University (NTU), where he is also the i ...

, Dean of Engineering at MIT as director of National Science Foundation. * 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 Nimrata Nikki Haley (née Randhawa; born January 20, 1972) is an American diplomat and politician who served as the 116th and first female governor of South Carolina from 2011 to 2017, and as the 29th United States ambassador to the United Na ...

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. * 2011: Jamshed Bharucha named president of

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

. Previous to that, he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Dartmouth College in 2001, the first Indian American dean at an Ivy League institution, and Provost at Tufts University in 2002. * 2011: Satish K. Tripathi appointed as President of University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. * 2011: Rohit Gupta wins over 100 international awards & accolades for his films '' Life! Camera Action...'' and '' Another Day Another Life''. * 2011:

is re-elected Governor of Louisiana. * 2012: Ami Bera is elected to the House of Representatives from California. * 2013: Vistap Karbhari appointed as president of University of Texas at Arlington * 2013: Sri Srinivasan is confirmed as a Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. * 2013: Nina Davuluri wins Miss America 2014. * 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. * 2014:

Satya Nadella Satya Narayana Nadella (, ; born 19 August 1967) is an Indian-American business executive. He is the executive chairman and CEO of Microsoft, succeeding Steve Ballmer in 2014 as CEO and John W. Thompson in 2021 as chairman. Before becoming CE ...

appointed as CEO of Microsoft. Vivek Murthy, Surgeon General (profile)

* 2014: Vivek Murthy appointed as the nineteenth

Surgeon General of the United States The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. Th ...

. He returned to the role again in 2021 to serve as the twenty-first Surgeon General. * 2014:

Rakesh Khurana Rakesh Khurana (born November 22, 1967) is an Indian-American educator. He is a professor of sociology at Harvard University, Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School and the Danoff Dean of Harvard College. Early life and ...

appointed as the dean of Harvard College, the original founding college of Harvard University. * 2014: Manjul Bhargava wins Fields Medal in Mathematics. * 2015: Sundar Pichai appointed as the chairman and CEO of Google. * 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. * 2016: President Donald Trump nominates Seema Verma to lead the

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), is a federal agency within the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that administers the Medicare program and works in partnership with state governments to administer M ...

. Her nomination is confirmed in 2017. * 2017: Hasan Minhaj roasts President Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, becoming the first Indian American and Muslim-American to perform at the event. * 2017: President Donald Trump nominates Ajit Pai as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). * 2017: Balvir Singh was elected to the

Burlington County Burlington County is a county in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The county is the largest by area in New Jersey. Its county seat is Mount Holly.

Board of Chosen Freeholders, New Jersey on November 7, 2017. He became the first Asian-American to win a countywide election in Burlington County and the first Sikh-American to win a countywide election in New Jersey. * 2019: Seven out of the eight winners of the

(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. * 2019: Lilly Singh became the first person of Indian descent to host an American major broadcast network late-night talk show A Little Late with Lilly Singh. * 2019: Abhijit Banerjee is awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. * 2020: Kash Patel is named chief of staff to the Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller. * 2020:

Arvind Krishna Arvind Krishna is an Indian-American business executive serving as the Chairman and CEO of IBM. He has been the CEO of IBM since April 2020 and took on the role of Chairman in January 2021. Krishna began his career at IBM in 1990, at IBM's Tho ...

appointed as the CEO of IBM. * 2021: Kamala Harris, born to an Indian mother, became the first woman and first Indian origin Vice President of the United States. * 2021:

Parag Agrawal Parag Agrawal (; born 21 May 1984) is an Indian-American software engineer who was the CEO of Twitter, Inc. from November 2021 to October 2022. He was fired, along with three other top executives, on October 27, 2022, following Elon Musk’s Ac ...

appointed as the CEO of Twitter. * 2022: Laxman Narasimhan appointed CEO of

Starbucks Starbucks Corporation is an American multinational chain of coffeehouses and roastery reserves headquartered in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's largest coffeehouse chain. As of November 2021, the company had 33,833 stores in 80 c ...

. * 2022: Shruti Miyashiro appointed as the President and CEO of Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU). * 2022: Aruna Miller elected the first

lieutenant governor of Maryland and first

South Asian South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, ...

woman elected lieutenant governor in the U.S.

Classification

According to the official U.S. racial categories employed by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S. government agencies, American citizens or resident aliens who marked "''Asian Indian''" as their ancestry or wrote in a term that was automatically classified as an Asian Indian became classified as part of the Asian race at the 2000 US Census. As with other modern official U.S. government racial categories, the term "Asian" is in itself a broad and

heterogeneous Homogeneity and heterogeneity are concepts often used in the sciences and statistics relating to the uniformity of a substance or organism. A material or image that is homogeneous is uniform in composition or character (i.e. color, shape, siz ...

classification, encompassing all peoples with origins in the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. In previous decades, Indian Americans were also variously classified as White American, the "Hindu race", and "other". Even today, where individual Indian Americans do not racially self-identify, and instead report

, Jewish, and Zoroastrian as their "race" in the "some other race" section without noting their country of origin, they are automatically tallied as white. 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.

Current issues

Discrimination

In the 1980s, a gang known as the Dotbusters specifically targeted Indian Americans in

Jersey City, New Jersey Jersey City is the second-most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey, after Newark.racial discrimination, as well as stereotyping and scapegoating of Indian Americans have been conducted in recent years. In particular, racial discrimination against Indian Americans in the workplace has been correlated with Indophobia due to the rise in

outsourcing Outsourcing is an agreement in which one company hires another company to be responsible for a planned or existing activity which otherwise is or could be carried out internally, i.e. in-house, and sometimes involves transferring employees and ...

offshoring Offshoring is the relocation of a business process from one country to another—typically an operational process, such as manufacturing, or supporting processes, such as accounting. Usually this refers to a company business, although state gover ...

, whereby Indian Americans are blamed for US companies offshoring white-collar labor to India.Worries about technical-job losses, discrimination
, by Amy Yee, The Financial Times Ltd., 2004 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. Due to various socio-cultural reasons, implicit racial discrimination against Indian Americans largely go unreported by the Indian American community. Numerous cases of religious stereotyping of American Hindus (mainly of Indian origin) have also been documented. Since the

September 11, 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial ...

, there have been scattered incidents of Indian Americans becoming mistaken targets for

hate crimes A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...

. In one example, a

, Balbir Singh Sodhi, was murdered at a Phoenix gas station by a white supremacist. This happened after September 11, and the

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

er claimed that his turban made him think that the victim was a Middle Eastern American. In another example, a

pizza Pizza (, ) is a dish of Italian origin consisting of a usually round, flat base of leavened wheat-based dough topped with tomatoes, cheese, and often various other ingredients (such as various types of sausage, anchovies, mushrooms, onions ...

deliverer was mugged and beaten in Massachusetts for "being

" though the victim pleaded with the assailants that he was in fact a

. 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. 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. 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. On April 5, 2006, the Hindu Mandir of Minnesota was vandalized allegedly on the basis of religious discrimination. The vandals damaged temple property leading to $200,000 worth of damage. 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. In 2006, then Delaware

Senator A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...

and current U.S President Joe 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." On August 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page shot eight people and killed six at a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. 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. Punjabi Sikh Americans in

Indianapolis Indianapolis (), colloquially known as Indy, is the state capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Indiana and the seat of Marion County. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the consolidated population of Indianapolis and Marion ...

suffered many losses in their community on April 15, 2021, during the

Indianapolis FedEx shooting On April 15, 2021, a mass shooting occurred at a FedEx Ground facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. Nine people were killed, including the gunman, 19-year-old former employee Brandon Scott Hole, who committed suicide. Seven others w ...

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. Another Sikh, Taptejdeep Singh, was one of the nine people killed in the San Jose shooting on May 26.

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. In December, 2015, over 30 Indian students seeking admission in two US universities—

Silicon Valley University Silicon Valley University (SVU) was a private, non-profit higher educational institution located in San Jose, California. The university was accredited by the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) at the bachelor's deg ...

and the Northwestern Polytechnic University—were denied entry by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 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. 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.

Citizenship

Unlike many countries, India does not allow dual citizenship. 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). 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

, the average family income of Indian Americans was roughly $273,000, while in Fresno, California, Fresno, the average family income of Indian Americans was only $24,000, an eleven-fold difference.

Illegal immigration

In 2009, the United States Department of Homeland Security, Department of Homeland Security estimated that there were 200,000 Indian unauthorized immigrants; they are the sixth largest nationality (tied with Koreans) of illegal immigrants behind Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Philippines. Indian Americans have had an increase in illegal immigration of 25% since 2000. In 2014,

estimated that there are 450,000 undocumented Indians in the United States.

Media

Politics

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. Additionally, there are industry groups such as the Asian American Hotel Owners Association and the Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin. A majority tend to identify as moderates and have voted for Democratic Party (United States), Democrats in recent elections, in particular supporting Barack Obama in vast numbers. Polls before the 2004 United States presidential election, 2004 presidential election showed Indian Americans favoring Democratic candidate John Kerry over Republican Party (United States), Republican George W. Bush by a 53% to 14% margin, with 30% undecided at the time. The Republican party has tried to target this community for political support, and in 2007, Republican Congressman

became the first United States Governor of Indian descent when he was elected Governor of Louisiana.

, also of Indian descent and a fellow Republican, became Governor of South Carolina in South Carolina gubernatorial election, 2010, 2010. Republican Neel Kashkari is also of Indian descent and ran for Governor of California in California gubernatorial election, 2014, 2014. Raja Krishnamoorthi who is a lawyer, engineer and community leader from Schaumburg, Illinois has been the Congressman representing Illinois's 8th congressional district since 2017. Jenifer Rajkumar is a Lower Manhattan district leader and the first Indian American woman elected to the state legislature in

history. In 2016, Kamala Harris (the daughter of a Tamil Americans, Tamil Indian American mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, and an Afro-Jamaican American father, Donald J. Harris, Donald Harris) became the first Indian American and second African American female to serve in the United States Senate. In 2020 United States presidential election, 2020, she briefly Kamala Harris 2020 presidential campaign, ran for President of the United States and was later chosen as the Democratic Party's vice-presidential nominee, running alongside Joe Biden. Indian Americans have played a significant role in promoting better India–United States relations, turning the cold attitude of American legislators to a positive perception of India in the post-Cold War era. File:Ami Bera official portrait.jpg, Representative Ami Bera from California File:12.19.17RaviBhallaByLuigiNovi2.jpg, Ravinder Bhalla, 39th Mayor of Hoboken, New Jersey File:Bharara, Preet Headshot.jpg, Preet Bharara served as the United States Attorney for the Southern District of

. File:Vin_Gopal.jpg, Representative Vin Gopal, New Jersey's 11th legislative district File:Nikki Haley official photo.jpg,

was the 29th United States Ambassador to the United Nations and 116th Governor of South Carolina. File:Kamala Harris Vice Presidential Portrait (cropped).jpg, Kamala Harris is the Vice President of the United States and was the first person of Indian descent elected to the United States Senate File:Bobby Jindal August 2015.jpg,

was the 58th Governor of Louisiana and a former representative. File:Pramila Jayapal 115th Congress photo.jpg, Representative Pramila Jayapal from Washington. File:Ro Khanna, official portrait, 115th Congress.jpg, Representative Ro Khanna from California. File:Raja Krishnamoorthi official photo.jpg, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi from Illinois. File:Jr-high-res.jpg, New York State Assembly, New York Assembly Representative Jenifer Rajkumar of Indians in Queens, Queens File:Dalip Singh Saund.jpg, 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. File:Shri Thanedar on The Bart Hawley Show.jpg, Representative Shri Thanedar from Michigan.

Notable people

References

External links

The American Institute of India Studies (AIIS)

* [https://www.saada.org/tides/article/1917-2017 From 1917 to 2017 Immigration, Exclusion, and "National Security"] by Seema Sohi
Widely exhibited across museums in the US, historic photography project of Indians living in the late 1980s in America
{{Indian Americans by location Indian American, American people of Indian descent, * Asian-American society Indian diaspora in the United States, American South Asian American

Terminology

History

Pre-1800

19th century

20th century

21st century

Demographics

U.S. metropolitan areas with large Asian Indian populations

List of U.S. states by the population of Asian Indians

Statistics

Socioeconomic status

Education

Household income

Culture

Commerce

Media

Indian Independence Day Parade

Sikh Day Vaisakhi Parade

Religion

Hindus

Sikhs

Jains

Muslims

Christians

Others

Deepavali/Diwali, Eid/Ramadan as school holidays

Ethnicity

Linguistic affiliation

Progress

Timeline

Classification

Current issues

Discrimination

Immigration

Citizenship

Income disparities

Illegal immigration

Media

Politics

Notable people

See also

References

Further reading

External links