Census 2000
Indians fastest-growing group among U.S. Asians
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Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON — Software engineer Shailesh Gala is one of a quarter-million Asian Indians who came to the United States in the 1990s to work for high-tech companies.
The 30-year-old native of Bombay, who works for a consulting company in Budd Lake, N.J., has a work visa and has applied for a green card, which would allow him, his wife, Varsha, and their 1-year-old daughter, Rashi, to live permanently in the United States.
"After coming here, I realized there are more opportunities here," said Gala, who came in 1995. "The American Dream, I want that fulfilled. That's why I decided to stay here longer."
The lure of high-tech jobs, combined with growing families, helped the population of Asian Indians in the United States to more than double to 1.7 million over the past decade, according to census data released today.
Third-largest group
Indians are the third-largest group of Asians, making up about 17 percent of Asians in this country. Ten years ago, there were about 815,000 Asian Indians, making up about 12 percent of Asians.
Despite those gains, Chinese remained the most populous Asian group. There are about 2.4 million U.S. Asians of Chinese origin, up about 48 percent from about 1.6 million counted in the 1990 census.
The second-largest Asian group is Filipinos, whose numbers increased about 31 percent to about 1.8 million.
Indians had the largest percentage increase in population followed by Vietnamese, whose numbers grew about 83 percent to about 1.1 million, Census 2000 shows.
The approximately 1.3 million people checking the "Other Asian" category was an increase of about 65 percent. That's probably due to intermarriages within Asian cultures, said John Haaga of the Population Reference Board, a nonprofit group.
Overall, there were about 10.2 million Asians in the United States in 2000 — about 3.6 percent of the total population. The Asian population grew about 48 percent, compared with about 58 percent for the fastest-growing ethnic group, Hispanics.
"Immigration is the number one factor that has driven the record number of ... ethnic Asian groups," said Sharon Lee, a sociologist at Portland State University in Oregon, who analyzes census data.
High-tech jobs
Experts attribute the increase in the U.S. Asian Indian population in part to the number of high-tech workers lured by plentiful jobs. India has a large pool of scientifically trained workers fluent in English.
Studies have shown that about 40 percent of the H-1B work visas issued in the 1990s were given to applicants from India, said Prem Shunmugavelu of the India Abroad Center for Political Awareness.
Gala, who heads a group called the Immigrant Support Network, estimated that there are about 250,000 Indians on work permits in the United States.
However, the primary reason the Asian Indian population is increasing is because Indian families are growing and the children are staying in the United States, said Mukesh Patel of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans.
Indians and other Asians also surged because of immigration laws focused on reuniting immigrants here with relatives back home, experts say.
Vietnamese, who began coming during and immediately after the Vietnam War, are now seeing their numbers increase due to family reunification and, to a lesser extent, rising birth rates.
The only Asian group that decreased in the 1990s was Japanese, falling 6 percent.
Japanese either left the country or married non-Japanese, prompting the children of mixed-race marriages to check other racial categories, Haaga said.
