The hordes of Hindustan trameling these shores
Based on our projections, Asian Indians already number more than 2.5 million, and have now — for the first time — slightly eclipsed the Filipino American population to become the second largest Asian group in the United States. It is expected that they will equal or outnumber Chinese Americans in 2025.
What this also means is that as 2010 approaches, with Asian Indians representing 1.5 percent of the U.S. population, and considering there are 7,424 state legislators nationwide, the Indian American community should have at least 100 State legislators of Indian origin as opposed to the four who currently hold office.
INDOlink - Diaspora - Desi Americans To Cross 4.5 Million in 2010
Making projections based on five-year trends is - ahem - speculative, though it certainly does "feel" like there are many more desis around, at least in New Jersey. Interestingly, Indian illegal immigration is rising simultaneously, which typically happens when there is a surge in legal immigration. Regarding legislators - the newly arrived can’t even become citizens for five years, so Assisi’s predicted burgeoning of elected officials is woefully premature.
(Aside: Given that esteemed Senators casually taunt us with racial slurs like macaca, I am not persuaded that we’ve arrived in the way some of our brand boosters proclaim.)
The New York Times and others announced a few years ago that many high-achieving Indians were returning to India. The lifestyle in India, the assurances that accrue from being among one’s own, and managerial salaries that, when adjusted for cost of living, may be the highest in the world, lured many people back to the obstreperous Bangalore traffic. Some even predicted that the reverse brain-drain would precipitate a drop in the Indian-American population.
Obviously, this scenario hasn’t panned out. While the Indian economy is growing at 9 percent a year, the per capita GDP is still around $3100, in comparison to $41000 for the United States; so there will continue to be people who can simply do better here (better in terms of $, not in any metaphysical sense).
And who are these illegals? I suspect many are fellas who’ve overstayed their expired H1-B visas; or Gujurati Patels who slip in on tourist visas, don a baseball cap and head for the fryer at their cousin’s Dunkin Donuts, where everyone is so blindingly brown no one notices mundane things like immigrant status; and poor old mummies and daddies who wile away their waning years watching the damsels on Zee TV.
They’ll come, and come some more. And then they’ll get back on top… never mind.
