Indians the third largest immigrant group in US

Washington: The US is home to about 1.6 million Indian origin people, making them the third-largest immigrant group in the country after Mexicans and Filipino, a Washington-based think tank has said.

Between 2007 and 2008, the number of Indian immigrants surpassed the number of Chinese and Hong Kong-born immigrants for the first time since at least 1960, said the Migration Policy Institute in its latest report.

Indian immigration to the US, a fairly recent phenomenon, grew rapidly during the 1990s and 2000s.

In addition, people with Indian ancestry have also immigrated to the US from the Caribbean, East Africa, Canada, and the United Kingdom, said the report authored by Aaron Terrazas and Cristina Batog.

The report said Indians are heavily concentrated in California and New Jersey. Compared to other immigrant groups, the Indian foreign born are much better educated - nearly three-quarters of Indian-born adults have a bachelor's degree or higher.

About one-quarter of Indian-born men in the labour force work in the information technology industry. Nearly half of all Indian immigrants resided in California, New Jersey, New York, and Texas, it said.

California had the largest number of Indian immigrants (303,497 or 18.7 per cent of the Indian-born population) in 2008, followed by New Jersey (187,732, or 11.6 per cent) and New York (141,738, or 8.7 per cent).

Texas (131,729, or 8.1 per cent), Illinois (129,187, or 8.0 per cent), Pennsylvania (65,014, or 4.0 per cent), Florida 59,169, or 3.6 per cent), Georgia (54,111, or 3.3 per cent), Virginia (53,674, or 3.3 per cent), and Michigan (49,167, or 3.0 per cent) are the other cities with substantial Indian-origin population.

In 2008, the Indian born made up 10.9 per cent of all immigrants in New Jersey and 10.3 per cent of all immigrants in West Virginia.

They were also about one in 10 immigrants in Pennsylvania (9.8 per cent), Delaware (9.7 per cent), New Hampshire (9.5 per cent), and Ohio (9.5 per cent).

The Indian immigrant population more than doubled in 10 states between 2000 and 2008.

These states, which generally had small Indian immigrant populations in 2000, include Montana (from 253 to 1,009), Utah (from 2,030 to 5,629), Nevada (from 2,511 to 6,750), Idaho (from 845 to 2,269), Arizona (from 9,134 to 22,731) and Washington (from 14,714 to 36,435).