http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/10/29/news/indians.php


Immigrants from India thriving in U.S.
By Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune

Published: October 29, 2006


VIENNA, Virginia When Gangadhar Chirravuri and his wife, Kalpana Seethepalli, meet Americans in the neighborhood here, they are sometimes asked whether they come from northern or southern India. The question would have been highly unusual five years ago, but much has changed in that time.

The ethnic Indian population of the United States has soared, boosted by a demand for English-speaking scientists, technicians, engineers, doctors, and other professionals. From 2000 to 2005, it swelled by 640,000, to 2.3 million, a 38 percent growth rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That pushed the population of Indian-Americans past that of ethnic Filipinos, with only ethnic Chinese more numerous among Asian immigrant groups.

By comparison, from 1948 to 1965, the population of "Asian Indians" - as the bureau calls immigrants from India to differentiate them from Native Americans - grew by a mere 7,000.

While Indians arriving in years past often encountered ignorance and misunderstanding, and sometimes discrimination, people like Chirravuri and Seethepalli represent a new wave of extremely well-educated and ambitious young professionals who seem to have little trouble fitting in.

Chirravuri, 32, is a software engineer with two master's degrees from Villanova University, in suburban Philadelphia, and ambitions for a third. Seethepalli, 31, finished a doctorate in economics at George Washington University in Washington last year and now works at the World Bank.

The Indian population has mushroomed in areas like Fairfax County, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, where people like Chirravuri and Seethepalli live, drawn by jobs in technology companies and international organizations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The area's Indian population has grown 50 percent in five years, from 70,000 to about 107,000, and a high level of education sets this local group apart. In the 2000 census, 72 percent of Indians in the Washington area aged 25 and older had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared with 24 percent of the overall U.S. population.

What is more, Indian Americans are now the country's richest ethnic group.

Median household income for all Asians in the United States was $57,518 in 2004, the highest among all racial groups, including whites, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in March. And for Indians, it was even higher: $68,771. The overall median household income, nationwide, was $46,326.

Amid the rapid growth, neighborhoods in Fairfax County that were nearly all white a decade ago now have significant Indian populations. Hindu temples like the Rajdhani Mandir in Chantilly, Virginia, are bustling. It is not hard at all, Chirravuri said, to find Indian food or to rent a Bollywood movie.

Rani Varna, owner of the Bombay Tandoor restaurant here, was "lonely, very lonely," she said, when she arrived from India 40 years ago.

Now the comfort level is far higher, she said in an interview at her large and popular restaurant, as a group of young Indian girls, regular patrons, sang gaily behind a carved wooden partition.

"Do I need a temple?" Varna asked. "It's here. Do I need family? It's here. Do I need a business? I have it."

Like many immigrant groups, Indians have come far since first making their way to the West Coast about a century ago to work on farms or in lumber mills. Many were uneducated Sikhs who spoke little English; they were often looked down on, referred to dismissively as "Hindus."

In 1917, a law barred nearly all Asian immigrants from the United States, and few Indians arrived until a law in 1965 set a limit of 20,000 immigrants a year from each country. The quota remains but is often exceeded, for a variety of reasons.

From India, 85,000 people came to the United States legally last year, said Jane Delung, president of the Population Resource Center in Princeton, New Jersey. More than half of those arrived on the employer-linked work visas that bring many technology workers and professionals. Most of the rest have family members in the United States.

In the six years since Varna opened the Bombay Tandoor, "the population has exploded," she said. She frequently rents out her restaurant for large wedding parties, often mixed Indian-American couples, and her friends want her to open a second place.

Chirravuri and Seethepalli came above all for the education.

As a young girl, Seethepalli said, she "very briefly toyed with the idea" of pursuing a career in classical dance - her erect, graceful posture still bespeaks years of training- but it was not meant to be. "Indian parents are very particular about education," she said. "They would rather not let anything else - dance, music or sports - get in the way."

After receiving her bachelor's and master's degrees in economics in New Delhi, she looked to the United States for her doctorate. "Very few countries do a Ph.D. as well as the U.S. does," she said. The American universities also provide more financial support than do universities in India, Seethepalli said.

She was not alone. Nearly every member of her master's program at the Delhi School of Economics came to the United States for further study.

Chirravuri and Seethepalli recently bought a house here and they hope someday to have a child. Chirravuri is applying for a green card, or work visa.

Permanent residency in the United States? They both hedge a bit.

Being Indian in America, said Chirravuri, is much easier now than when his cousins came years ago. The support network is much larger, and easy communications, he said, are "an absolute boon." E-mail helps, especially when one's parents in India are e-mail savvy, said Seethepalli. Indians used to call home with a calculator in hand, Chirravuri said, but now calls cost 8 or 10 cents a minute, not $3 or $4.

Chirravuri is optimistic about the future and takes pride when someone like the Indian-born Indra Nooyi is tapped to head PepsiCo. But he knows that in the technology world, he will constantly need to update his knowledge. He worries about outsourcing, too, he said without irony, before noting that even Indian companies are now thinking of outsourcing to places like Vietnam.

He plans to stay agile. "Our generation has become the generation of opportunities," he said - quick to adapt, learn or move.

Seethepalli would be open to returning to India someday. "I have this very, very deep bond with my country" and to family members there, she said. Still, she added, "The longer we stay here, the deeper the roots we strike."

As for Varna, she has three complaints about the United States: Domestic help is too expensive, the transit system is inferior and support for older people is not what it is in India.

"If America could improve those things," she said, "it is a heaven."

Next: The parents left behind.