According to the Census Bureau, in 2021, there are over 4.8 million people of Asian-Indian origin in the United States. Asian Indians began immigrating to the U.S. as early as the 16th century along with traders from countries like China, Japan, Korea, and the Philippines.
Since those early days, Asian Indians have immigrated to the United States in waves though the pace of the immigration has been regulated by various changes in the immigration rules in the past four centuries. In the last two decades, large numbers of young and highly educated Asian Indians have immigrated to the US to work in the high-technology industry. Due to family reunification laws, the numbers of Asian Indian older adults who followed their offspring to this country has also risen.
From 2010 to 2020, the Asian Indian population grew 54.7% to 4.3 million. In 2019, roughly 8 percent of Asian Indians in the US were over 65 years of age. In 2019, 12% of Indian Asians were foreign born. 72% of all Asian Americans speak English proficiently. 34% only spoke English at home. 13% speak Hindi at home.
There are now two groups of Asian Indian older adults:
- those who came to the US in the late 1960s and early 1970s
- those who came much later
Asian Indians constitute 20% of the Asians alone residing in US as of the year 2021, second to the Chinese community and around 4.5% of them are 65 years or older.
