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Thursday, May 27, 2004

I'm intensely curious about the Indian population in the UK. I don't know why. Every now and then you see one on a British television programme. Sometimes they even have speaking parts! I got curious as just how many there were. Turns out the UK only has about 2.4 million South Asians, and about 1.1 million Indians (source). For comparison, I looked up the United States' numbers. In absolute terms, the UK's behind the United States, where the Indian-American population stood at about 1.6 million in 2000 1 In relative terms, of course, that's a big difference 2 , since the US has five times the UK's population 3 . Most Indians live in California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois (source), with Texas having edged out Illinois during the 1990s. Indian were the fastest growing Asian 4 population in the US, and third-largest in absolute terms at 1.6 million, after Chinese (2.4 million) and Filipinos (1.85 million). I didn't realize there were that many Filipinos here. The Japanese population in the US actually declined over the same period (source).

1 I couldn't readily find numbers on non-Indian South Asians in the US, but they are clearly far fewer; a large part of the immigration to the United States from India has been technology-driven (viz. my entire extended family), and Pakistan and Bangladesh just don't have the educational infrastructure that India does.

2 Specifically, 1.8% vs. 0.55%

3 Not to mention that Indians have only been emigrating to the US in large numbers since the 1960s (I challenge you to find an American-born Indian over the age of 40), while, of course, Indians' relationship with UK goes back a lot further.

4 Yes, India is part of Asia, for people who seem to think Asian means "East Asian," i.e., Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipinos, and Vietnamese. Apparently, they understand this in the UK, although I've nearly given up on people over here understanding this. I have been told multiple times that I am not "Asian."

¶ 757 Posted at 01.25 PM ⇒ No Comments ( india | statistics )