South and Southeast Asians of the United States - Orientation



Identification. The terms South Asian and Southeast Asian refer to broad ethnic and cultural categories, each comprised of a number of ethnic and national groups. Almost all South Asians in the United States came from or are descendants of those who came from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, or Sri Lanka. There are a few people from Nepal and Bhutan. A number are secondary migrants from the South Asian diaspora who lived in Africa, South America, and islands in the Indian and Pacific oceans before coming to the United States. Most individuals define themselves as being Indian, Pakistani, Tamil, Bengali, and so on, rather than as being South Asian. Southeast Asians in the United States are mainly immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, with substantial numbers also coming from Thailand and to a lesser extent from Myanmar (Burma). Those coming from Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam are usually either ethnic Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, or Chinese. Those coming from Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea) are mainly ethnic Lao or Khmer, respectively, although some are Chinese or of other ethnic groups.

The nations of South and Southeast Asia contain a rich variety of cultural, religious, and occupational groups. Broad labels such as "South Asian" and "Southeast Asian" and even national labels such as "Indonesian" often obscure the variety and complexity of ethnicity in this part of the world as well as the cultural background of immigrants to the United States.

Location. In general, South and Southeast Asian-Americans are concentrated in the warmer areas of the country, particularly California, with local concentrations in large metropolitan areas in other regions. Except for special cases, such as that of Vietnamese refugees after the fall of that country to the Viet Minh, initial settlement by immigrants has usually been in urban centers. Over time, however, secondary migration within the United States generally increases.

Demography. In early 1990, the U.S. Bureau of the Census reported that heavy immigration of Asians from 1980 to 1988 had increased their total population by 70 percent to about 6.5 million. A significant portion of this increase has been South and Southeast Asians and a great number of these have settled in California. In general these new Immigrants, particularly the South Asians, have far higher educational and professional qualifications than those of earlier groups. Major factors in immigration to the United States may be the lack of job opportunities for skilled professional workers in the sending nations as well as political violence there. Large numbers of the immigrants were admitted under family reunification priorities in order to join relatives already in the United States.

In 1980 the number of South Asian-Americans was probably underestimated when the U.S. Bureau of the Census counted about 375,000 Indians, 25,000 Pakistanis, and a few thousand each of Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. Some experts believe that the Indian population at that time alone may have been in excess of 700,000. Most of the approximately 450,000 Southeast Asian-Americans enumerated in the 1980 census were post-1960 immigrants. The proportion of Vietnamese in this group up to the mid-1980s was steadily increasing.

linguistic Affiliation. Because of British colonial Dominance, in most South Asian nations English was used as the language of the educated classes or as a national language. Other major languages used were and are Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam, Sinhala, Tamil, and Telugu. Hundreds of other languages are spoken on the subcontinent. Most U.S.-born South Asian-Americans can understand the mother tongue of their parents, but few are fully fluent in it. The situation with many Southeast Asian-Americans is much the reverse, as few immigrants knew English, and a significant number presently do not have effective command of it. Many of those coming from former Indo-china, a French colonial area, have some command of French, but this is of little use in the United States. Among the major languages are Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao, and cantonese, which is a commercial lingua franca in the area. In the southern part of the area, Malay and Bahasa Indonesia are the major languages. Other languages spoken are Burmese, Thai, and the languages of numerous smaller ethnic groups, with among the latter groups, only Hmong or Yao spoken by significant numbers in the United States.

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