Indian-Americans Increase Political Clout in US

WASHINGTON (NNN-Bernama) -- Having doubled its population in the last decade, Indian-Americans have emerged as a powerful political group in the United States that the Republican and the Democratic parties cannot ignore in a presidential election year.

Between 2000 and 2010, the South Asian American population became the fastest growing major ethnic group in the US and has emerged in new areas of the country, Press Trust of India (PTI) said, citing a report released by two American NGOs -- South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) and Asian American Federation (AAF).

The report said that overall the South Asians of voting age increased between 100 per cent to 414 per cent.

Indians comprise the largest segment of the South Asian community, making up over 80 per cent of the total population, followed by Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, and Bhutanese.

"With the 2012 elections underway, there has been an increase in the number of South Asians of voting age in the United States since 2000," according to the report by SAALT and AAF, which said it was based on the figures of 2010 population.

According to SAALT and AAF, the 2010 census figures reveal that there are over 3.4 million South Asians living in the US. Comparing only the four South Asian groups for which there is Census data from both 2000 and 2010 (Bangladeshi, Indian, Pakistani, and Sri Lankan), the South Asian community as a whole grew 78 per cent over the past decade, the report said.

While Indians and Pakistanis are the third and seventh largest Asian American ethnic groups, respectively; Bangladeshis, Nepalis, Sri Lankans, and Bhutanese each rank among the top twenty Asian American ethnic groups.

According to the report, the five states with the largest South Asian populations are California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, and Illinois.

Beyond the areas that historically have large South Asian populations, the community has experienced the greatest growth outside of these "traditional" metropolitan areas, the report said.

The South Asian population grew the most in Charlotte, North Carolina, increasing 187 percent over the past ten years.

This was followed by Phoenix; Richmond Virginia; Raleigh, North carolina, San Antonio, Seattle, and Stockton, California, Jacksonville, Florida, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and Las Vegas.

Among the ten fastest growing South Asian metropolitan areas, only the Seattle and Phoenix metropolitan areas had more than 30,000 South Asians in 2010, while the smallest of the top 10 fastest growing metropolitan areas was the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania metropolitan area with close to 6,500 South Asians.

The remaining metropolitan areas had between 10,000 and 25,000 South Asians, the report said.  -- NNN-BERNAMA