Indians are third largest immigrant group in US

Indians have emerged as the third-largest immigrant group in  the US behind Mexicans and the Chinese with their number touching  nearly 1.9 million in 2011, according to a US think tank.

The share of Indian immigrants among all foreign born in the US has grown to almost 5 percent of the country's 40.4 million immigrants in 2011, noted an article published in the Migration Policy Institute's online journal, the Migration Information Source.

Indian population has grown to over 150 times its size since 1960, when the slightly more than 12,000 Indian immigrants represented less than 0.5 percent of the total immigrant population of 9.7 million immigrants.

Indians' share of Asian immigrants in the United States has been increasing steadily since 1960, making it the third-largest sending country overall and the second-largest Asian sending country after China.

As a group, immigrants from India are better educated, more likely to have strong English language skills and arrive on employment-based visas, and are less likely to live below the federal poverty line than the overall foreign-born population, it says.

They are also more concentrated in the working ages than immigrants overall, and Indian-born men outnumber Indian-born women.  In 2011, India was the second most common country of origin for international students at US institutions of higher learning, behind China, MPI noted.

Based on data from various US government reports, the article noted that Almost one-third of all Indian immigrants resided in just two states:

California (380,700 or 21 percent) and New Jersey (210,400, or 11 percent).

Other states with Indian immigrant populations greater than 100,000 were Texas (162,400, or 9 percent); New York (145,400, or 8 percent); and Illinois (127,200, or 7 percent).

In terms of share of the states' respective immigrant populations, the Indian born made up 12 percent of all immigrants in Delaware, 11 percent in New Jersey, and 10 percent in Ohio.

More than one-quarter (508,200 or 27 percent) of all Indian immigrants lived in three major metropolitan areas: greater New York (304,300 lived or 16 percent, Chicago (114,000 or 6 percent), and San Jose (90,000 or 5 percent).

Other metropolitan areas with Indian-born populations greater than 60,000 were San Francisco, California (86,800, or 5 percent), Washington, DC (82,300, or 4 percent); Los Angeles, California (82,200, or 4 percent); Dallas, Texas (66,100, or 4 percent); and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (62,200, or 3 percent)

In terms of share of cities' respective immigrant populations, the Indian born made up 15 percent of all immigrants in Trenton, New Jersey; 14 percent in Richmond, Virginia and 14 percent in Raleigh-Cary, North Carolina.

According to the Institute of International Education, students from India accounted for 13 percent (100,270) of the 764,495 international students studying at US institutions of higher learning during the 2011-12 academic year.

India was the second largest origin country of international students in the United States, behind China (25 percent of international students in the United States).

More than 29 percent of employed Indian-born men worked in information technology occupations, while 19 percent of employed Indian-born women worked in management, business, and finance.

The top three occupations that employed Indian-born men ages 16 and older were information technology (29 percent of all 717,000 Indian male workers); management, business, and finance (21 percent); and sales (11 percent).