Immigrants from India in the Washington metropolitan area have grown by an additional 50 per cent over the last five years and foreign-born Indians now rival Koreans as the area's second most populous group, a media report said on Monday.
After doubling in the 1990s, the immigrant population from India has grown in the past half-a-decade from about 70,000 to nearly 1,07,000 and are rivalling the Koreans as the area's most populous group after the Salvadorans, The Washington Post reported.
'That growth naturally has smoothed the cultural transition for Indians; some joke that there are more Indian cultural events in the Washington suburbs than in Mumbai,' the report said.
More recently the trends of population boom and rapid development in India accompanied by a strengthening of economic bonds between India and the US trends have reshaped the Indian American and Indian immigrant experience -- influencing, some say, their plans and senses of identity and home,' the report said.
The daily said more immigrants who planned to stay in the US for good are reconsidering.
'And as India sprouts Western-style shopping malls and gleaming outposts of US companies, a small but growing number of Indians -- particularly affluent male technology workers and retiring baby boomers -- are leading dual lives in the countries,' the Post report said, quoting Indian Americans in the metropolitan area.
Dr Sreedhar Potarazu, 41, born to Washington region's first Indian immigrants left a career in medicine to start a McLean software company that now has offices in Bangalore that he now visits several times a year.
'More than ever, he sees both India and the United States as home,' the Post says.
The media report also mentions the different and distinct stages of the arrival of Indian immigrants in the United States -- the first group coming in the 1960s and 1970s with 'stellar academic credentials' and headed for graduate schools.
Those who stayed behind brought in relatives that led to the second wave of immigrants in the 1980s; and the third wave would be the 1990s when American technology industry surged leading to the arrival of thousands of highly skilled Indian workers.
'Today, community leaders say, the growth is the result of skilled workers, foreign students and family members -- including many parents of immigrant professionals,' the Post said, pointing out that the Washington region census figures showed 72 per cent Indians had a bachelor's degree or higher, and their median household income was more $75,000.
It pointed out wealth and lifestyles brought their own set of complications.
'Beyond the edges of India's pristine developments, some Indians note, remain grinding poverty and poor infrastructure that can be hard to deal with for those accustomed to life in US suburbs. And although working in both places can deepen professionals,' attachment to two countries, some say it also can accentuate alienation from both,' the report said.
