The multicultural, multiracial and diverse character of North American society reflects the consequences of significant immigration flows over the centuries from different parts of the world. However, the underlying transformation of North American society, economy and polity did not happen overnight but evolved over the years through the dynamic socioeconomic and cultural adaptation processes. The continent of North America comprises the contemporary world's two largest immigration countries of the global North, the United States and Canada. The immigration into North America is, however, dominated by the United States, which is 5–6 times larger than that into Canada. This chapter focuses upon the size, trends and characteristics of migration from India into the United States.

The United States is also known as a ‘nation of immigrants’. Handlin (1973: 3) perhaps realised this squarely when he said, ‘Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that immigrants were American history.’ The Statue of Liberty is also an iconic symbol upholding the historical fact of America being the ‘land of the free’. The United States has been one of the most sought-after destinations in the history of population movements and the same applies to the flows of ‘Asian Indians’ (as Indians are called in the US census to differentiate them from the native Americans) especially after the 1970s. In the early twentieth century, the size of the Indian population in the US was very small, increasing gradually to 1.7 million in 2000 (Figure 1.1A). Today, one of the largest Indian communities abroad in the world is found in the United States. In the US Census 2010, over 2.8 million people reported to be of ‘Asian Indian’ race alone (Figure 1.1B).

Indian immigration to the US dates back to the nineteenth century, when their entry into the US was mainly characterized by laissez-faire, i.e., without restrictions.