America Needs Its Indian Immigrants

Ask many successful Indian CEOs, entrepreneurs, or scientists how they rose to prominence in America, and they will tell you that, grit and talent aside, the key factor was the country itself: an economy and a culture that rewarded merit and drew ambitious, talented people from around the world.

Indian Americans are among the most affluent and best-educated groups in the country. What distinguishes them from other immigrant groups is that they have risen to the top in one generation. Median household income for Indian Americans is $151,200, compared with $92,530 for white Americans. About three-quarters of Indian adults 25 and older in the U.S. hold a bachelor’s degree, against a national average of 38 percent. Nearly half have graduate degrees, and the poverty rate, 6 percent, is among the lowest of any ethnic group. Indian Americans tend to be employed and law-abiding.

For a community more accustomed to being called the “model minority” or “tech’s new titans,” a recent rise in anti-Indian rhetoric—now commonplace on sites and apps such as X, YouTube, and Reddit—has been a shock. According to Stop AAPI Hate, nearly half of South Asian adults living in America reported having been targeted in a “race-based hate act” in 2025 alone. From 2023 to 2025, the use of anti–South Asian slurs online surged by 109 percent. The Trump administration has also attacked immigrants coming from India with efforts to severely restrict the H-1B visa program, a legal pathway to American jobs; 70 percent of H-1B recipients are Indian. Despite two different judges blocking President Trump’s $100,000 fee for the visa, the administration claims that applications are down 92 percent at the largest IT-staffing and -outsourcing firms—a decline that it views as a massive success.

Indian immigrants have helped make this country great. America has long needed Indian immigrants, and it still does. But people who don’t understand the great contributions of Indian Americans would rather close the door, and are hostile to those who are already here.

By 1960, Europeans made up 75 percent of all immigrants in the U.S. By 2010, the balance had reversed, and Europeans were just 12 percent of all immigrants. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, in 1990 fewer than a million Indians were living in the U.S. A decade later, their numbers doubled because of a hiring spree for engineers to help avert a potential Y2K crisis. Today, some 5.2 million Indians reside in America, more than 60 percent of whom were born in India. Although they represent just 1.5 percent of the population, their sudden success has made them very visible—and that visibility has made them targets.

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