Indian-Americans, who constitute the second-largest immigrant group in the United States, regularly face discrimination in the country, if a survey released on Wednesday is any indication.
“Indian-Americans regularly encounter discrimination. One in two Indian Americans has reported being discriminated against in the past one year, with the discrimination based on skin colour identified as the most common form of bias,” according to the report, ‘Social Realities of Indian Americans: Results from the 2020 Indian American Attitudes Survey'.
The report has been primarily drawn up on the basis of the Indian-American Attitudes Survey (IAAS), carried out by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Johns Hopkins-SAIS and the University of Pennsylvania.
The report includes a rather surprising fact; Indian-Americans born in the United States are much more likely to report being victims of discrimination than their foreign-born counterparts.
The ‘Indian American’ community is a significant population in the United States. In 2018, the American Community Survey by the US Census Bureau stated that there were over 4.2 million people of Indian origin living in the country.
The study is based on a poll of 1,200 Indian Americans — including citizens, Green Card holders and Non-Resident Indians — in September of 2020, in the run up to the November election.
Incidentally, the duration of the survey coincided with the final year of the Trump presidency, which was marred by a spike in hate crimes and discriminatory behaviour.