Immigration Laws and the Indian Diaspora in America

Guest: Maina Chawla Singh, PhD, Scholar-in-Residence, School of International Service, American University The vast majority – 70 percent - of H-1B visas go to workers from one country: India. Today there are more than 2-and-a-half million Indian-born immigrants living in the US. The H-1B visa program has facilitated just the latest wave of them. The first Indian immigrants to the US came more than 100 years ago, mainly as farmers. But there weren’t many and they stopped coming entirely in the early 1900s when the US passed laws effectively banning immigration from Asia.