![]() Whatever happens at the polls, seeing Harris on the ticket is likely to inspire a new generation to consider careers in politics, says Sanjay Puri, chairman of the US-India Political Action Committee. Republicans Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal shake hands at the White House in 2015, when both were serving as governors. “She raised us to be proud, strong Black women, and she raised us to know and be proud of our Indian heritage.” “My mother instilled in my sister Maya and me the values that would chart the course of our lives,” Harris said as she accepted the Democratic Party’s vice presidential nomination Wednesday night. She has spoken out about her mother’s upbringing in India in a home “where political activism and civil leadership came naturally,” and she’s described her childhood memories visiting her grandfather in the southern Indian city of Chennai. Harris credits her mother, who died in 2009, as one of the most important influences in her life. Now, according to the Migration Policy Institute, Indian immigrants are the second largest immigrant group in the United States. Then came a generation of IT workers with visas under the H-1B program for specialty occupations. Then a large cohort of families migrated to join loved ones already in the United States. Several waves of immigration after 1965 shaped the Indian American population, Kapur and his co-authors argue in their 2016 book, “The Other One Percent.” The first wave were highly educated immigrants, many of whom, like Harris’ mother, came to the United States to study and pursue advanced degrees. “Every decade since 1980, it’s been almost doubling,” Kapur says. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which eliminated national origin quotas, paved the way for millions of Indians and other non-European immigrants to come to the United States. ![]() ![]() “Once you have a population in the US that is highly educated and highly skilled, then it sets up their kids for certain kinds of achievements and opportunities that can happen within a generation or two.” “It speaks to how US immigration law privileged certain kind of immigrants, namely those with high education levels and skills in scientific fields, that many Indians, including Kamala Harris’ mother, migrated through,” Dhingra says. The US began admitting more Asians and Africans “It’s pretty remarkable that you have a population that was numbering in the thousands 50 years ago now on a major presidential ticket,” says Pawan Dhingra, a professor of American Studies at Amherst College.ĭhingra says that reveals a lot about how US immigration policies have influenced who’s able to come to the US in the first place, and what happens to generations of families once they’re here. Others note that Harris’ Indian heritage is just one part of her background and caution against painting a group that is culturally, linguistically and religiously diverse with too broad a brush.īut there’s no doubt that this is a “first” that’s drawing attention. Some Indian Americans say the moment is a particularly resonant sign of how far the community has come in a matter of decades. ![]() "She, and so many other strong women in my life, showed me the importance of community involvement and public service," Harris wrote. “Her background, her experience, her leadership is an indication of the ways in which so many immigrant communities really just are woven throughout the fabric of this country.”Ī young Harris is seen with her mother, Shyamala, in this photo that was posted on Harris' Facebook page in March 2017. … It is, first of all, really affirming and rooting into our consciousness that these demographic shifts are very much a part of our country and they are here to stay,” says Virginia state Sen. Her vice presidential nomination marks a milestone and highlights a major demographic shift in the US in recent decades, as more immigrants began arriving from non-European countries. Harris is the daughter of immigrants – her mother from India and her father from Jamaica. Kamala Harris, is the first Indian American on a major party’s presidential ticket. It was 1958, seven years before a new law would transform the US immigration system and fundamentally change the face of the nation.īy 2018, there were nearly 2.7 million Indian immigrants living in the US. When Shyamala Gopalan first came to the United States, there were only around 12,000 Indian immigrants living here.
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