Pakistani Population in America Reaches 600,000

[Riaz Haq]

Foreign-born Pakistani immigrant population in the United States rose 31% since 2010 to reach nearly 400,000 as of 2017. This figure includes naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents (green card holders), temporary workers, and foreign students from Pakistan. An earlier 2015 estimate put the number of  US-born Pakistani-Americans at 180,000.  It is safe to assume that the total number of Pakistanis in the United States exceeds 600,000 in 2018.

Origins of Foreign-Born Americans. Source: Pew Research

2017 US Census Update:

On September 13, 2018, the US Census Bureau released some of the data from the 2017 American Community Survey (ACS). The survey reflects the U.S. population as of July 1, 2017.

The source countries with the largest increases in the number immigrants since 2010 are India (up 830,215), China (up 677,312), the Dominican Republic (up 283,381), Philippines (up 230,492), Cuba (up 207,124), El Salvador (up 187,783), Venezuela (up 167,105), Colombia (up 146,477), Honduras (up 132,781), Guatemala (up 128,018), Nigeria (up 125,670), Brazil (up 111,471), Vietnam (up 102,026), Bangladesh (up 95,005), Haiti (up 92,603), and Pakistan (up 92,395).

The sending countries with the largest percentage increases since 2010 are Nepal (up 120%), Burma (up 95%), Venezuela (up 91%), Afghanistan (up 84%), Saudi Arabia (up 83%), Syria (up 75%), Bangladesh (up 62%), Nigeria (up 57%), Kenya (up 56%), India (up 47%), Iraq (up 45%), Ethiopia (up 44%), Egypt (up 34%), Brazil (up 33%), Dominican Republic and Ghana (up 32%), China (up 31%), Pakistan (up 31%), and Somalia (up 29%).

The states with the largest increases in the number of immigrants since 2010 are Florida (up 721,298), Texas (up 712,109), California (up 502,985), New York (up 242,769), New Jersey (up 210,481), Washington (up 173,891), Massachusetts (up 172,908), Pennsylvania (up 154,701), Virginia (up 151,251), Maryland (up 124,241), Georgia (up 123,009), Michigan (up 116,059), North Carolina (up 110,279), and Minnesota (up 107,760).

The states with the largest percentage increase since 2010 are North Dakota (up 87%), Delaware (up 37%), West Virginia (up 33%), South Dakota (up 32%), Wyoming (up 30%), Minnesota (up 28%), Nebraska (up 28%), Pennsylvania (up 21%), Utah (up 21%), Tennessee, Kentucky, Michigan, Florida, Washington, and Iowa (each up 20%). The District of Columbia's immigrant population was up 25%.

Education and Income Levels of Pakistani-Americans:

56% of Pakistani-Americans have at least a bachelor's degree, much higher than 33% of Americans with college degrees. Among Pakistani-American college grads, 33% have a bachelor's degree while 23% have master's or Ph.Ds.

Median annual income of Pakistani-American households is $60,000, higher than the $50,000 median household income of all Americans. 33% of Pakistani-American households earn at least $90,000 while 18% earn more than $140,000.

Pakistani Doctors in America:

Pakistan is the third biggest source of foreign doctors who make up a third of all practicing physicians in the United States, according to OECD. Vast majority of Muslim doctors in America are of Pakistani origin.  Among them is Dr.Mark Humayun who was awarded top US medal for technology by President Barack Obama in 2016.

About 30% of the 800,000 doctors, or about 240,000 doctors, currently practicing in America are of foreign origin, according to Catholic Health Association of the United States. Predictions vary, but according to the American Association of Medical Colleges, by 2025 the U.S. will be short about 160,000 physicians. This gap will most likely be filled by more foreign doctors.

Foreign Doctors in US, UK. Source: OECD

As of 2013, there are over 12,000 Pakistani doctors, or about 5% of all foreign physicians and surgeons, in practice in the United States.  Pakistan is the third largest source of foreign-trained doctors. India tops with 22%, or 52,800 doctors. It is followed by the Philippines with 6%, or 14,400 foreign-trained doctors. India and Pakistan also rank as the top two sources of foreign doctors in the United Kingdom.

Pakistanis in Silicon Valley:

is home to 12,000 to 15,000 Pakistani Americans. Thousands of them are working at Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Intel, Oracle, Twitter and hundreds of other high-tech companies from small start-ups to large Fortune 500 corporations. Pakistani-Americans are contributing to what Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee describe as "The Second Machine Age" in a recent book with the same title.

A Representative Sample of Pakistani-American Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley

Pakistani-Americans are the largest foreign-born Muslim group in San Francisco Bay Area that includes Silicon Valley, according to a 2013 study. The study was commissioned by the One Nation Bay Area Project, a civic engagement program supported by Silicon Valley Community Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation, Marin Community Foundation and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy.

 Overall, US-born Muslims make up the largest percentage at 34% of all Muslims in the Bay Area, followed by 14% born in Pakistan, 11% in Afghanistan, 10% in India, 3% in Egypt and 2% each in Iran, Jordan, Palestine and Yemen.

Pakistani-American entrepreneurs, advisers, mentors, venture capitalists, investment bankers, accountants and lawyers make up a growing ecosystem in Silicon Valley. Dozens of Pakistani-American founded start-ups have been funded by top venture capital firms. Many such companies have either been acquired in M&A deals or gone public by offering shares for sale at major stock exchanges. Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN) has become a de facto platform for networking among Pakistani-American entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. It holds an annual event called OPEN Forum which attracts over 500 attendees.

Entertainment and Sports:

Kumail Nanjiani, a Pakistani-American actor-comedian, recently made news with the successful release of his feature film The Big Sick on hundreds of screens across the United States.  It is a cross-culture romantic comedy based on actual events that breaks new ground by casting a brown-skinned Pakistani-American in a lead role in a movie produced and widely screened in the United States. Acquired by Amazon Studios for $12 million after a bidding war at Sundance film festival, the film has already grossed over $36 million so far.

Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American engineer who made his multi-billion dollar fortune in auto industry, became only non-white owner of an NFL franchise team when he bought Jacksonville Jaguars for $760 million in 2011.

Major League Baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers franchise general manager is a Pakistani-American named Farhan Zaidi, an MIT and Berkeley-educated economist.

Kamala Khan is a new Ms. Marvel comic book character created by Pakistani-American Sana Amanat for Marvel Entertainment. Kamala is both female and Muslim. It is part of the American comic giant's efforts to reflect a growing diversity among its readers.

Academy Award winning Hollywood hits Frozen, Life of Pi and The Golden Compass have one thing in common:  Each used extensive computer-generated imagery (CGI) created by Pakistani-American Mir Zafar Ali who won Oscar statuettes for "Best Visual Effects" in each of them.

Pakistani-American Organizations:

Rockefeller Foundation-Aspen Institute Diaspora (RAD) program identified 79 Pakistani-American organizations. Of these, 5 organizations had revenue exceeding $1m while two had over $200,000 in their most recent fiscal year. The top organizations are The Citizens Foundation (TCF), the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent in North America (APNA) and the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs (OPEN). Other large organizations are American Pakistan Foundation, Imran Khan Cancer Foundation and Human Development Foundation (HDF). These organization help raise funds for education, health care and other development and human welfare activities in Pakistan.

Trump's America:

Some Pakistani-Americans, like members of other ethnic and religious minorities, are alarmed by the increasing bigotry in America since the election of President Donald Trump. This is particularly true of places like New York's Little Pakistan were Pakistanis were targeted after 911 terrorist attacks. At the height of the sweep, over 20,000 people in Brooklyn’s South Asian communities left the United States, a COPO survey found, according to Gotham Gazette, a New York City publication. Many sought political asylum in Canada and Australia, and some returned to Pakistan and other countries. A number of them never returned. Many had their legitimate US immigration applications pending at the time. Others had their cases in immigration courts and they were waiting for disposition by judges.

Summary:

There are an estimated 600,000 Pakistanis in the United States as of 2018. With few exceptions, most Pakistani-Americans, making up a tiny fraction of the US population, are thriving. They have significantly higher incomes and education levels than the general US population.  Pakistani-Americans are engaged in diverse occupations ranging from doctors, engineers and lawyers to large and small business owners and drivers. In addition to participating in local philanthropic and community activities, several Pakistani-American organizations help raise funds for schools, hospitals and other human welfare activities in Pakistan.

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[Riaz Haq]

Jagdish Patel came alone from #India to #UnitedStates 50 years ago; he's now head of a 91-member clan of #Indian #immigrants and children spread across #America. They work as #programmers, #engineers, #doctors, university researchers. #immigration https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/16/us/immigration-family-chain-migr...

The share of the United States population that is foreign-born has reached its highest level since 1910, according to government data released last week. But in recent years, the numbers have been soaring not so much with Latin Americans sweeping across the border, but with educated people from Asia obtaining visas — families like the Patels, who have taken advantage of “family reunification” provisions that have been a cornerstone of federal immigration law for half a century.

Since the Patels began flocking to America in the 1970s, millions of other Indians have arrived to work as programmers and engineers in Silicon Valley, doctors in underserved rural areas and researchers at universities. The majority were sponsored by relatives who came before them. Others arrived on work visas and were later sponsored for legal residency, or green cards, by their employers.

The Trump administration has framed immigration as a threat to the nation’s security and to American workers, a drastic departure from the longtime consensus that immigration was a net positive for the country. The president’s public priorities have often focused on fortifying the southwest border, but his administration is also working to scale back decades of legal migration that have led to Asians, not Latin Americans, becoming the largest group of new foreign-born residents since 2010.

Already, the administration has quietly begun taking steps to cut back legal immigration, under the banner of “Buy American and Hire American,” which the president framed in an executive order last year. Some experts predict that the number of immigrants granted permanent legal residency in the 2018 fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, will show a rare decline.

Without passing new legislation, the administration has pursued a number of policies that are slowing legal immigration. It has reduced refugee admissions; narrowed who is eligible for asylum; made it more difficult to qualify for permanent residency or citizenship; and tightened scrutiny of applicants for high-skilled worker visas, known as H-1Bs.

A recent analysis of government data by the National Foundation for American Policy, a nonpartisan research group, found that the denial rate for H-1B visa petitions had jumped by 41 percent in the last three months of the 2017 fiscal year, compared with the previous quarter. Government requests for additional information on applications doubled in the same period.

Green-card applicants sponsored by an employer now must undergo in-person interviews, a step that previously was taken only in cases that raised concerns.

The Trump administration is pushing policies supposedly intended to favor immigrants who have valuable skills at a time when newcomers already are, on average, at their most educated. Nearly half of all foreign-born people who have arrived since 2010 have college degrees, compared with about 30 percent of native-born residents.

[Riaz Haq]

#Remittances to #Pakistan from #Pakistani expats jump 13.5% to $4 billion in July-Aug 2018. Inflows from #US saw a significant jump of 31.5%, posting highest increase during first 2 months of 2018-19 with total inflow at $597m   https://www.dawn.com/news/1432240

KARACHI: Overseas Pakistanis sent around $4 billion remittances during the first two months of this fiscal year, according to data released by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) on Monday.

The total remittances increased 13.45 per cent to $3.966bn during the July-August period. The central bank said that during August the inflow of workers’ remittances amounted to $2.037bn, which is 5.6pc higher than July and 4.24pc higher than August 2017.

Remittances are second most important contributor to the country’s overall foreign exchange reserves after exports. During FY18, Pakistan’s remittances were equal to total export earnings.

Inflows from US saw a significant jump of 31.5pc, posting the highest increase during first two months of 2018-19 with total inflow at $597m. The United Kingdom, home to a large Pakistani expatriate population, also posted a 24pc jump in total inflows clocking in at $556m during July-Aug period. Furthermore, amongst the Gulf states, inward remittances from the UAE swelled by 15.4pc reaching $894m during the period under review.

In addition to that, remittances from the EU also increased by 8.4pc with total inflows reaching $124m compared to same period last year.

On the declining trend, remittances from Saudi Arabia fell to $903 million down by 1.86pc, whereas those from the Gulf Cooperation Council countries dropping by 7pc to $392m during July-August FY19.

Despite the festive season during the month, August saw a decline in remittances from Saudi Arabia – largest contributor – dropping by $45.5m to $465.5m in August.

Remittances from UAE increased to $461m by $21m in August. Remittances from United States also increased by $57m and by $29m from UK.

Pakistan’s widening current account deficit has increased the country’s dependence on remittances; however, manpower exports to Middle East have dropped significantly during the last two years. Saudi Arabia’s change in policy towards foreign workers, looking to enable the native population, has resulted in loss of jobs for Pakistani workers and in turn declined the overall remittances contribution from the country.

The newly elected government has also asked overseas Pakistanis to send $1,000 per head to fund the construction of dams. This appeal’s effect is likely to be reflected at the end of the first quarter of FY19.

However, the government has yet to come up with measures to address the widening trade and current account deficits. The finance minister has recently said that the country needs $9bn to meet its current account needs.