Fuelled by the demand for hi-tech visa workers as well as a growing number of immigrants sponsoring their families, the Asian Indian population in the United States has doubled in the last 10 years, according to data released on Tuesday by the Census Bureau and analyzed by the Asian American Federation Census Information Center.

Based on the count of the 2000 Census, there are 1.7 million people in the US who identify themselves as Asian Indians or Indian Americans -- first- and second-generation immigrants or those whose ancestors migrated to the US from India. According to an estimate provided by the Immigration Support Network, a lobby group that works in the interests of H1-B workers, last year there were approximately 400,000 Asian Indian hi-tech visa holders in the US. Most of them had arrived in the past few years to run what was then a booming new (Internet-based) economy. Although Chinese Americans constitute the largest Asian sub-group in the US (2.4 million people and 24 per cent of the total Asian population), followed by Filipinos (1.9 million or 18 per cent), Asian Indians had the largest and unprecedented growth rate in the 10 years since the last census.

The Asian Indian growth of 106 per cent from 1990 to 2000 was way ahead of other Asian American communities. This growth was followed by that of the Vietnamese American community (83 per cent growth rate and 1.2 million in population) and the Other Asian categories (65 per cent growth rate and 1.3 million in population). The 2000 census forms gave people the option of selecting one of the following Asian ethnicities -- Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Korean and Japanese.

The decline in the Japanese population can be attributed to low migration from Japan to the US. Post-industrial societies such as Japan and Italy are currently facing a decline in their population growth. Analysts say that the number of 1.7 million Asian Indians may be underrepresented, since the Census Bureau did not make an all-out effort to educate the ethnic communities about the importance of filling out census forms.

All the census advertisements for the South Asian community were aimed at people from India. In addition, the advertisements were only in English. Later South Asian community groups -- especially on the East Coast -- did step in with posters in Gujarati, Urdu, Bengali and Punjabi.

The census is an official headcount of people living in the United States on April 1, 2000. This should have included American citizens, permanent residents, those who were living on a large assortment of visas -- F1, H1-B, H4, G4, etc -- and even undocumented illegal immigrants.

Indian American Population in the United States: click here to view