Background
The nations of South Asia, including India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal, have been a source of immigrant labor to the
United States since the eighteenth century. While all people of Asian origin were summarily banned from immigrating to the
United States from 1913-1946, and were limited by per-country quotas for several years more, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service Act of 1965 transformed the circumstances of American immigration for South Asians. This new act based immigration
decisions on the professional experience and education of individuals regardless of national origin, resulting in a flood
of South Asian, particularly Indian immigrants in the late 1970s and during the technology boom of 1995-2000. South Asian
immigrants, also referred to colloquially as desis, meaning "countrymen," often maintain close ties to their countries of
origin and have established tightly knit immigrant communities in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. These
communities continue to follow the social and political happenings in their homelands, and numerous organizations, foundations,
and networks have been founded to maintain these ties.
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