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www.desitalkchicago.com – that’s all you need to know 15 COVER STORY : AMERICA’S 250TH July 3, 2026 pines (5,200, or 1 percent). Indian immigrants participate in the labor force at higher rates than both the native and overall foreign-born popu- lations. In 2024, 74 percent of Indian immigrants ages 16 and older were in the civilian labor force, compared to 63 per- cent of the U.S. born and 68 percent of all immigrants. Compared to these two groups, Indian immigrants were much more likely to work in the management, business, science, and arts occupations (see Figure 5). INCOME AND POVERTY On average, Indians have much higher incomes. In 2024, households headed by an Indian immigrant had a median annual income of $176,200, compared to $82,400 for all immigrant-led households and $81,400 for those led by the U.S. born. Indian immigrants are also less likely to experience poverty. In 2024, Indian immigrants were roughly half as likely to be in poverty (6 percent) as immigrants overall (14 percent) or the U.S. born (12 percent). (The U.S. Census Bureau de- fines poverty as having an income below $32,130 for a family of four in 2024.) IMMIGRATION PATHWAYS AND NATURALIZA- TION Indians are slightly less likely to be naturalized citizens than other immi- grant groups, which may reflect the large numbers arriving on temporary visas and their relative recency of arrival. About 47 percent of Indian immigrants were U.S. citizens in 2024, compared to 51 percent of all immigrants. However, Indians are naturalizing at a relatively fast rate. Indians tended to spend six years as lawful permanent resi- dents (LPRs, also known as green-card holders) before naturalizing as citizens, a shorter period than the 7.5-year median for immigrants overall as of FY 2024. That year, 6 percent of all immigrants who received U.S. citizenship were Indian, the second largest group after Mexicans (13 percent). More than half of Indian immigrants residing in the United States in 2024 ar- rived after 2010, compared to 38 percent of the overall foreign-born population. India was the third largest country of origin for immigrants who obtained a green card in FY 2023, the most recent year for which data are available, after Mexico and Cuba. Of the nearly 1.2 mil- lion people receiving a green card that year, about 78,100 (7 percent) were from India. That year, 60 percent of Indians who received a green card did so either as an immediate relative of a U.S. citizen or green-card holder or as another family member of a citizen. At the same time, 37 percent of Indians obtained a green card through employment-based preferences, a share more than double that of all new LPRs. UNAUTHORIZED IMMIGRANT POPULATION The Migration Policy Institute (MPI) estimates that approximately 199,000 (or 1.5 percent) of the 13.7 million unauthor- ized immigrants in the United States as of mid-2023 were from India. The country was the 11th largest origin for unauthor- ized immigrants. About 1,470 Indian immigrants as of September 2025 were beneficiaries of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arriv- als (DACA) program, which provides temporary deportation relief and work authorization to unauthorized im- migrants who arrived as children and met the program’s education and other eligibility criteria. This population represented a tiny share of all 505,900 active DACA recipients. HEALTH COVERAGE Indians have higher health insur- ance coverage rates than both the overall immigrant and U.S.-born populations. In 2024, just 4 percent of immigrants from India were unin- sured, compared to 7 percent of the U.S. born and 18 percent of the overall foreign-born population. Indian immi- grants were more likely to be covered by private health insurance than the overall foreign-born and U.S.-born populations, reflecting their strong labor force participation and employ- ment in high-skilled jobs that often come with employer-provided health insurance (see Figure 7). DIASPORA The Indian diaspora was comprised of approximately 5.8 million U.S. resi- dents who were either born in India or reported Indian ancestry or origin, according to MPI tabulation of data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2024 American Community Survey. Of these individuals, around 55 percent were born in India, and the remainder were born in the United States or elsewhere. The Indian diaspora was the tenth largest in the country. TOP GLOBAL DESTINATIONS India is the world’s largest country of emigration, with approximately 18.5 million Indians residing outside their country of birth, according to mid-2024 estimates by the United Nations Population Division. The top destination countries were the United Arab Emirates and the United States (3.2 million apiece), Saudi Arabia (2 million), Pakistan (1.6 million), and Kuwait (1.2 million). REMITTANCES Migrants and other individuals worldwide sent approximately $129.1 billion in remittances via formal chan- nels to India in 2024, a 55 percent increase from the nearly $83.1 bil- lion received in 2020. The amount of money individuals remitted to India was nearly double the transfers to the second highest country, Mexico ($68.2 billion). Remittances represented about 3 percent of India’s gross domes- tic product (GDP) in 2024. -This article appeared on the Migration Policy Institute April 15, 2026 https://www.migrationpolicy.org/ article/indian-immigrants-united-states (Usedwith express permission from Migration Policy Institute Indian Immigrants In The United States - Continued From Page 14 CHARTS: COURTESY MIGRATIONPOLICY.ORG