With about 1.6 million foreign-born from India residing in the United States in 2008, they have emerged as the third-largest immigrant group in America after Mexican and Filipino immigrants.

There were, however, 2.3 million members of the Indian diaspora residing in the United States in 2008, including 455,000 native-born US citizens of Indian ancestry.

Between 2007 and 2008, the number of Indian immigrants surpassed the number of Chinese and Hong Kong-born immigrants for the first time since at least 1960, according to a new report from the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington is think tank.