A local Florida politician’s comments about Indians and Indian immigrants have sparked controversy in the United States. Chandler Langevin, a conservative politician who made comments on X about Indians living in the United States.
He claimed that more than a million Indians in the United States were illegal and should be deported.
“There are 5 million Indians in the United States, and 1 million of them are illegal. There were no Indians in the United States just 30 years ago. A large number of them came just in the last five years on temporary H-1b visas or student visas. This is a foreign ethnic group with no legal or historical precedent in our country,” Langevin claimed in his posts.
The deportation of 5 million is possible.”Langevin describes himself as a conservative, family-oriented politician. His political alignment has been linked to the MAGA movement and “America First” populist and nationalist views, especially regarding immigration.
In 1990, US Census and Demographic Research estimates showed that there were about 870,000 people of Indian descent in the United States, including those identified by race or ancestry.
Since then, the population of Indian origin in the United States has increased dramatically. According to the Pew Research Center, which uses data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the American Community Survey, by 2000 there were about 1.8 million Indian Americans.As of 2023, the Indian-American population has increased to an estimated 5.2 million, making Indian-Americans the second-largest group of Asian-origin in the United States and representing approximately 21% of the Asian-American population.This rapid growth of the Indian population is primarily due to migration of skills, education and family reunification. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 opened US visas to highly skilled professionals, resulting in large numbers of Indian engineers and doctors entering on H-1B and other work visas. The United States has also become a major destination for Indian students pursuing higher education, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
In addition, family-sponsored migration allowed settled American Indians to bring along relatives.