Although born in Lahore, I have lived in the United States since 1966. I was 2 years old when my family immigrated in the first wave of Pakistani immigrants to the United States. The small trickle that came in the 1960s has turned into a roaring river as the Pakistani-American community enters this new century.
Before 1965, US immigration policy was heavily weighted toward Europeans, and several old laws from the 1920s sharply restricted entrance from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. America had gone through a huge wave of European immigration in the early 20th century, with over a million immigrants arriving every year at the peak. But after the Great Depression and World Wars, immigration had almost stopped. The liberal government of President Johnson decided to open up US immigration dramatically in 1965, and the result has been the new multicultural America that has taken shape over the last 35 years.
In 1960, there were only 1,700 residents of the US who were born in Pakistan. By 1970, according to the US census, this was up to 6182. Immigration rates picked up to 2,500 persons per year in the 1970 s and then vaulted to about 6,000/year in the 1980 s. By the 1990 census, the number of US residents born in Pakistan was 91,889. If you double that number for their US born children, that means the total Pakistani-American community in 1990 was somewhere between 150 and 200 thousand. In the 1990s legal immigration from Pakistan has been running at about 10-13 thousand per year. In 1998, the INS reported 13,094 immigrants from Pakistan. Using this data, one can certainly assume the Pakistani community is now over 300 thousand strong, and may be approaching 400 thousand.
The Pakistani community may be somewhat larger due to illegal immigration. However most illegal immigration is due to unskilled laborers, and Pakistanis of that sort usually head for the Persian Gulf or Europe. To move large numbers from Pakistan into the US illegally is expensive and difficult, unlike Mexican illegals who can easily cross the long border. Illegal immigrants need a system that employs and hides them once in the US. These systems exist for Mexicans, and also for Chinese who can disappear into the sweatshops of the big urban Chinatowns, but there is no such system for Punjabi speakers. There are some students who overstay their visas, but the numbers are probably too small to be significant. Compared to us, the Indian community in the US is significantly larger. US residents born in India numbered 450,000 in 1990. Immigration in the 1990s ran about 40,000 per year, so the total US Indian community is probably around 1.5 million currently. Perhaps 10% of them are Muslim. The Bangladeshi community is about 120,000 using the same method to estimate size. This would give a total South Asian Muslim population in the US of about 600 to 700 thousand. The number of Hindus in the US by comparison is probably around 1.3 million.
Most Pakistanis in America are highly educated. Medicine is a favorite profession. APPNA figures suggest that there are about 10,000 Pakistani physicians, some of whom, like myself, were educated in the United States. The 1990 census put Pakistani-Americans as the second highest ethnic group for per person income, with Indians coming out on top. Income is different than wealth, and most Pakistanis have not been here long enough to accumulate great wealth, but we should do well in that regard over the next two decades.
Pakistan is number 12 currently in the list of source countries for US immigration, and the highest ranked Muslim country. Bangladesh is number 18, and Iran is number 20. If we are to be an effective voice both for Pakistani reform and to counterbalance Indian-American political weight, we must keep our community growing strongly. I do not think a “brain drain” is good for Pakistan, but without a large and organized Pakistani-American community, Pakistan will suffer.