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11

Getting Here

Earlier groups of Indian immi- grants also contributed a great deal to American life. A small number of immigrants from India first came to the United States. during the early19thcentury. This group worked mainly as low- skilled laborers at lumber mills, railroads, and farms. Many helped build the mighty Western Pacific Railway in California. They faced hardship and persecution but they persevered, and by 1960, around 12,000 Indian immigrants lived in the United States. That number started to grow

President Lyndon Johnson signed very important legislation that opened up Asian immigration.

in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and NationalityAct into law. That lawgot rid of discriminatory national origin quotas and opened the door to larger numbers of people from India and Asia. Before 1965, America strictly—and,manybelieved, unfairly—limited the number of people who could emigrate from most Asian countries. Although many Indians were urban professionals, not everyone who arrived in the United States right after the Immigration and Nationality Act was signed was as highly skilled or educated as today’s crop of STEM workers. Most were eager and ambitious though, and once they had estab- lished themselves, they invited friends and family members to make the journey too. Starting in the early 1980s, about 30,000 relatives of those who