Pakistani-American Demographics
Pakistani-American has been elected mayor of a town in Washington state by a landslide. The 54-year-old Mayor-elect Haroon Saleem admits that running the Timberline Bar and Cafe, with beer ads plastered everywhere, is not exactly a pious following of Islam, which forbids alcohol consumption.
The big win for a Muslim Pakistani-American is all the more surprising because Granite Falls is a small mining town of 800 mostly blue-collar whites, a result that residents say would have been inconceivable not long ago.
After 911 attacks in New York and Washington, Saleem told the Associated Press that community members reached out, letting him know he was one of them. No one seems to notice that his wife, Bushra, attends social events wearing a traditional shalwar-kamiz.
While Saleem is only the second American mayor of Pakistani origin after Dr. M. Ali Chaudry of New Jersey town of Basking Ridge elected in 2001, others have been elected to public offices in different parts of the country. Masroor Javed Khan, a fellow NEDian and a friend, serves on the city council in Houston, Texas. Saghir Tahir is a member of the New Hampshire State Assembly. Saqib Ali is a legislator in Maryland State.
Since the growth of immigration from Pakistan and other non-European nations starting in 1965, the Pakistani American community has not been particularly politically active, but this is now changing, with the community starting to contribute funds to their candidates of choice in both parties, and running for elected office in districts with large Pakistani American populations. In recent times, Pakistani American candidates have run for various offices across the nation. Because the community is geographically dispersed, the formation of influential voting blocs has not generally been possible, making it difficult to for the community to make an impact on politics in this particular way. However, there are increasing efforts on the part of community leaders to ensure voter registration and political participation.
The U.S. Census Bureau has indicated that there are about 210,000 U.S. citizens of Pakistani descent living in the United States, including permanent residents. The Census Bureau, however, excluded the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters from all population groups. The Pakistani embassy estimates the number of people of Pakistani origin living in United States to be much higher, closer to 500,000.
According to estimates published by the Wikipedia, 50% of Pakistani Americans have origins in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. About 30% are Urdu-speaking "Muhajirs" and the rest is made up of other ethnic Groups from Pakistan. The most systematic study of the demography of Pakistanis in America is found in Prof. Adil Najam's book 'Portrait of a Giving Community' (Harvard University Press, 2006), which estimates a total of around 500,000 Pakistanis in America with the largest concentrations in New York and New Jersey states, each with around 100,000 Pakistani-Americans.
Here are a few demographic snapshots of Pakistani-Americans in different parts of the United States:
California:
A 2008 LA Times survey of Pakistani-Americans, conducted on the basis of 2000 Census, found that Californians of Pakistani descent numbered about 28,000, double the population of 1990. Community members say the figure now surpasses 40,000.
The data showed that 56 per cent had undergraduate or graduate degrees, the second-highest rate after Indian-Americans among 16 Asian subgroups examined. Nearly half were home-owners, with the median household income about $49,000, on par with the state-wide average. Two-thirds were immigrants, with a 46 per cent naturalization rate, and the majority were fluent English speakers.
Based on my own knowledge and experience of living in California for decades, the estimate of $49,0000 median household income of Pakistani-Americans appears to be too outdated and too low, particularly for the San Francisco Bay Area where I conservatively estimate it to be higher than $100,000.
New York:
Unlike California, New York City’s Pakistani Americans are mostly newer and less-educated immigrants. They tend to experience greater poverty, earn less, speak less English and live in larger households than city residents as a whole in 2000, according to a census analysis by the Asian American Federation of New York.
Key profile statistics (involving 2000 census data unless stated otherwise) include the following:
1.From 1990 to 2000, New York City’s Pakistani American population grew from 13,501 to 34,310, or 154 percent – surpassing increases of 9 percent for the city overall and 71 percent for all Asian New Yorkers.
2. More than one-third (34 percent) of Pakistani American children and more than one-fourth (28 percent) of all Pakistanis in New York City lived in poverty – exceeding 30 percent of all children and 21 percent of all residents in the city.
3. Pakistani New Yorkers’ per capita income was $11,992 – about half of the city-wide figure ($22,402).
4. Two out of 3 elderly Pakistani Americans (67 percent) and nearly half (48 percent) of all Pakistani adults in New York City had “Limited English Proficiency” – markedly surpassing 27 percent of all elderly New Yorkers and 24 percent of all city adults.
5. New York City’s Pakistani American households averaged 4.1 occupants – far more than 2.6 city-wide.
6. Almost one-third (32 percent) of Pakistani American adults in New York City had not finished high school – compared with 28 percent of all adult New Yorkers.
7. With a 79 percent foreign-born population, New York City’s Pakistani Americans were more than twice as likely to be immigrants as city residents overall, of whom 36 percent were born outside the United States.
8. Most Pakistani Americans in the city lived in Queens, with 45 percent of Pakistani New Yorkers (15,604 people), or Brooklyn, with 41 percent (14,221). The rest of the city’s Pakistani population was distributed about evenly among the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.
Chicago:
According to the New York Times, the stretch of Devon Avenue in North Chicago also named for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, seems as if it has been transplanted directly from that country. The shops are packed with traditional wedding finery, and the spice mix in the restaurants’ kebabs is just right.
The 2000 federal census counted over 18,000 Pakistanis in metropolitan Chicago, one of the largest concentrations of Pakistanis in the United States. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, community estimates in the late 1990s, however, ranged from 80,000 to 100,000, most of whom were either Urdu- or Punjabi-speaking Muslims. Like other South Asians, Pakistanis have commonly tended to settle in and around major urban areas, especially on the two coasts near New York and Los Angeles. Chicago and other inland cities such as Houston have also developed large and visible Pakistani communities.
Nationwide, Pakistanis appear to be prospering. The census calculated that mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, while that for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis, was $70,047. By contrast, about one-fifth of young British-born Muslims are jobless, and many subsist on welfare.
Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a book published by Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, “Portrait of a Giving Community by Professor Adil Najam,” puts the number around 500,000, with some 35 percent or more of them in the New York metropolitan area. Chicago has fewer than 100,000, while other significant clusters exist in California, Texas and Washington, D.C.
New York Times estimate of 109,000 Pakistani-born American workers' occupations include salesmen, managers or administrators, drivers, doctors and accountants as the top five categories.
Pakistani-Americans political participation remains woefully inadequate. But it's good to see some signs that it is starting to happen at various levels starting from from local communities to state legislatures.
Related Links:
Edible Arrangements--Pakistani-American's Success Story
Pakistani-Americans in Silicon Valley
HDF Fundraiser in Silicon Valley For Pakistan
Pakistani Diaspora in America
Asian-Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues
New York City's Pakistani Population
Pakistani-Americans in NYC
NED Alumni Convention Draws 400
NEDians Convention 2007 in Silicon Valley
Muslim Demographics in America
Pakistanis in America
Pakistani-Americans Wikipedia Entry
Illegal Immigration From India to America Hits 125%
Pakistanis Find US Easier Fit than Britain
Portrait of a Giving Community
India's Washington Lobby
Occupations of Pakistani-Americans--New York Times
The big win for a Muslim Pakistani-American is all the more surprising because Granite Falls is a small mining town of 800 mostly blue-collar whites, a result that residents say would have been inconceivable not long ago.
After 911 attacks in New York and Washington, Saleem told the Associated Press that community members reached out, letting him know he was one of them. No one seems to notice that his wife, Bushra, attends social events wearing a traditional shalwar-kamiz.
While Saleem is only the second American mayor of Pakistani origin after Dr. M. Ali Chaudry of New Jersey town of Basking Ridge elected in 2001, others have been elected to public offices in different parts of the country. Masroor Javed Khan, a fellow NEDian and a friend, serves on the city council in Houston, Texas. Saghir Tahir is a member of the New Hampshire State Assembly. Saqib Ali is a legislator in Maryland State.
Since the growth of immigration from Pakistan and other non-European nations starting in 1965, the Pakistani American community has not been particularly politically active, but this is now changing, with the community starting to contribute funds to their candidates of choice in both parties, and running for elected office in districts with large Pakistani American populations. In recent times, Pakistani American candidates have run for various offices across the nation. Because the community is geographically dispersed, the formation of influential voting blocs has not generally been possible, making it difficult to for the community to make an impact on politics in this particular way. However, there are increasing efforts on the part of community leaders to ensure voter registration and political participation.
The U.S. Census Bureau has indicated that there are about 210,000 U.S. citizens of Pakistani descent living in the United States, including permanent residents. The Census Bureau, however, excluded the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters from all population groups. The Pakistani embassy estimates the number of people of Pakistani origin living in United States to be much higher, closer to 500,000.
According to estimates published by the Wikipedia, 50% of Pakistani Americans have origins in the Punjab Province of Pakistan. About 30% are Urdu-speaking "Muhajirs" and the rest is made up of other ethnic Groups from Pakistan. The most systematic study of the demography of Pakistanis in America is found in Prof. Adil Najam's book 'Portrait of a Giving Community' (Harvard University Press, 2006), which estimates a total of around 500,000 Pakistanis in America with the largest concentrations in New York and New Jersey states, each with around 100,000 Pakistani-Americans.
Here are a few demographic snapshots of Pakistani-Americans in different parts of the United States:
California:
A 2008 LA Times survey of Pakistani-Americans, conducted on the basis of 2000 Census, found that Californians of Pakistani descent numbered about 28,000, double the population of 1990. Community members say the figure now surpasses 40,000.
The data showed that 56 per cent had undergraduate or graduate degrees, the second-highest rate after Indian-Americans among 16 Asian subgroups examined. Nearly half were home-owners, with the median household income about $49,000, on par with the state-wide average. Two-thirds were immigrants, with a 46 per cent naturalization rate, and the majority were fluent English speakers.
Based on my own knowledge and experience of living in California for decades, the estimate of $49,0000 median household income of Pakistani-Americans appears to be too outdated and too low, particularly for the San Francisco Bay Area where I conservatively estimate it to be higher than $100,000.
New York:
Unlike California, New York City’s Pakistani Americans are mostly newer and less-educated immigrants. They tend to experience greater poverty, earn less, speak less English and live in larger households than city residents as a whole in 2000, according to a census analysis by the Asian American Federation of New York.
Key profile statistics (involving 2000 census data unless stated otherwise) include the following:
1.From 1990 to 2000, New York City’s Pakistani American population grew from 13,501 to 34,310, or 154 percent – surpassing increases of 9 percent for the city overall and 71 percent for all Asian New Yorkers.
2. More than one-third (34 percent) of Pakistani American children and more than one-fourth (28 percent) of all Pakistanis in New York City lived in poverty – exceeding 30 percent of all children and 21 percent of all residents in the city.
3. Pakistani New Yorkers’ per capita income was $11,992 – about half of the city-wide figure ($22,402).
4. Two out of 3 elderly Pakistani Americans (67 percent) and nearly half (48 percent) of all Pakistani adults in New York City had “Limited English Proficiency” – markedly surpassing 27 percent of all elderly New Yorkers and 24 percent of all city adults.
5. New York City’s Pakistani American households averaged 4.1 occupants – far more than 2.6 city-wide.
6. Almost one-third (32 percent) of Pakistani American adults in New York City had not finished high school – compared with 28 percent of all adult New Yorkers.
7. With a 79 percent foreign-born population, New York City’s Pakistani Americans were more than twice as likely to be immigrants as city residents overall, of whom 36 percent were born outside the United States.
8. Most Pakistani Americans in the city lived in Queens, with 45 percent of Pakistani New Yorkers (15,604 people), or Brooklyn, with 41 percent (14,221). The rest of the city’s Pakistani population was distributed about evenly among the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.
Chicago:
According to the New York Times, the stretch of Devon Avenue in North Chicago also named for Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, seems as if it has been transplanted directly from that country. The shops are packed with traditional wedding finery, and the spice mix in the restaurants’ kebabs is just right.
The 2000 federal census counted over 18,000 Pakistanis in metropolitan Chicago, one of the largest concentrations of Pakistanis in the United States. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, community estimates in the late 1990s, however, ranged from 80,000 to 100,000, most of whom were either Urdu- or Punjabi-speaking Muslims. Like other South Asians, Pakistanis have commonly tended to settle in and around major urban areas, especially on the two coasts near New York and Los Angeles. Chicago and other inland cities such as Houston have also developed large and visible Pakistani communities.
Nationwide, Pakistanis appear to be prospering. The census calculated that mean household income in the United States in 2002 was $57,852 annually, while that for Asian households, which includes Pakistanis, was $70,047. By contrast, about one-fifth of young British-born Muslims are jobless, and many subsist on welfare.
Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a book published by Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, “Portrait of a Giving Community by Professor Adil Najam,” puts the number around 500,000, with some 35 percent or more of them in the New York metropolitan area. Chicago has fewer than 100,000, while other significant clusters exist in California, Texas and Washington, D.C.
New York Times estimate of 109,000 Pakistani-born American workers' occupations include salesmen, managers or administrators, drivers, doctors and accountants as the top five categories.
Pakistani-Americans political participation remains woefully inadequate. But it's good to see some signs that it is starting to happen at various levels starting from from local communities to state legislatures.
Related Links:
Edible Arrangements--Pakistani-American's Success Story
Pakistani-Americans in Silicon Valley
HDF Fundraiser in Silicon Valley For Pakistan
Pakistani Diaspora in America
Asian-Americans: Contemporary Trends and Issues
New York City's Pakistani Population
Pakistani-Americans in NYC
NED Alumni Convention Draws 400
NEDians Convention 2007 in Silicon Valley
Muslim Demographics in America
Pakistanis in America
Pakistani-Americans Wikipedia Entry
Illegal Immigration From India to America Hits 125%
Pakistanis Find US Easier Fit than Britain
Portrait of a Giving Community
India's Washington Lobby
Occupations of Pakistani-Americans--New York Times
Comments
Here's an excerpt from America.gov on this subject:
This year, the entry period for the lottery lasts for 30 days, from October 5 to November 3. The lottery is open to individuals who meet certain education or work requirements and were born in an eligible country. Those whose names are selected by computerized random drawing are permitted to take the next steps in the visa application process.
“The idea was to diversify the immigrant pool,” said John Wilcock, a visa specialist with the State Department, in explaining the 1990 law that created the new class of “diversity immigrants.” He briefed journalists at Washington’s Foreign Press Center September 27.
The Diversity Visa Lottery is open to natives of countries that have sent fewer than 50,000 immigrants to the United States in the last five years. Countries that are the source of high numbers of immigrants are excluded from the lottery.
The ineligible countries are the same as last year: Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam. People born in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China, Macau SAR and Taiwan are eligible.
To ensure that 50,000 permanent resident visas are issued each year, Wilcock said, some additional names are selected in the lottery to make up for people who decide not to apply for a visa or don’t qualify.
.. Kamal Ahmed, a Morgan Stanley managing director in Menlo Park. According to federal prosecutors, he provided inside information about Advance Micro Devices' July 2006 takeover of a Canadian firm, ATI Technologies, information that ultimately found its way to the captain of the pirate ship hedge fund, Raj Rajaratnam.
Ahmed's alleged involvement was revealed in a government court document Friday concerning Rajaratnam's trial, scheduled for Feb. 28.
The 42-year-old banker is cooperating with investigators, said his lawyer, Douglas Tween of New York's Baker & McKenzie in a statement. He is "confident that when the investigation is completed, and all the facts are gathered, it will be shown that he did nothing illegal or unethical."
According to securities filings and other sources, Ahmed works at Morgan Stanley's investment practice in Menlo Park. He was one of 241 new managing directors named by Morgan Stanley in December 2007.
On its website, OPEN Silicon Valley, a Pakistani American business organization, Ahmed, a Los Altos resident, is described as having "led a wide variety of financing transactions and has executed numerous mergers & acquisitions" for Morgan Stanley since 1999," according to information Ahmed provided to the organization.
Prior experience included stints at Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse First Boston.
According to Institutional Investor, Ahmed was one of two Morgan Stanley managing directors advising Hewlett-Packard on its $2.7 billion takeover of 3Com last year, earning the investment bank tens of millions of dollars in fees.
He is listed on the advisory board of Folio3, a Redwood City organization with offices in Pakistan and Bulgaria, which is "focused on helping entrepreneurs and small enterprises successfully build and manage an offshore software development presence."
A Yale economics graduate and Cornell University MBA, with 383 connections according to his LinkedIn profile, Ahmed could have plenty to say if he's cooperating with the feds. Morgan Stanley advised AMD on the ATI deal, and provided a $2.5 billion loan to finance it.
Saratoga resident Anil Kumar, a McKinsey consultant since fired by the firm, pleaded guilty and was fined $2.8 million last year for providing insider information to Rajaratnam, including the planned AMD takeover of ATI.
I never met Omar Ahmed, but I remember first hearing of him when he famously responded to a question about whether his being a Muslim affected his position as Mayor of San Carlos City, California, that “there’s no Muslim way to fill in a pothole.” It was with great sadness that I learnt today that he had suddenly died of a heart attack at the young age of 46.
Omar Ahmad – born in Ohio to Pakistani parents and raised in Florida – was elected to the city counil in San Carlos in 2007 and became mayor in 2010. According to an interview published in Illume, he was “an experienced entrepreneur and community leader who founded several companies including SynCH Energy Corporation, TrustedID and Logictier. He was also in leadership positions at Grand Central Communications, Naptser, @Home Network, Netscape and Discovery Channel.”
A serial entrepreneur, an NBC story on his death reports that he “was a Silicon Valley techie before running for office and continued that work while in office. He moved to the Bay Area to work for @Home Networks and then Netscape. His city biography says he was the CEO of a new Silicon-Valley technology startup CynCH Energy Corporation, which is renewable energy company.”
I met Omar recently in San Jose when he gave a very humorous but inspirational talk at a Human Development Foundation (HDF) fundraiser just last month to encourage young Muslims and Pakistani-Americans to make a difference through public service in America.
Here's an excerpt from Prof Adil Najam's Pakistaniat.com post on his sudden sad demise.
I never met Omar Ahmed, but I remember first hearing of him when he famously responded to a question about whether his being a Muslim affected his position as Mayor of San Carlos City, California, that “there’s no Muslim way to fill in a pothole.” It was with great sadness that I learnt today that he had suddenly died of a heart attack at the young age of 46.
Omar Ahmad – born in Ohio to Pakistani parents and raised in Florida – was elected to the city counil in San Carlos in 2007 and became mayor in 2010. According to an interview published in Illume, he was “an experienced entrepreneur and community leader who founded several companies including SynCH Energy Corporation, TrustedID and Logictier. He was also in leadership positions at Grand Central Communications, Naptser, @Home Network, Netscape and Discovery Channel.”
A serial entrepreneur, an NBC story on his death reports that he “was a Silicon Valley techie before running for office and continued that work while in office. He moved to the Bay Area to work for @Home Networks and then Netscape. His city biography says he was the CEO of a new Silicon-Valley technology startup CynCH Energy Corporation, which is renewable energy company.”
May his soul rest in peace!
In Pakistan, students who are accepted into medical school are congratulated — only half-jokingly — on three counts: that they will become doctors, that they will become certified by the American Board of Medical Specialties, and that they will soon be living in the United States.
Pakistan has contributed approximately 10,000 international medical graduates (IMGs) to the United States,1 even though it faces a shortage of physicians.2 Take the case of Aga Khan University Medical College in Karachi. By 2004, it had produced 1100 graduates, 900 of whom had gone on to graduate medical training in the United States — . . .
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp068261?andorexacttitleabs=and&
Then, as a couple of local officials he knows catch up by the window, and a former state police officer he knows picks up a frozen cake, and a Mennonite family, regular customers, eat his soft-serve out on the patio, Hamid from the Dairy Queen tells his American story.
He was the youngest of six in a Muslim family in Karachi. His father, an accountant, was physically and mentally damaged after being hit by a car; his mother, a schoolteacher, took care of her husband and insisted that her baby go to America for a better life. That meant Chicago, where a brother was driving a cab while studying to become a college professor.
Mr. Chaudhry took several years to earn a college degree in finance, partly because of language difficulties, and partly because he was always working — mostly at the celebrated Drake Hotel. He was the unseen busboy, working his way up to assistant manager for room service and minibars, serving Caesar salad to President-elect Bill Clinton, delivering unsatisfactory apple pancakes to Jack Nicholson, tending to the dietary needs of a guest named Lassie. The Drake became an immersion course in Western pop culture.
He became an American citizen and started a career in financial-accounting software, eventually moving to New York, where he got fired. (“Wall Street wasn’t for me,” he says.) But he did meet a medical student named Sana Syed. Their first meeting was with her parents; the second was for a coffee at Starbucks; the third a brunch at a diner; and, finally, a dinner date at an Outback Steakhouse.
After they married in 2001, she landed a residency at the Reading Hospital and Medical Center. While his wife worked 90 hours a week, Mr. Chaudhry mustered the nerve to ask the owner of the local Dairy Queen, at Kenhorst Plaza, whether he wanted to sell. When he heard yes, Mr. Chaudhry scraped, mortgaged and borrowed to meet the asking price of $413,000.
He completed his classroom training at Dairy Queen’s headquarters in Minnesota, where he studied everything from labor management to the proper way to hand a customer a Blizzard. On June 27, 2003, he finally opened the doors to his Dairy Queen, but he was so jittery, intent on making every customer feel extra, extra special, that one employee quit on the spot. Oh, and the soft-serve machine malfunctioned.
Once he found his footing, Mr. Chaudhry decided to give back to the community, and held an elementary-school fund-raiser in which he provided the parent-teacher organization with 25 percent of the sales. Though the $450 seemed a generous amount, the publicity he received did not seem right to him.
“It felt like I got more in return than what I was giving,” he says.
Just like that, the Dairy Queen began to become the center of communal good, notwithstanding its contribution to the high obesity rate recorded among adults in Berks County. Mr. Chaudhry immersed himself in fund-raising, splitting everything 50-50 so that he only covered his costs. Good for promoting the business, yes, but also good for Hamid.
Fund-raisers for a father of four with cancer; for the Children’s Miracle Network; for soccer teams and Little League teams and the widow of a deputy sheriff recently killed in a shootout — he was a regular customer who liked Blizzards. Sponsorship of car washes and high school homecomings and blood drives four times a year. (Donate a pint of blood and get a $20 frozen cake.) Free parties held at every local elementary school, as well as at a Bible school run by the Mennonite church.
It shows that there are 16000 Indian taxi drivers in America versus 10,000 Pakistan taxi drivers.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/07/us/20090407-immigration-country.html#view=52100
I see that most taxi drivers, 711 workers, gas station attendants, liquor store clerks and newsstand sellers in the United States are Indian....and it's not surprising given that there are a large number of legal and illegal Indian immigrants in US.
Even Hilary Clinton once joked about it saying "He (Gandhi) ran a gas station down in St. Louis.”
Anecdotally, here's this excerpt from Time Magazine about Indians in New Jersey:
"I am very much in favor of immigration everywhere in the U.S. except Edison, N.J. The mostly white suburban town I left when I graduated from high school in 1989 — the town that was called Menlo Park when Thomas Alva Edison set up shop there and was later renamed in his honor — has become home to one of the biggest Indian communities in the U.S., as familiar to people in India as how to instruct stupid Americans to reboot their Internet routers....
For a while, we assumed all Indians were geniuses. Then, in the 1980s, the doctors and engineers brought over their merchant cousins, and we were no longer so sure about the genius thing. In the 1990s, the not-as-brilliant merchants brought their even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1999416,00.html
Following the 9/11 attacks of 2001, renewed fears of terrorism turned the New York community of Little Pakistan into a ghost town. But 10 years later, this Brooklyn neighbourhood has learned some important lessons in community activism.
-----
In Little Pakistan, a New York neighbourhood where the store signs are in English and Urdu, the rich smell of freshly fried samsosas entices mothers in hijabs walking their children home from school.
On the corner of Coney Island and Foster avenues, a cheerful, matronly woman roasting corn on a charcoal spit provides a lively commentary on the neighborhood. “This is Little Pakistan, it's going well here,” Kaneez Fatima says, in her native Urdu. “This is my home. I'm the queen of this place,” she adds with a throaty laugh. Around her, a clutch of clients chomping her roasted corn sportingly agree.
Ten years after the 9/11 attacks, commerce is brisk – or as brisk as one could hope for during an economic crisis – along this stretch of Coney Island Avenue.
The area has come a long way since the dark days following the biggest terrorist attacks on US soil. As law enforcement officials began patrolling here and detaining hundreds of Pakistani immigrants – often for minor infractions – in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a climate of fear gripped the community. Numerous wives, mothers and sisters, some of them non-English speakers, had no idea back then where their menfolk were being held.
In the following months, once-thriving stores permanently closed their shutters as thousands of Pakistani immigrants packed up and left, often either for Canada or Pakistan. By May 2003, about 15,000 of the once 120,000-strong community had left, according to Pakistani government estimates.
----
Of the estimated 700,000 Pakistani-Americans, roughly two-thirds live in the New York area. Over the past decade, Little Pakistan has periodically turned into a focal point for journalists who swoop down on the area to take the community's temperature with every new black mark on Pakistan's terrorism track record.
And there have been many black marks. In May 2010, a newly nationalised US citizen of Pakistani origin attempted to detonate an explosive device in a car on Times Square. When he was arrested, Faisal Shahzad admitted to receiving bomb-making training in Pakistan’s Waziristan province.
A year later, US Navy SEALS and CIA operatives found and killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a house in Abbottabad, not far from the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, renewing US suspicions that Pakistan's military establishment is protecting Islamist militants.
With every crisis in US-Pakistani relations, community leaders in Little Pakistan spring into action, taking to the airwaves to reiterate the community's rejection of violence and their history of being patriotic, law-abiding US citizens.
------------
COPO, for instance, was founded by a local businessman who turned his fabric store into a temporary community service centre, believing that once the neighbourhood's immediate problems were resolved, he would close down the organisation and get back to business.
Engaging with America
Nearly a decade later, COPO not only survives but has vastly expanded its operations, conducting English-language classes, youth programs and forums where law enforcement officials meet with community members in order to discuss each other's concerns.
Caught unprepared shortly after 9/11, the community is now keenly aware of the importance of empowering its members to engage actively with officials in their new home, rather than fearing and fleeing them.
...
Pakistan is one of the six countries which accounts for 54 percent of the UK’s (non-EU) international students. After September 2001, it has become the market leader, a place traditionally taken by the US, but the US is picking up after a long time, owing to simplified visa procedures and increased marketing efforts, not to forget the excellent scholarship opportunities that thy have to offer Pakistani students.
There were 5222 students from Pakistan studying in the United States in 2009/2010 (Source:IIE Opendoors). Pakistan now has the largest Fulbright Scholarship Programme in the world. There is an upward trend of Pakistani students studying in Australia. 2557 students studied in Australia in 2009/2010 compared to 2190 in 2008/2009 (Source: AEI). Other European countries have also become quite active in marketing their education in Pakistan. Countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore are more visible and perceived as offering quality education at lower prices. UK has remained the highest in this with 10,420 students studying in the UK in 2009/2010 (HESA, 2011).
Market opportunities
Pakistan is predominantly a postgraduate market, of the students currently studying in the UK, approximately 71 per cent are postgraduate and 29 per cent undergraduate. While the further education market is still relatively small, there is potential for growth, as there is a greater need for skills in a more service sector-led economy.
One-year Master's programmes are popular, due to their shorter duration compared to competitors. A further major aspect of the postgraduate market is the relatively wide availability of scholarships by UK institutions and Government funding agencies. In addition to the Pakistan Government‘s new overseas scholarship schemes, this target group also has access to scholarships offered by international organisation such as IMF, Commonwealth and World Bank. Popular subject areas are for 2009- 2010 are Business Studies, Engineering, Computer Sciences, Social Sciences followed by law.
Based on HESA statistics, the total number of Pakistani students enrolled in the UK was 10,420 in 2009 / 2010, a 2 percent growth on 2008/2009.
There is also significant growth in GCE O- and A-levels conducted in Pakistan, which naturally leads to demand for UK undergraduate study. More than 46,000 students took these examinations in 2010 / 2011. Popular subjects include business, law, accountancy, IT, management and engineering.
Foundation programmes have a market in Pakistan as a pathway from 12-year study into UK higher education.
Vocational programmes are a new market in Pakistan, with increasing student awareness of the opportunities. National Vocational and Technical Education Commission (NAVTEC) is a regulatory body for promoting linkages among various stakeholders to address challenges aced by Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET)....
1. There are 409,163 Pakistani-Americans in 2010, the 7th largest Asian-American community in America.
2. Pakistani-American population doubled from 2000 to 2010, the second largest percentage increase after Bangladeshis' 157% increase in the same period.
3. 6% of Pakistani-American population is mixed race.
4. 65% of Pakistanis in America are foreign-born. 57% of Pakistani-American population is naturalized citizens.
5. There are 120,000 Pakistani legal permanent residents of which 42% are eligible to naturalize.
6. There were 69,202 immigrant visas issued to Pakistanis from 2001 to 2010.
7. 28% of Pakistanis have limited English proficiency.
8. Average per capita income of Pakistani-Americans is $24,663.00 and 15% of them are classified as poor.
9. 55% of Pakistanis own their own homes.
10. 55% of Pakistanis have bachelor's degree or higher.
http://www.advancingjustice.org/pdf/Community_of_Contrast.pdf
Nov. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The Jacksonville Jaguars will be sold to Shahid Khan, the owner of auto-parts maker Flex-N-Gate Corp. who failed in a bid last year to buy the National Football League’s St. Louis Rams.
The Jaguars, who have a 3-8 record this season and fired coach Jack Del Rio today, are the only team in the four major U.S. professional sports to play in Jacksonville. Khan plans to keep the franchise in the northeast Florida city rather than relocate, owner Wayne Weaver said at a news conference.
“It’s a little bittersweet,” said the 76-year-old Weaver, who called the sale an exit strategy. “I’ll miss it because it’s been a big part of our lives for 18 years. But it’s the right time and it’s for the right reasons.”
The Jaguars have an estimated value of $725 million, the lowest in the NFL, according to Forbes. They rank 26th among the NFL’s 32 teams in attendance this season.
Khan, a native of Pakistan whose company is based in Urbana, Illinois, agreed in February 2010 to buy a controlling interest in the Rams before billionaire Stan Kroenke exercised an option to purchase the 60 percent of the club he didn’t own.
“He said he really wanted to buy a team and do it here in Jacksonville,” Weaver said. “This gentleman is absolutely the American story. He’s passionate about football and he’s going to buy a home here in Jacksonville.”
Weaver, the owner of shoe retailer Shoe Carnival Inc. and chairman of wholesale distributor Liz Claiborne Shoes, bought the Jaguars for $208 million in 1993, two years before they started play as an expansion team. Weaver said he refused to take several calls from interested buyers in California, where the city of Los Angeles remains without an NFL franchise.
‘Wasting Time’
“It was wasting my time and their time,” Weaver said without identifying the interested parties. “We had no interest. We’re a Jacksonville franchise and we plan to stay a Jacksonville franchise.”
Khan left Pakistan in 1967 at the age of 16 to attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and began working for Flex-N-Gate three years later while still an engineering student. Khan left the company in 1978 to begin a business that designed and manufactured lightweight metal bumper systems, with no seams to corrode or rust.
Today, almost two-thirds of all North American-built pick- up trucks and sports utility vehicles have bumper systems based on Khan’s designs, according to figures released by the Jaguars today. Khan bought Flex-N-Gate in 1980 and the company now has more than 10,000 employees at 48 manufacturing plants with annual sales exceeding $3 billion.
‘Dream Come True’
“Owning a team in the National Football League has long been my personal and professional goal,” said Khan, whose purchase could be formally completed in January. “Becoming the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars would be a dream come true for me and my family but, above all, would be a privilege.”
The team made the playoffs in four of its first five seasons and has been to the postseason twice since. Jacksonville last finished with a winning record in 2007 and has had a series of home games “blacked out,” which means they can’t be televised locally if tickets aren’t sold out 72 hours before kickoff at EverBank Field.
“We’ve got a lot of tickets to sell before these last few games,” Weaver said. “I would hope the community would respond and support us in a positive way. We’re still a small market and growing.”
The Jaguars cut starting quarterback David Garrard in September five days before their first regular-season game, a move that saved the team $9 million..
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-29/nfl-s-jaguars-to-be-sold-to-khan-remain-in-jacksonville.html
WASHINGTON: A United States Congressman from Ohio has called on his government to apologise to Pakistan, and for NATO to pay compensation to the families of 24 soldiers killed in a NATO air strike on a Pakistani border check post on November 26.
Speaking at an event organised by the Association of Physicians of Pakistani Descent of North America (APPNA) Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich, a Democrat, said relations with Pakistan was a critical issue. “We need to apologise to the people of Pakistan, NATO must pay reparations to the families of the soldiers.”
His remarks come a day after US Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham called for Pakistan’s funding to be reviewed.
(Read: Key US Senators urge review of Pakistan funding)
Pakistani doctors face visa wall to working in US
Dr Zaffar Iqbal, a member of the 17000-member strong APPNA said “Last year, only 90 doctors came to work in the US.”
Speaking to The Express Tribune on the sidelines of an event organized by APPNA at the Rayburn House Office Building to highlight to Congressmen the issues faced by Pakistani physicians applying for visas to work in the US, Dr Iqbal said numerous young physicians applying for visas to work in the US are facing delays or are being rejected by the US embassy and consulates. “They don’t get their visas on time, and hence can’t join their residencies that they’ve been offered.” Dr Iqbal said that hospitals then become reluctant to offer residencies to Pakistani physicians.
He added that due to less Pakistanis being given visas, the number of Indian doctors coming to the US to work has more than doubled in the past few years.
Dr Manzoor Tariq, President of APPNA, said that they had held meetings with the State Department and Homeland Security to urge them to facilitate the process.
The event also saw a number of members of Congress attending, and looking at APPNA posters highlighting statistics of the decrease in Pakistani physicians coming to the US. APPNA says that a majority of Pakistani doctors work in the rural areas of the US, and provide a vital service to the country.
Addressing the event, Congressman Kucinich said, “I’m aware of complexities around US-Pakistan relations, but you are our brothers and sisters, and we need to help facilitate those who want to take care of people here”.
Paying tribute to the Pakistani community in her district of Nevada, Congresswoman Birkley added that the US was facing a shortage of medical professionals, and offered her support to APPNA to push for more visas for Pakistani doctors.
Other members of Congress who attended the event and lent support to APPNA included Senator Bob Casey, Claire McCaskill, Congressman Guthrie and others.
Addressing the event, Tim Lenderking, the head of the Pakistan desk at the State Department, said that it was important to talk to the Embassy. “Pakistan has done a great job in contributing to healthcare in the United States, and we want to support that.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly quoted Dr Iqbal that this year 90 doctors from Pakistan came to the US. Also Congressman Kucinich was listed a Republican. This is incorrect. The error is regretted.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/303012/us-should-appologise-to-pakistan-nato-pay-reparations-to-soldiers-congressman-kucinich/
Shahid Khan was 16 when he moved from Pakistan to the United States to attend the University of Illinois.
While hanging out in the basement of his fraternity house, he began his American dream of owning an NFL team.
After building a multibillion-dollar company, Khan started working toward spending some of his fortune on fulfilling that college fantasy. He reached out to owners such as Wayne Weaver of the Jacksonville Jaguars to learn the business from the inside, and for them to get to know him.
Khan's dream-turned-plan crossed the goal line Wednesday. He joined the fraternity of NFL owners as his purchase of the Jaguars from Weaver was unanimously approved by the other owners.
The deal is for an estimated $760 million. The ownership transfer will be complete Jan. 4.
"What I want to share with the Jacksonville fans is: Here I am, reporting for duty and ready to serve the fans. Let the fun begin,'' Khan said with a smile that never left his face during a 20-minute news conference.
The 61-year-old Khan is the league's first minority owner. But that's not the only reason he stands out among his 31 peers. There's also the prominent mustache he's fancied since 1972, a trademark that he joked enables him to leap tall buildings and "do things I didn't know I could do.''
Then again, what he's done to get to this point is pretty remarkable.
Upon graduating from college in 1971, Khan went to work at Flex-N-Gate as an engineering manager. He left in 1978 to start his own company, Bumper Works, and two years later bought his former employer.
Now his privately held company is a major manufacturer of bumper systems for pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles built in North America. Revenue last year topped $3 billion, and Khan is believed to be a billionaire himself.
He tried buying the St. Louis Rams last year, coming close enough that the league had done its homework on him. That helped speed along this sale.
The deal was announced in late November and the league's finance committee formally approved his bid last week. When the agenda item came up Wednesday, there wasn't a single question or dissenting vote.
"I think that's a good sign,'' NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said. "It's certainly an endorsement of his ownership.''.....
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/football/nfl/wires/12/14/2020.ap.fbn.nfl.owners.2nd.ld.writethru.1401/index.html#ixzz1gYwRs4MG
It's an Internet myth that has taken on a life of its own. No matter how often you slay this phony legend, it keeps popping up again like some hydra-headed beast.
But on Monday, the Indian government itself consecrated the oft-circulated fiction as fact in Parliament, possibly laying itself open to a breach of privilege. By relaying to Rajya Sabha members (as reported in The Times of India) a host of unsubstantiated and inflated figures about Indian professionals in US, the government also made a laughing stock of itself.
The figures provided by the Minister of State for Human Resource Development Purandeshwari included claims that 38 per cent of doctors in US are Indians, as are 36 per cent of NASA scientists and 34 per cent of Microsoft employees.
There is no survey that establishes these numbers, and absent a government clarification, it appears that the figures come from a shop-worn Internet chain mail that has been in circulation for many years. Spam has finally found its way into the Indian parliament dressed up as fact.
Attempts by this correspondent over the years to authenticate the figures have shown that it is exaggerated, and even false. Both Microsoft and NASA say they don't keep an ethnic headcount. While they acknowledge that a large number of their employees are of Indian origin, it is hardly in the 30-35 per cent range.
In a 2003 interview with this correspondent, Microsoft chief Bill Gates guessed that the number of Indians in the engineering sections of the company was perhaps in the region of 20 per cent, but he thought the overall figure was not true. NASA workers say the number of Indians in the organization is in the region of 4-5 per cent, but the 36 per cent figure is pure fiction.
The number of physicians of Indian-origin in the US is a little easier to estimate. The Association of American Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) has 42,000 members, in addition to around 15,000 medical students and residents. There were an estimated 850,000 doctors in the US in 2004. So, conflating the figures, no more than ten per cent of the physicians in US maybe of Indian-origin – and that includes Indian-Americans – assuming not everyone is registered with AAPI.
These numbers in themselves are remarkable considering Indians constitute less than one per cent of the US population. But in its enthusiasm to spin the image of the successful global Indian to its advantage, the government appears to have milked a long-discredited spam - an effort seen by some readers as the work of a lazy bureaucrat and an inept minister.
The story has attracted withering scrutiny and criticism on the Times of India's website, with most readers across the world trashing it. "The minister should be hauled up by the house for breach of privilege of parliament (by presenting false information based on hearsay). We Indians are undoubtedly one of the most successful ethnic groups in USA, be it in Medicine, Engineering, Entrepreneurship. BUT, that does not translate to those ridiculous numbers that have been presented....this is a circulating e-mail hoax," wrote in Soumya from USA, who said he worked at the NASA facility in Ames, California, and the number was nowhere near what was mentioned in the figures given to Parliament.
http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-03-12/us/27742502_1_indian-origin-indian-parliament-indian-american
AUSTRALIA: A Pakistan-born migrant Mehreen Faruqi became the first Muslim woman to enter the Australian state parliament as she was selected by the New South Wales Greens to fill a position in the upper house of the state legislature, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Wednesday.
Faruqi was selected by a postal ballot of party members, from a field of seven in a contest in which only women could run.
She is all set to become part of Australia’s first and oldest parliament in New South Wales in July as the first female Muslim in any of Australia’s state, territory or federal parliaments.
While Muslim groups worry that Faruqi will face problem in merging the teachings of Islam and Greens policies, she believes that faith should have no bearing on Australian politics.
“I see no role that religion plays in government and nor should it. I am not a spokesperson, you know, for religious Islam. There are many other MPs who are Christians and likewise they are not spokespeople for the church,” she stated.
“And, like I said earlier, I joined the Greens because of a really strong position on sustainability, social justice, human rights [and] multiculturalism.”
“She would support things such as gay marriage and that is directly in conflict with the teachings of Islam. I do not know whether she is going to stick to that, how she is going to harmonize between the two,” Keysar Trad, the founder of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia said.
Faruqi studied environmental engineering after she migrated from Pakistan with her family in 1992 and is a professor at the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales.
As the ethnic diversity increases in Australia, analysts expect more participation from minorities in the political arena.
http://tribune.com.pk/story/539848/pakistan-born-first-muslim-female-to-enter-australian-parliament/
Mian and Sufi have recently written a book "House of Debt" published by University of Chicago Press.
Here are excepts of their thoughts as published in a Bloomberg piece:
The point is general: Housing is a service we must all consume, whether we rent or own. A decline in the price of housing services is a good thing for those of us who plan on increasing our consumption. If my home value declines, I should only feel poorer if I was planning to decrease my consumption of housing services or moving to a less expensive area.
So from a macroeconomic perspective, in a world without mortgages, falling house prices would have negligible aggregate effects. Some households would be richer and some would be poorer. But there is no reason to believe that there would be a large aggregate “housing-wealth effect.”
So why is housing holding back the economy? It is because most homeowners use substantial amounts of debt to purchase houses. Once we acknowledge that housing is a highly leveraged sector, the conclusions of the theory are totally different. In this case, there are a number of reasons why house-price declines will affect household spending.
First, the collateral value of housing is extremely important. Households can only borrow at a 3.9 percent, 30-year fixed rate if they have home value to back the loan. A severe decline in house prices takes away this channel.
Second, the debt associated with homes means a higher rate of defaulting households. This leads to lower credit scores and more foreclosures, both of which have negative effects on household spending.
And third, even for households that choose to continue paying their mortgages, the decline in home values will lead to deleveraging as homeowners struggle to improve their financial position.
The evidence overwhelmingly supports the view that high debt levels are the central reason that house-price declines negatively affect household spending. For example, our research shows that for a given drop in home value, a household cuts back on auto purchases much more if it is highly leveraged. We also find that the reductions in household spending in counties experiencing large house-price declines are far too large to be explained by a housing-wealth effect alone.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-01/how-debt-ridden-housing-holds-back-recovery-commentary-by-mian-and-sufi.html
During the early months of 2010, Adnan A. Durrani found himself frequently thinking of kosher hot dogs. To be more precise, he was thinking of an ad campaign for them created decades earlier by the Hebrew National company. Its well-known slogan went, “We answer to a higher authority.”
Let it be said that Mr. Durrani was, in many ways, an unlikely recipient for such a revelation. An observant Muslim born to Pakistani parents, a Wall Street refugee turned natural-foods entrepreneur, he was then trying to create a line of frozen-food entrees adhering to the Muslim religious standard of halal for the American market.
And Mr. Durrani was doing so in an especially forbidding political climate, with a demagogic battle raging against a proposed Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan depicted as the “ground zero mosque,” and judicial and criminal attacks against a mosque being constructed in Murfreesboro, Tenn. “Perfect timing,” he recalled dryly.
Yet the Hebrew National mantra attested to the goal that Mr. Durrani had set for his nascent company, Saffron Road: to hit both the bull’s-eye of a specific religious audience and appeal to the concentric ring of other consumers inclined to impute positive traits to any food with a sanctified aura.
By the late summer of 2010, the first Saffron Road entrees landed store shelves. This year, as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan approaches, bringing with it daytime fasts and nightly iftar meals, the company has put out more than 50 different products and built annual sales on a pace to reach $35 million.
As significant, thanks to a close partnership with the Whole Foods chain, Saffron Road’s products have moved beyond a core audience of observant American Muslims and into the commercial mainstream. In that respect, Saffron Road is among the first halal producers to follow what might be called the kosher model of simultaneously serving and transcending a communal constituency.
“What it takes for an ethno-religious food to cross over into the mainstream is, first of all, buy-in from the general public — a perception that this food has something of value that other food does not,” said Sue Fishkoff, author of the book “Kosher Nation.” That something, she continued, might be a sense, even if inaccurate, that the food is healthier, purer or of higher quality because it has been produced under religious supervision.
The challenge for a halal product, then, is a foundational one. Instead of entering a marketplace that has an innocuously favorable view of a religion and its clergy, such as Judaism and Christianity enjoy in America, a brand like Saffron Road runs the risk of colliding with and even provoking Islamophobia. All of which makes its commercial success more notable, and one might say more heartening.
-----------
As of 2014, about two-thirds of Saffron Road’s products are gluten-free and about one-third do not use genetically modified ingredients. They are sold in such mainstream supermarket chains as Costco, Publix and Kroger.
Predictably, some anti-Muslim reaction has appeared, with a small number of bloggers assailing Whole Foods in 2011 for running a Ramadan promotion of Saffron Road products. Less predictably, however, the brouhaha wound up being a bonanza. Mr. Durrani went on CNN to defend his company and deployed a “rapid-response team” of bloggers, including a rabbi, to attack the attackers. Thanks to all the free publicity, Saffron Road’s sales shot up by 300 percent during that Ramadan.
“We say this is higher-powered,” Mr. Durrani said. “Angels come in from nowhere to help us.”
That part of the story, of course, just may not fit into an M.B.A. case study.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/us/a-muslim-entrepreneur-follows-a-kosher-model-to-success.html?_r=0
As a Pakistani-born doctor who grew up in England, studied nutrition and agriculture in the U.S. and consulted for the Mayo Clinic on diabetes and other diseases, Mehmood Khan's background gives him a broad perspective.
His job gives him a daunting challenge.
Khan, 53, is PepsiCo's chief scientist and CEO of its Chicago-based Global Nutrition Group. It's his group's task to more than double Pepsi's healthier food portfolio to $30 billion in revenue by 2020.
Food companies are under pressure from government, consumers and special interest groups to address the epidemic of obesity, particularly in the United States. As more consumers seek out healthier snacks, drinks and meals, these products can be the fastest-growing piece of an otherwise mature portfolio. And some consumers are willing to pay more for them.
But PepsiCo is still primarily in the business of sodas and chips (from its Frito-Lay stable of brands). In fact, Pepsi is also planning to increase its core business, including Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Doritos and Cheetos, to $70 billion by 2020, from $48 billion at the end of 2010.
As chief scientist, Khan oversees efforts to reduce salt and introduce alternative sweeteners. And that puts the doctor in the unlikely position of selling what most people call junk food, but also helping to make it marginally healthier.
Sitting in his downtown Chicago office, which is adorned with artwork and memorabilia depicting everything from his role at PepsiCo to the importance of looking at the big picture (a broken squash racket mounted on the wall is labeled "tough point"), Khan addressed what some might view as the contradiction inherent to his job.
A healthy lifestyle, he maintains, is all about balance. That means there are no "bad" foods, he said. Some of them you just shouldn't eat all of the time.
"There's no one prescription fits all," said Khan. "What is good and appropriate for my grandson is not appropriate for my 22-year-old college student son, which is not appropriate for me. … It's what is appropriate for you at the quantity and at the time in your life. If we can make it easier for people to make better choices, then we've done a lot of good."
Khan also said that nutritional needs and taste preferences vary by region, and he noted the testing of a snack aimed at teenage girls in India. Iron deficiencies are very common in India, where vegetarianism is widespread, Khan said. Lehar Iron Chusti — tea cookies or savory snacks resembling tiny, spicy, cheeseless Cheetos that are fortified with iron and B vitamins including folate — is being sold for 5 rupees, or about 10 cents.
"This to an Indian girl in Bangalore is very delightful," he said, passing a sample across the table. But for young girls in the U.S., he added, it probably wouldn't be.
Khan is quick to acknowledge that the healthy-lifestyle battle is uphill. He points to a photo taken at a seminar for cardiac specialists. The snapshot looks down at a jammed escalator, with only two people climbing the adjoining stairs. One of them appears to be elderly.
"This is literally the world's experts on cardiology and it tells you everything, doesn't it?" Khan said. "It reminds me that having the knowledge and knowing what to do doesn't change anything, no matter if you are the people who are writing the books on that knowledge."
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-06-20/business/ct-biz-0620-profile-khan-20110620-56_1_pepsico-cheetos-snacks
Writing on a White House blog Tuesday morning, a 24-year-old writer for the Obama administration described how she and her family made it from Pakistan to the U.S. -- Westland to be exact -- and, in her case, on to the West Wing, forging their identities as new Americans.
Asra Najam’s blog entry begins with the words “Mujhe Amreeka jana hai” -- “I want to go to America” -- spoken by her as a 4-year-old in Karachi to her father before her family began a journey that eventually landed them in southeastern Michigan, where her father worked as an engineer on a skilled worker visa.
“We knew no one there, but thankfully, that didn’t last long,” she wrote. “We lived in an apartment complex 15 minutes from the airport and befriended two or three neighboring Pakistani families … Our mothers would drink chai and watch over us. You could find our fathers nearby discussing world politics.”
“I didn’t know it at the time but the community we built in that apartment block the first year we moved to Michigan became the cornerstone to my American identity,” she continued. “Every time I go home, I still find myself in the company of those same neighborhood kids. Even though we’ve all grown up to lead different lives, we still look back to the days when we were all nervous and excited to live in a country where we could be anything we wanted.”
Najam’s blog entry comes at a time when, in the wake of attacks in Paris and California, many have called for a tightening of restrictions on programs to let people into the U.S. out of fear terrorists may try to infiltrate the country. The Obama administration has maintained its intention to settle some 10,000 Syrian refugees in the U.S. by next October.
Najam said it was in 2008, when her parents took their oaths of citizenship, that they knew, as a family, “that the home we had built for ourselves here could never be taken away from us.” She said it was that same day she started dreaming of a future that might include government service, “because I knew I had a stake in bettering this country and in carrying forth its ideals of opportunity and openness.”
“Being an American has never meant giving up who you are to become something else. It means using the sum of your parts to establish communities, build your livelihood, reimagine your identity and grow your dreams,” she added. “It means that even though there are imperfections in the immigration experience, they are always eclipsed by the overwhelming sense of possibility that makes our nation great.”
You can read Najam’s full blog post here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/12/14/being-american.
https://geriatrics.stanford.edu/ethnomed/pakistani/introduction.html
Pakistan is ranked as the 12th highest source country for immigration into the United States. Compared to other heritage groups in the United States, Pakistani Americans are well educated with an estimated 60% holding a bachelor’s degree or higher professional degrees.
According to the 1990 U.S. Census, there were 81,691 individuals who identified themselves as of Pakistani origin. A U.S Census Bureau American community survey in conducted in 2005 showed that there has been a tremendous growth of the Pakistani American population with an estimated 210,000 (+/- 18,989) persons reporting a Pakistani descent who are currently living in the United States. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2005)
The Census Bureau, however, excluded the population living in institutions, college dormitories, and other group quarters from all population groups. The Pakistani embassy estimates the number of people of Pakistani origin living in United States to be much higher, closer to 600,000. (Government of Pakistan, 2004, p. 30)
There are two distinct groups of Pakistani older adults in the United States:
1. Older adults who immigrate to the US
This group consists of the parents or grandparents who immigrated to the US to be reunited with their adult children and to spend their remaining days in the care of their children.
2. Adults who immigrate to the US and live here and become older adults
This group consists of the professionals and their nuclear families who immigrated to this country in the 1950s and 1970s. Their acculturation trajectory is very different from that of the first group as these subjects have often joined the American work force and lived here for many years and may be well acculturated into the American culture.
Given their degree of acculturation, this group’s communication skills, decision-making patterns and clinical adherence patterns are likely to differ significantly from those of the older adults who immigrate to the US, to be reunited with their adult children.
Preferred Cultural Terms
The preferred term for Americans with roots in Pakistan is Pakistani American, regardless of their province of origin in Pakistan.
Currently, an estimated 10% of Pakistani Americans are over the age of 55 and the estimated percentage of older adults (>65 years) is about 4.1 percent.
Between the periods of 1989–1992, an estimated 2,433 elders over the age of 60 years emigrated from Pakistan to the United States. In 2005, it was estimated that there were a total of 9342 Pakistani elders with the elderly men (53.3%) slightly outnumbering the women (46.7). About 95.9 % of the Pakistani elders were foreign-born (Young & Gu, 1995; US Census Bureau, 2005).