Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Liberal Studies

Columbia University Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Liberal Studies Master of Arts South Asian Studies The Indian and Pakistani Diaspora in the U.S.: Interest Groups, American Politics and Policy Process a final paper by Britt Roels Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts February 2005 Introduction The United States has always been a nation of immigrants where people from every region of the world have come to begin a new life. Who are these immigrants? Why did they decide to come? How well have they adjusted to this new land? What has been the general reaction to these immigrants? Numerous studies about earlier waves of immigrants, i.e. the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians and Poles have assiduously been published, but relatively little has been written about those arriving since the passage of the 1965-Immigration Act. 1 The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the Asian Indian 2 and Pakistani American community has asserted itself over the last 50 years and how the coming of age of both diaspora communities has contributed to its infiltration in mainstream American politics. Moreover, to what extent have these diaspora communities been able to steer and guide U.S. foreign policy as to favor India or Pakistan? Do Indian and Pakistani Americans play a role in improving respectively India-U.S. or Pakistan-U.S. relations? Have these minority groups been able to 'capture' foreign policy, i.e. control policy toward a foreign nation such that the result is variance with the policy preferences of the majority of the Americans? As we advance into the 21st century more people will be on the move. Already, the result is a world where the demographic and political maps diverge. Only a small minority of the world's states conforms to the nationalist ideal of a nation state - one culture one state. Most states are multi-cultural, home to diasporic communities, some of which have been long established, while others are much more recent. How are governments to react to this phenomenon, which although not new in itself, has gained much greater visibility since the end of the Cold War and in the context of globalization? Countries have benefited from continuing links with the diasporic communities that their emigrants established in a new 1 Leonard, K.I., 1997 2 I will use the terms Asian Indian, Indian American and Indo-American interchangeably. These three terms all indicate people of Indian (as from South Asia, not to be confused with Native Americans) origin in the U.S. 1 country. With the development of the global economy, these countries of origin have been able to look to these outreach communities as trading partners, sources of foreign investment, and also as diplomatic 'friends at court'. Unlike immigrants hundred years ago, the new diasporas can live in the U.S. and genuinely retain their political and affective connections with India or Pakistan. Frequent trips to the subcontinent, phone calls, daily internet use, periodic visits to South Asian stores to buy magazines, videos, newspapers…are all means to keep in touch with the events in India or Pakistan. This thesis developed from the paper The Indian American community in the U.S.: a catalyst for U.S.-India relations?, that I wrote in the Spring of 2004 for Dr. Saeed Shafqat's course International Politics of South Asia. The paper examined to what extent the bipartisan U.S. Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, established in the House of Representatives in 1993, has been able to influence, steer or guide U.S. politics in favor of India. Additionally, it highlighted the role that the Indian American community has been playing in lobbying legislators on Capitol Hill and looked at the way this community has been trying to convert their overall financial successes into a political clout. When a Congressional Caucus on Pakistan and Pakistani Americans in the U.S. House of Representatives was established in the summer of 2004, we decided it would be interesting to look at the Pakistani American side of the question and make a comparison between the two diaspora groups. This is how the idea for this thesis came into being. It is obvious that the India Caucus and Pakistan Caucus -as they will be named from now on- do not operate in some sort of vacuum but are influenced by contextual circumstances. To set the stage, Chapter 1 presents a brief description of the Indian and Pakistani community in the U.S. and gives some historical background of South Asian migration to the U.S. Chapter 2 looks at the ways the Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans have been organizing themselves. I compiled a catalogue of the most prevalent Indian and Pakistan immigrant organizations at the federal level. The agendas of political, 2 religious and professional associations specifically were examined because they display overt as well as covert political agendas. These immigrant associations are important because research has proved that participation in immigrants associations often becomes a first step in gaining full political participation in the U.S. 3 Additionally, Chapter 2 also gazes at other means of political participation employed by the Indian and Pakistani Americans. Chapter 3 and 4 describe the ways the India and Pakistan Caucus came into being and how both diaspora communities were more than instrumental in these processes. Since both caucuses are not officially recognized 4 but more informal groups of members of Congress with shared interests in specific issues regarding India or Pakistan and their diaspora communities in the U.S., it was hard to find consistent, coherent and uniform resources about it. Consequently, I was forced to use primarily newspaper articles that mention the caucuses. In addition, very few scholars have been analyzing the impact the India Caucus and the Pakistan Caucus have been able to exert on U.S. politics and foreign policy; mainly - I figure - because they are very recent phenomena and precisely because of their informal nature. In contrast, the Jewish lobby in the U.S. has received much more scholarly attention. In the course of my research, I realized the best way to investigate the caucuses' influence on U.S. politics, was to trace all the names of the congressmen aligned with the caucuses, subsequently delve into the congressional records and trace which caucus members participated in congressional hearings concerning India or Pakistan and voted pro or contra issues about India or Pakistan. In Chapter 5, I tested the voting behavior of caucus members by means of conducting a sample survey on 8 different congressional resolutions. Chapter 6 is a follow up in which I identify the issues of concern to both diaspora communities and analyze the nature of matters of importance to them. Again, I used articles published in community newspapers and looked at the activism of some of the immigrant associations. 3 De la Garza, R.O., Hazan, M., 2003 4 There is only one officially recognized caucus, i.e. the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control established by law in 1985. 3 This thesis would not be complete if I had not presented the highlights of U.S.-India and U.S.-Pakistan ties. Chapter 7 presents U.S.-India relations from the 1980s onwards and Chapter 8 U.S.-Pakistan ties from Pakistan's inception in 1947 till 2004. Chapter 9 deals with the relationship between India and Israel and the role of the Jewish and Indian community in the U.S. has played in enhancing those ties. I incorporated this chapter because I believe this development will gain much importance in U.S. ethnic (and foreign) politics over the next few years. Not only Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans have tried to influence U.S. foreign policy, but also the Indian and Pakistani nation-state have recently discovered the benefits their diasporas can bring to the countries. Consequently, the states have been actively reaching out to their diaspora communities in the U.S. with the hope of improving Indo-U.S. or Pakistan-U.S. relations. In Chapter 10, I discuss some of the methods that Indian and Pakistani government have deployed to reach this goal. The concluding chapter looks at future prospects in Indo-U.S. and Pakistan-U.S. relations and after a general assessment of the political activity and influence of the Indian Americans and Pakistani Americans in U.S. politics is made. Much of my research is based on the analysis of articles that appeared in Indian American newspapers such as India Abroad, India - West and The Times of India . I acknowledge that there is a lack of use of Pakistani American resources. Pakistani Americans are not yet as efficiently organized as their Indian counterparts. While Indian Americans have a couple of national ethnic newspapers and journals with high standards of journalism and production, Pakistani Americans do not. Additionally, I believe there is an enormous lack in scholarly research about the Pakistani Americans. Whereas many books on Indian Americans have been published over the last two decades, Pakistani Americans are largely ignored. They are incorporated in works about South Asian Americans but in these cases often overshadowed by a focus on Indian Americans. This to say I am guilty of doing the same and 4 tend to focus a little more on the Indian American community than on the Pakistani American. Last but not least I want to specify own position in this research. I am a European - more specifically Belgian- graduate student at Columbia University enrolled in a South Asian studies program. I am not American but came to the U.S.

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