Although the Southeast Asian nation of Indonesia has one of the largest populations in the world, it has sent comparatively few immigrants to the United States. However, the numbers of Indonesian immigrants began increasing rapidly during the 1980’s, and their heavy concentration in Southern California gave them considerable visibility.
Indonesia is made up of a large number of populated islands located south of Southeast Asia’s Malay Peninsula. It has the largest population of any nation in Southeast Asia and is home to a diverse variety of ethnic and linguistic groups. The most numerous of these groups are the Javanese, who constitute about 45 percent of Indonesia’s total population. Partly because it was a Dutch colony until 1949, Indonesia has had fewer political, economic, and cultural ties to the United States than many other Asian nations.
Some of the earliest American immigrants of Indonesian origin were people of mixed European and Indonesian ancestry. These mixed-background migrants left Indonesia during the late 1940’s during the nation’s struggle for independence. Many of them went first to the
By 1980, an estimated 26,700 Indonesian-born immigrants lived in the United States. About one-fourth of them had arrived in the United States before 1960 and close to one-third had arrived between 1960 and 1964. During the 1980’s, immigration from Asia increased greatly. By 1990, the total number of foreign-born people from Indonesia in the United States doubled, reaching more than 53,600. This figure increased to close to 77,000 in 2000 and reached an estimated 86,000 by 2007.
Despite this rapid growth, Indonesian migration still remained much lower than immigration from many other parts of Asia. Even in the heavy migration years from 1999 to 2008, a time during which migrants from Asia made up about one-quarter of all new legal immigrants to the United States, only about 3,000 immigrants per year came from Indonesia. This figure was dwarfed by the averages of more than 60,000 Chinese and 54,000 Filipinos arriving every year.
In 2007,
Restaurants have been an important source of employment for Indonesians, about 12 percent of whom were employed in commercial eating and drinking places during 2007, according to U.S. Census data. Indeed, roughly one of every eight Indonesian Americans worked as a cook, waiter, or waitress. The Los Angeles area, in particular, has had a significant number of restaurants owned by Indonesian immigrants and specializing in Indonesian food. Indonesian Americans employed outside the restaurant industry are most heavily represented in professional and technical occupations.
Takaki, Ronald. Strangers from a Different Shore. Boston: Back Bay Books, 1998. Taylor, Jean Gilman. Indonesia: Peoples and Histories. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003. Vickers, Adrian. A History of Modern Indonesia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Asian immigrants
California
Filipino immigrants
Los Angeles
Malaysian immigrants
Muslim immigrants
Thai immigrants
Vietnamese immigrants