There are 500,000 Pakistanis living in the United States and they are prospering, according to a forthcoming book by Adil Najam, a young Pakistani academic at Tufts University, Boston. The 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, the book says.A report on the Pakistani community appearing in the New York Times on Monday notes, “Hard numbers on how many people of Pakistani descent live in the United States do not exist, but a forthcoming book from Harvard University Press on charitable donations among Pakistani-Americans, ‘Portrait of a Giving Community,’ 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 DC.”
| “You can keep the flavour of your ethnicity, but you are expected to become an American...” |
The newspaper quotes Pakistani poet, broadcaster and gay rights activist Ifti Nasim as saying that in Pakistan, his “flamboyance” would not be tolerated, but here he calls his acceptance “the litmus test of the society”. Like many, however, he has moments of doubt, saying, “Pakistani society in Chicago has made a smooth transition so far, but you never know”. Outward signs of religious devotion will arouse little suspicion in America compared with how they tend to be now viewed in Britain.
| “Before, a good 70 percent of the women who came into his shop were veiled, he said. Now the reverse is true, and far fewer men wear traditional clothes” |