Mosaic - South Asian Immigrants

An estimated 8,000 immigrants from the Indian subcontinent passed through the US Immigration Station at Angel Island. Many early immigrants from India came from the Punjab province of present-day India and Pakistan.

Overall, they were a diverse group of Sikh, Muslim and Hindu farmers, students, and former colonial soldiers from British India. They found jobs in the lumber mills, rope factories, and railroad camps in California and the Pacific Northwest and most settled in the Sacramento, Imperial and San Joaquin valleys where they worked on farms.

South Asians had the highest rejection rate of all immigrants passing through the Immigration Station during its thirty-year history. From 1911 to 1915, over half of South Asian immigrants were rejected from admission and returned to their homes. South Asians were barred from immigrating to the US by the Immigration Act of 1917.

Learn more: Read the story of Punjabi immigrant Kehar Singh.

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