Tamil Americans () are Americans who are of Tamil origin. The majority of Tamil Americans come from the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Significant minorities are from other Indian states like Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, etc., as well as from other countries like Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and Singapore.
In 2000, the number of Tamil speakers in the US numbered approximately 50,000 individuals. By 2010 the number surged to 127,892 and grew to 293,907 by 2022. The growth of the Tamil population in the United States is attributed to the H-1B visa program, and the presence of a large number of Tamil students studying in American universities.
Demographics
In the second half of the 20th century, Tamils from India migrated as skilled professionals to the United States, Canada, Europe, and Southeast Asia. The Tamil American population exceeds 1,500,000 individuals. The Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America functions as an umbrella organization for the growing community.
Central New Jersey is home to the largest population concentration of Tamil Americans. Sizeable populations of Indian American Tamils have also settled in New York City, and New Jersey and New York house separate Tamil Sangams. The Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and the Research Triangle area on the East Coast as well as Silicon Valley on the West Coast also have Tamil associations.
The New York City and Los Angeles metropolitan areas are home to the largest concentrations of Tamil-speaking Sri Lankan Americans. New York City's Staten Island alone is estimated to be home to more than 5,000 Sri Lankan Americans, one of the largest Sri Lankan populations outside Sri Lanka itself, and a significant proportion of whom speak Tamil.
Language
The Indian Tamil community in the United States is largely bilingual. Tamil is taught in weekly classes in many Hindu temples and by associations such as the American Tamil Academy in South Brunswick, New Jersey and the Tamil Jersey School in Jersey City.
The language's written form is highly formal and quite distinct from the spoken form. A few universities, such as the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, have graduate programs in the language.
Religion
The Indian Tamil community is majority-wise connected to the Hindu community. In most Hindu temples in the United States, the prayers are in Sanskrit. However, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, the "Tamil Temple" ("Tamil Annai Thirukkoyil") conducts all the prayers in the Tamil language. The Hindu Temple in Houston, Texas, is dedicated to Meenakshi, a manifestation of the goddess Parvathi. There are also active Tamil Christian and Muslim minorities, as well as Jains and Buddhists. Tamil Muslims also hold a Tamil Muslim Community Sangam-Iman America/QMFUSA
Notable people
Academia
Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar – Astrophysicist and Nobel laureate
Raj Chetty – Economist, professor of economics at Harvard University renowned for his research on equality of opportunity in the United States G. V. Loganathan – Professor and a victim of the Virginia Tech massacre C. Mohan – Computer scientist Sendhil Mullainathan – Economist, Harvard professor Sethuraman Panchanathan – Executive Vice President, Knowledge Enterprise Development and Chief Research Innovation Officer at Arizona State University Arogyaswami Paulraj – Wireless researcher, winner of Marconi Prize V. S. Ramachandran – Physician, neuroscientist, director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego Venkatraman Ramakrishnan – Structural biologist and Nobel laureate Maya Shankar – Scientist Siva Sivananthan – Academic, scientist, businessman and Director of the Microphysics Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago Subra Suresh - Former President of Carnegie Mellon University Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah – Social anthropologist S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan – Mathematician Sudhir Venkatesh – Sociologist and urban ethnographer