South Asian Americans or Desi Americans are Americans of South Asian ancestry. The term refers to those who can trace back their heritage to South Asia, which includes the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. The South Asian American diaspora also includes generations of South Asians from other areas in the world who then moved to the United States, areas such as Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritius, Singapore, Malaysia, Suriname, other parts of the Caribbean, etc. In the United States census, they are a subcategory of Asian Americans, although individual racial classification is based on self-identification and the categorization is "not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically".
The New York City Metropolitan Area, including New York City, Central New Jersey, as well as Long Island in New York, is home to the largest South Asian American population.
Aerial view of exurban Monroe Township, Middlesex County, New Jersey housing tracts in 2010. Since then, significant new housing construction is rendering an increasingly affluent and suburban environment to Monroe Township, while maintaining the proximity to New York City sought by the South Asian diaspora in this township with the fastest-growing South Asian population in the Western Hemisphere.
Kamala Devi Harris is an American politician and attorney who is the 49th and current vice president of the United States under President Joe Biden. She is the first female vice president and the highest-ranking female official in U.S. history, as well as the first African-American and first Asian-American vice president. A member of the Democratic Party, she was previously attorney general of California from 2011 to 2017 and a U.S. senator from California from 2017 to 2021.
Official portrait, 2021
Harris's childhood home on Bancroft Way in Berkeley
Harris with California representative Nancy Pelosi in 2004
Harris's official Attorney General portrait