Tuesday, February 18One world for all

Tag: Immigration

A World Grows in Sunnyvale
Demographics

A World Grows in Sunnyvale

By Sharon Simonson SUNNYVALE and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — The Silicon Valley Asian Indian population is growing faster than all other racial and ethnic groups countywide and will shortly overtake the Vietnamese as the valley's second-largest Asian population after the Chinese, despite the Vietnamese population’s own substantial growth. With an estimated 120,000 people, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the increased Indian population is manifesting across business and social institutions in multiple valley cities. Storefronts along El Camino Real, a central Silicon Valley thoroughfare connecting multiple communities, reflect the change, with new restaurants, clothiers and grocers selling Indian foods, spices and traditional garments filling more and more spaces. At...
Change Comes in Colorful Garb
Demographics

Change Comes in Colorful Garb

By Sharon Simonson Sagar Exclusive bills its Sunnyvale showroom as the largest for Indian apparel in the United States. It is 8,000 square feet at 939 W. El Camino Real, next door to the Chaat House, whose savory Indian snacks drew Sagar’s owners, Varsha Patel and Reuben Kanhai, to the location in the first place. “I have surveyed Chicago, Los Angeles — also Australia, New Zealand and Canada — wherever I travel, I look for Indian stores. There are about 1,000 Indian clothing stores in the United States,” Patel said. Based on square footage and diversity of offerings, she has concluded that Sunnyvale’s is the largest. It is her second Bay Area showroom — the first still operates in Hayward — and caters to customers from Los Gatos and Saratoga to Los Altos, for whom Hayward is a...
Afghan Sisters in Silicon Valley
Uncategorized

Afghan Sisters in Silicon Valley

By Sharon Simonson SANTA CLARA, Calif.—As young children, Afghan sisters Hasina and Somaya Qaderi scampered through dusty streets once shared by soldiers under command of Alexander the Great. In their native Herat, an enormous citadel built in the early 14th century still occupies the same site as Alexander’s fort. The citadel's turreted walls rise high and stern from the central hilltop, a weighty symbol of the 2,500 years of civilized history that underlie the modern city’s expression. Herat is 7,500 miles from the suburban Santa Clara ranch home that the women now own and share with their parents. Even that enormous distance doesn’t measure the intellectual, psychological and emotional chasm that the sisters have leapt in the last 12 years, and in some ways since their births. The ...
Fertile Valley
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Fertile Valley

By Sharon Simonson Known first as the world's information technology and innovation hub, Silicon Valley and its people are much more. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly four in 10 valley residents were born in another country, and the citizenry is among the nation's most racially, culturally and ethnically diverse. From 1990 to 2010, more than 20 million people from other countries settled in the United States—more even than the crush of European immigrants who came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Today, 40 million American residents were born elsewhere, the highest absolute count in the nation's history and the highest proportion—one in eight—since 1920. Silicon Valley's population has been among those most changed. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born residents ...