User:Highrise13/Indonesian Americans

note: the citation from the original wiki page did not copy over, so only my citations are seen below.

Overview[edit]
The earliest Indonesian immigrants to the United States were Dutch Indonesian or "Indos" who settled in Southern California in the 1950s as refugees following the Indonesian National Revolution against Dutch Colonists. Indonesian international students also came to the United States in significant numbers as early as the mid-1950s, beginning with a 1953 International Cooperation Administration (now U.S. Agency for International Development) program to allow University of Indonesia medical faculty to pursue higher studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Permanent settlement in the U.S. began to grow in 1965, due to the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the door to Asian immigration, and the violent and chaotic Transition to the New Order in Indonesia, which spurred emigration from that country. Due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the number of Indonesians in the United States tripled between 1980 and 1990, reaching 30,085 persons. A large proportion live in Southern California: 29,710 respondents to the 2000 census who listed "Indonesian" as one of their ethnicities lived there. Indonesia was one of 25 other countries that participated in a special registration program for its emigrants which started in 2002 as a response to the September 11 attacks against the US. Following the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean, there was another sure of immigrants to the East Coast of the US which included many Indonesians.

Between 2000 and 2010, the number of census respondents identifying themselves as Indonesian (either alone or in combination with other responses) grew by 51% from 63,073 to 95,270. Come 2015, this number has augmented again to 113,000 persons according to the Pew Research Center.

Ethnicity[edit]
Indonesian Americans are comprised of various ethnic subcategories such as the Javanese, Minahasans, Batak, or Tionghoa. The first Indonesians to move to Southern California were Indos (Indonesians of mixed Native Indonesian and Dutch European descent). However, the majority of Indonesians who came in the 1960s were of Chinese descent. Unofficial estimates suggest that as many as 60% of the Indonesians in Southern California are of Chinese descent. Interracial marriage is not uncommon, especially among the young, though the elderly often prefer that their children marry other Indonesian or Chinese.

Many second-generation Indonesian Americans still feel a connection to their Indonesian identity through their ancestry despite often not having a complete grasp on the Indonesian language.

Religion[edit]
Indonesian Americans belong to many faiths including Islam, Protestantism, Catholicism, Confucianism, Buddhism and Hinduism, although the first three are the most common.

While Islam gains its popularity among Indonesian Americans due to Indonesia being one of the largest Islamic countries in the world, Christianity is the mostly rapidly growing religious tradition among these communities. The first Indonesian church in the U.S. was a Seventh-day Adventist Church established in Glendale, California in 1972 with a predominantly Indo congregation (now located in Azusa, CA); however, as more pribumi migrants joined the church, racial tensions arose, and the Indos withdrew to other churches. The second Indonesian church to be founded in the U.S. was a Baptist church, started by an ethnic Chinese pastor and with a predominantly ethnic Chinese congregation. By 1988, there were 14 Indonesian Protestant congregations; ten years later, that number had grown to 41, with two Indonesian Catholic congregations as well. Catholicism is most present within Indonesian American communities in states like California, Georgia, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania where mass is offered weekly or monthly in the Indonesian language. Many of the Chinese-Indonesian immigrants of the late 1990s were Christian, and chose to flee their mainland due to fear of persecution.

Indonesian Muslims constituted around 15% of the Indonesian American population in the 1990s. The first Indonesian Mosque in the US was the Al-Hikmah Mosque founded in Astoria, New York, which is currently headed by Shamsi Ali. In 2017, the Indonesian Muslim community in Los Angeles purchased a former church at 1200 Kenmore Avenue and converted it into At-Thohir Mosque. There is also an Indonesian mosque in Silver Spring, Maryland named the IMAAM Center which was founded in 2014. This mosque is very active today, and is an important hub for Indonesian Muslim life in America. Many upper class Indonesians have chosen to assimilate more into American culture due to economic and cultural comforts. From the perspective of those within this community, this can be seen as a divergence from the Indonesian Muslim identity.

Workforce[edit]
Roughly one of every eight Indonesian Americans worked as a cook, waiter, or waitress. Restaurants owned by Indonesian Americans are sites for cultural unity over shared meals and traditions.