[alephnerd]

I can't speak for all South Asian Americans, but in my experience caste is not a significant player in our community in the US at least.

Alternatives like University Affiliation, Regional ties, Ethnic ties, Clan ties, and Workplace affiliation play a greater role due to the nature of South Asian immigration in the US (tends to be white collar professionals across all ethnic groups).

Treating South Asian Americans homogeneously will lead to the same mistakes like treating all Latinos homogeneously - plenty of South Asian heavy battleground counties like Loudoun County, Middlesex County, Williamson County, Kern County, San Joaquin County, etc have seen Ds margins drop significantly in the current election.

That said, we are a clannish bunch, and biradari (and every other South Asian language's equivalent of that word) is our guanxi.

[selimthegrim]

Kern and San Joaquin in particular are the exact opposite of white collar professional immigration and more similar to Guyana. (My great grandfather came during that 1920s era but jumped ship in NYC instead) People often forget some of us came before 1965. Vivek Bald has an excellent book about it.

[alephnerd]

My point about Kern and SJV was about how Desi Americans are a swing vote, not the white collar portion.

That said I do agree with you to a certain extent that pre-Tech immigration absolutely was a thing (and a major factor in the Punjabi community across western US).

> more similar to Guyana. (My great grandfather came during that 1920s era but jumped ship in NYC instead

Oh dang, that's pretty wild! I thought most immigration to Guyana from South Asia during that era was primarily from Eastern UP, Bihar, and West Bengal, not Sindh/Punjab.

[selimthegrim]

Yes but that was the 1920s ethnic pattern to USA too, see Bald’s book. Most of my great grandfather’s NYC compatriots would have been from the areas you mentioned and he was the exception (although his family was originally decades before from Bareilly so it kind of proves the rule). Guyana was a blue collar thing like you intuited.