Tibetan Americans

The migration of Tibetans to the United States and Canada is a relatively new phenomenon that began en masse in the late 20th century. An estimated 8,650 Tibetans live in the United States today, and nearly 2,000 live in Canada. This entry describes these immigrants and their descendants.

Tibetans are followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Their current temporal and spiritual leader is His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso. Tibetans believe the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation in human form of his predecessor and of avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva or Buddha of compassion, and is reborn to help humans alleviate suffering.

The modern history of Tibet traces back to 1949 when the army of the People's Republic of China invaded Tibet. In 1950, at the age of 15, the Dalai Lama was called on to assume full political power. Through the 1950s, he negotiated with Mao Tse-tung and other Chinese leaders over the future of Tibet. In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet undercover over the Himalayan Mountains to India, where he established the Tibetan government in exile in Dharamsala. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed, which began the modern Tibetan diaspora. More than 100,000 Tibetans now live in India and Nepal, essentially stateless as refugees.

Some Tibetans came to the United States in the late 1950s. These Tibetans were trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado, to fight a guerrilla war against the People's Republic of China in the 1960s. A few of these Tibetans returned or remained in the United States once this support ended in 1969, as the United States began to normalize relations with the People's Republic of China.

Before 1990, an estimated 524 Tibetans lived in the United States. A large number of Tibetans living in the United States today came in 1992 and 1993 as a result of the 1990 Immigration Act, which provided 1,000 visas for Tibetans living in exile in India and Nepal to immigrate to the United States. To offer opportunities for the greatest number of Tibetans to benefit from these visas, the Tibetan government in exile along with the U.S.-based Tibetan U.S. Resettlement Project (TUSRP) arranged a program and lottery system whereby only one member of a family household would be eligible to receive an initial visa under this program. Once in the United States, these 1,000 Tibetans could file applications for family members to receive visas as well. In essence, each of these visas could be parlayed into several visas and families would be reunified in the United States. This meant that many Tibetan men and women who immigrated under this program left behind spouses and children for several years until they were reunited in the United States.

These initial 1,000 Tibetans were resettled in twenty-two different cluster sites around the United States by predominantly volunteer-run organizations under the umbrella of the TUSRP. Because Tibetans were not considered refugees eligible for public resettlement assistance, TUSRP and local organizations raised private funds to aid in covering the initial costs for such needs as housing, health care services, food, clothing, furniture, English language classes, and a variety of other social services. A condition of these 1,000 visas was that each Tibetan immigrant was required to have a confirmed job offer from a U.S. employer before arriving.

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