Indonesian Americans

A Dozen Different Indonesian Groups

During the Dutch colonial period, Indonesia was known to the West as the Dutch East Indies. Numerous Europeans immigrated to the islands during and after the Industrial Revolution. Indonesians of mixed Indonesian and European descent are called Indo-Europeans, or Indos, and represent the majority of Indonesia's population of European descent. Very few Indonesians are known to have immigrated to the United States before World War II, and those who did may have been given any number of classifications by immigration officials. The first Indonesians to move to the United States after independence were Indo students who arrived in southern California as part of a program begun in 1953 that allowed Indonesian medical professionals to study at the University of California at Berkeley.

When immigration restrictions were reformed in 1965, more Indonesians immigrated to the United States, and most continued to settle in California. In the 1960s, most Indonesian immigrants were Chinese Indonesians, many of whom were political refugees. Immigration accelerated in response to chaos in Indonesia, tripling between 1980 and 1990. Most immigrants settled in established Asian American communities in large cities; there are no well-established Indonesian American enclaves, because of how recently Indonesians arrived in the United States but principally because of Indonesians’ ethnic and cultural diversity. Although there are certainly common elements of culture in Indonesia, it is more difficult to preserve a cultural heritage within a community whose members are drawn from a dozen different Indonesian groups.

Cultural association within the Indonesian American community is conducted less through enclave neighborhoods and more through cultural organizations in cities with large Indonesian populations like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. There are also numerous Indonesian churches, which function as social centers as well as places of worship. That said, although Indonesians do not live in Indonesian enclaves, neither do they fully assimilate. Marriage to non-Indonesians—though not rare—is discouraged, though perhaps also inevitable given the age at which most Indonesian immigrants arrive in the country and the ratio of Indonesians to non-Indonesians.

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