Thai Americans

The Thai were among the later groups of Asian immigrants into the United States. Immigration began during the Vietnam War and has been slow for Thai Americans. Today, Thai Americans remain a vibrant, if a relatively new and small, ethnic group, with nearly 238,000 Americans identifying themselves as being of Thai descent. Thais have influenced American culture by infusing Thai cuisine, religion, and holidays into American ways of life.

Following the enactment of the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments of 1965, which eliminated the national origins quota system, the initial wave of Thais coming to the United States was part of a larger southeast Asian movement of immigrants in the late 1960s and early 1970s. About 27 percent of all Thai Americans came to the United States prior to 1975, and the majority of these Thais consisted of students and professionals.

Between 1970 and 1980, a second wave of Thais immigrated to the United States as a result of political dissatisfaction with the Thai government. In addition, when the last military base from the Vietnam War was closed in Thailand in 1976, an influx of Thai women married to American servicemen resulted. A shortage of nurses in the United States during this decade also attracted large numbers of nurses to emigrate from Thailand.

Since the 1980s, the third wave of Thai immigration has continued to see the number of professionals and students rise. Concurrently, an increase in undocumented Thai immigrants, particularly for sweatshops, has also occurred as economic opportunities in Thailand have decreased.

Thais faced linguistic isolation that was typical of most of the later groups of immigrants. As acculturation increased, fluency in Thai disappeared, with nearly a third of Thai Americans speaking only English in 2010. Thais also encountered racial discrimination based on their physical appearance whenever they were conflated with other Asian ethnic groups, even though Thais make up only the 10th largest ethnically Asian population in the United States.