/r/asianamerican Weekly Banter - December 14, 2018

My post from /r/nostupidquestions that got no responses: Why is the population of Indonesians in America so small?

I often read about other countries and ethnic groups when I go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. I noticed that the population of Indonesian permanent residents and Indonesian-Americans (169,220) is significantly smaller than the number of Americans and immigrants to the U.S. with origins in other Asian countries and countries of similar population size. Indonesia, with about 261 million people is the fourth most populous country in the world, so this surprised me. Brazil is the fifth most populous with 207 million people and there are more than twice as many Brazilians in the U.S. Pakistan is the next most populous Asian and majority Muslim country after Indonesia with a population of 193 million and there are about 3-4 times more Pakistanis in the U.S. Nearly every other Asian-American group other than Malaysians, Singaporeans, Burmese, and Mongolians is significantly larger than Indonesians. Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans, and Vietnamese originate from countries of less than half the population of Indonesia, yet their communities in America include 1-3 million people each. Is there a major cultural, political, or legal reason why it is comparably rare for Indonesians to immigrate to the U.S.? When I searched on google, all I could find was that Indonesians wouldn't like the cultural and climate adjustment that moving to America would require and that the two countries are far away, but that can be said for almost all immigrants from outside of the Americas and that Indonesia doesn't allow dual citizenship, bud neither do many other countries, including China and Japan.

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