India

Nearly 17,000 Asian-Indians lived in Minnesota in 2000 according to the Census—twice as many as were counted in 1990, and more than any other Asian group except the Hmong and Vietnamese. Since then, that figure has grown significantly: In 2002 alone, 1,000 immigrants came directly to Minnesota from India. Minnesota’s Asian-Indians live throughout the Twin Cities metropolitan area as well as Rochester, with a scattered few in Greater Minnesota. In recent years, many immigrants from India have come to work in Minnesota’s high-tech industries. A significant number of Asian-Indian children have also been adopted by Minnesota families. Most Asian-Indians are Hindu; Hindi is the dominant language of India.

Former Soviet Republics and Yugoslavia

When the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, most Minnesotans probably didn’t think about how events in Moscow, 5,000 miles away, would affect our state. But they have. Minnesota’s Russian population has grown to 12,500 and more than 2,300 public school students speak Russian at home. Many Russians who -immigrated to Minnesota in the late 1980s and 1990s were Jews who had endured decades of repression under the Soviet Union. People from Belarus, Ukraine, and other former Soviet Republics also have -immigrated to Minnesota since the fall of -communism.

Since the 1990s, Bosnians, Croatians, and others from the former Yugoslavia have also come to Minnesota as refugees from war and ethnic conflicts. More than 2,000 Bosnian refugees alone came to Minnesota, many of whom settled in Fargo-Moorhead and Pelican Rapids. Serbo-Croatian is spoken in the homes of 681 -public school students in Minnesota.

Because immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and other eastern European nations are white, they’re not always as easily identified as some of Minnesota’s other newcomers. Their sense of dislocation, however, is profound.

Tibet

Although the Tibetan population of Minnesota is small—around 1,000—it is the second-largest concentration of Tibetans in the United States. A great many Tibetans, including the Dalai Lama, fled their homeland as a result of the Chinese invasion of 1949 and the systematic repression that followed. Most Tibetans practice a form of Buddhism; the Dalai Lama is their spiritual leader.

Liberia

Minnesota is home to one of the nation’s largest Liberian populations. Estimates vary, but at least 3,000 Liberians live in Minnesota. Civil war and political instability during the 1990s led to an exodus of Liberians seeking refuge in other countries, including many West African nations and, ultimately, the United States. Of the total number of Liberian immigrants to the U.S. in 2002, 13.5% came to Minnesota. Many of these individuals have settled in the suburbs of Brooklyn Park and Brooklyn Center.