Home > Multicultural America: > Nepalese Americans

Nepal is a landlocked country of over 23.6 million people living between the Tibet Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China to the north and India to the south. Eighty-three percent of Nepal's total land area is high mountains and hills, with over 1,300 peaks, including the world's highest mountain. According to the 1990 U.S. Census there were 2,616 Americans with Nepalese ancestry, a small ethnic group that is slowly growing. In 1998, 226 Nepalese were winners of the government's diversity lottery which makes 50,000 permanent visas available to people from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States.

While not all Nepalese are Sherpas, Sherpas are the best known ethnic group of the Himalayan country of Nepal, from an American perspective. Adventure travel was a $220 billion industry in 1997, expanding at a rate of nine percent each year, and the idea of climbing Everest focused many...