[park123]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

In BC, the Sikhs already had a long-time presence in places further inland in the lower mainland like Abbotsford (home of the first Sikh temple/gurdwara in Canada and North America as a whole). Does that explain why they are in places like Surrey or Delta, or is it a separate wave of movement where the Vancouver metro area and the Abbotsford area are different communities? Surely, both South and East Asians had their communities arrived across the Pacific and naturally had their immigration gateway closer to the coast than inland, right?

Suburban South Asian Canadians are more middle class or lower middle class/working class/manual laborers, and South Asian Americans are more upper middle class/professional, but for some reason, both are more suburban than urban.

So what explains this? It's not income alone, otherwise, you'd have well-off South Asians in the US in cities too, just like well-off whites or east Asians, or more working class South Asians in cities in Canada too, just like the working class of other minorities.

Do South Asians have a strong cultural preference for home ownership?

I think in India until quite recently, the wealthy tended to own their own detached houses in affluent areas of Indian cities. The only exception would be Bombay/Mumbai, which was too expensive for detached houses even in the 1970s and 1980s. But generally it's more of the culture there.