Indian Community • New York City
Malayali Community in New York City
24,927 in the Malayalam and Kannada group — 3rd largest in the US • Rockland, Westchester & eastern Queens • Built on Kerala’s churches and the nursing profession
Kerala’s community in New York was built by nurses and churches, not by tech campuses — which is why it sits where it does. The hospitals of Rockland, Westchester and Long Island recruited Kerala-trained nurses from the 1970s onward, and Syro-Malabar, Malankara Orthodox and Marthoma congregations followed the families. New York ranks third in the country on the Census measure that contains Malayalam, behind only the Bay Area and Dallas-Fort Worth, and the settlement pattern looks nothing like either of them.
Last updated: August 2026 • Full Indian Community guide for New York City →
Why Malayali Families Choose New York
Almost every other Indian community on this site followed an employer. Kerala’s community followed a profession. Beginning in the late 1960s and accelerating through the 1970s, American hospitals recruited nurses directly from Kerala — a state that had built an unusual concentration of nursing schools, many of them run by Christian institutions. New York’s hospital systems, in the city and in the northern suburbs, were among the largest recruiters in the country.
Three things follow from that and they still shape the community today.
The geography is hospital geography. Rockland and Westchester are not places Indian professionals typically settle. They are where the hospitals are. The Malayali population sits in a belt running from Yonkers north and west through New City, Suffern and Spring Valley, and separately around Nassau County’s hospital corridor.
Women led the migration. Nurses were recruited first and sponsored husbands and families afterward — an inversion of the usual pattern, and one that shaped the community’s economics and its unusually high rate of two-earner professional households.
The church, not the temple, is the community centre. Kerala is roughly 18% Christian, far above the Indian average, and the Christian share of Kerala’s emigrant population is higher still. In New York the parish is where Malayalam is spoken, children are taught, marriages are arranged and newcomers are absorbed.
Where Malayali Families Live
The Census measure below is a bucket — read the caveat at the end of this section before quoting these numbers. Figures are ACS 2024 5-year estimates.
Rockland County — the Kerala corridor
3,412 across three adjoining areas: Orangetown, Clarkstown and southeast Ramapo (1,403); New City and Congers (1,223); and Spring Valley, Suffern and Monsey (786). This is the densest Kerala Christian settlement in the New York metro, anchored by Holy Family Syro-Malabar Church in Wesley Hills and St. Mary’s Malankara Orthodox Church in Suffern. Good schools, detached houses, no New York City income tax, and a short commute to the Westchester and Rockland hospital systems.
Queens Village, Bellerose & Rosedale
3,009 — the largest single area in the state, and the eastern Queens counterpart to Rockland. Families here are closer to the city’s hospitals and to the Nassau border.
North Hempstead and western Nassau
2,990 in North Hempstead (south) plus 2,077 in northwest Hempstead and 780 in northeast Hempstead — more than 5,800 across the Nassau hospital belt. St. Mary’s Syro-Malabar Catholic Church serves Nassau and Suffolk from here and runs a dedicated Nurse Ministry, which tells you most of what you need to know about the community’s composition.
Yonkers and Westchester
2,384 in southwest Westchester (Yonkers), plus 624 in central Westchester and 384 in the northwest. Yonkers is the oldest of the Malayali settlements in the northern suburbs and remains the most urban of them.
Read this before quoting the number. Census table B16001 does not publish Malayalam separately. It reports a combined category covering Malayalam, Kannada and other Dravidian languages. Nationally Malayalam is roughly 70% of that bucket and Kannada about 25%. In New York the Kannada population is very small — Kannada migration is overwhelmingly tech-driven and New York is not a tech-corridor metro — so the bucket here is more Malayalam-weighted than the national split suggests. It is still a bucket. We use it because it is the best available measure, and we label it rather than presenting it as a Malayalam count.
Churches — The Community Anchor
Kerala Christianity is not one tradition, and the distinctions matter to families choosing where to live. Three main rites are represented in New York.
Syro-Malabar Catholic
In communion with Rome but with its own East Syriac liturgy. Holy Family Syro-Malabar Church in Wesley Hills anchors Rockland; the community there began in the early 1990s as house prayer meetings organised by Fr. George Kalapura CMI, then working in the Archdiocese of New York, and grew into a parish. St. Mary’s Syro-Malabar Catholic Church serves Nassau and Suffolk. St. Joseph Syro-Malabar Mission covers the Hudson Valley.
Malankara Orthodox
The Oriental Orthodox tradition, tracing to the Apostle Thomas and not in communion with Rome. St. Mary’s Indian Orthodox Church in Suffern serves Rockland and the surrounding area.
Marthoma and others
The Marthoma Church — reformed in the nineteenth century and in communion with Anglicans — has congregations across the metro, alongside Pentecostal and evangelical Malayali churches that have grown quickly in recent decades.
Malayali Hindus are a real presence too, and are generally served by pan-Indian temples rather than Kerala-specific ones. The Hindu Temple Society of North America in Flushing, a South Indian temple in form and liturgy, is the usual anchor. Ayyappa devotion and Sabarimala pilgrimage groups organise within it.
Onam, Associations & Language
Onam
Kerala’s harvest festival is the community’s largest secular gathering and is celebrated across religious lines — Hindu, Christian and Muslim Malayalis all keep it, which is unusual and worth knowing. Expect pookalam (floral carpets laid in competition), sadya (the vegetarian feast served on a banana leaf), and cultural programmes running through late August and September. Associations across Nassau, Rockland and Westchester each hold their own, so there is no single central event.
Associations
The Kerala Center in Elmont is the main institutional body in the metro, running cultural programming, Malayalam classes, Kerala classical arts and community events. Kerala Samajam of New York, the New York Malayali Association in Floral Park and the Westchester Malayalee Association serve their own areas. Nursing associations and alumni networks from Kerala nursing colleges operate alongside them and are often the more useful professional contact.
Language
Malayalam classes run mainly through parishes rather than through schools or temples — Sunday school and Malayalam class are frequently the same trip. Vishu in April, with its kani and kaineettam, is the other major date in the calendar.
Nursing & Work
If you are a Kerala-trained nurse coming to New York, the pathway is well worn and the community knows it in detail. You will need CGFNS credential evaluation, NCLEX-RN, New York State licensure through the Office of the Professions, and an English proficiency test unless exempt. Employer sponsorship for permanent residence is common in this sector and the hospital systems in Rockland, Westchester, Nassau and the Bronx have decades of experience with it.
Beyond nursing, the community is heavily represented across allied health — respiratory therapy, radiology, lab science, pharmacy — and increasingly in the professions the second generation entered: medicine, law, finance and technology. Kerala’s exceptionally high literacy rate and English-medium education are a large part of why this community moved into American professional life quickly.
Kerala Food
Kerala cooking is unlike the North Indian food that dominates American Indian restaurants, and unlike the Tamil and Telugu cooking it is often lumped with. Coconut in every form — grated, milk, oil — curry leaves, black pepper, tamarind and a great deal of seafood.
Breakfast is the distinctive meal. Appam, the lacy fermented rice pancake with a soft centre, served with stew. Puttu, steamed rice flour and coconut in a cylinder, with kadala curry. Idiyappam, string hoppers. These are eaten at home far more than in restaurants, and finding them is one of the first things families look for.
Kerala parotta — layered, flaky, torn by hand — with beef fry is the dish that most reliably marks a genuine Kerala kitchen. Kerala is one of the few Indian states where beef is widely eaten across Christian and Muslim communities, and its presence on a menu is a good signal.
Fish and seafood: meen curry in a clay pot with kudampuli (Malabar tamarind), karimeen, prawns in coconut. Sadya, the Onam feast, is entirely vegetarian — two dozen or more dishes on a banana leaf, ending with payasam — and is the one meal the whole community shares regardless of religion.
Where to find it: Kerala groceries and restaurants cluster in eastern Queens, around New Hyde Park and Floral Park, and in the Rockland corridor near the churches. Parish festival days and Onam sadyas are frequently the best Kerala food available in the metro, and are open to newcomers.
Rockland, Nassau or Queens?
Rockland County if you work in the Westchester or Rockland hospital systems. Detached houses at prices well below Nassau, strong schools, the densest Kerala Christian infrastructure in the metro, no New York City income tax, and a genuine community within walking distance of the churches. The trade is a long and unpleasant commute to Manhattan and a car for every adult.
Nassau County if you want the best schools and are working on Long Island or in eastern Queens. St. Mary’s Syro-Malabar serves the area, the Kerala Center is in Elmont, and Hicksville’s Indian commercial strip is close. Property taxes at roughly 1.79% of market value are the cost.
Eastern Queens — Queens Village, Bellerose, Floral Park — if you want to stay in the city. You keep the subway and bus network, pay New York City income tax of up to 3.876%, and get a shorter commute to Manhattan hospitals. Housing is houses rather than apartments and the Malayali presence here is the largest of any single area in the state.
For cost of living, the job market, schools, climate and practical information covering all communities in New York, see our Indian Community in New York City guide.
Data Sources
U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey 2024 5-Year Estimates, table B16001 (Malayalam, Kannada and other Dravidian languages spoken at home, persons aged 5 and over — a combined category, see the note above), aggregated from Public Use Microdata Areas covering the five boroughs plus Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties • Parish and community organisation websites and direct verification • Queens rent and property tax data as cited. Read our full research methodology →