In Fresno, Calif., where Dhillon lives, there's a longstanding Punjabi community. “The Punjabi community getting into the trucking is like enormous numbers,” said Raman Singh Dhillon, the head of the North American Punjabi Trucking Association. "Everything they make very nice." Singh has only been driving a truck for 15 months, he said, but has already learned where to find roadside restaurants all over the country through word of mouth.Ĭhef and owner Jagdeep Nayyar in the kitchen of My Taste Of India, a roadside restaurant off I-81 near Harrisburg, Pa.
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Here is a good Punjabi restaurant," said Gurtaj Singh, on his way to Kentucky.
#PUNJABI RESTAURANT DRIVERS#
On a recent evening, a steady stream of Punjabi drivers pulled over for dinner at My Taste Of India. Punjabis have taken to trucking in a big way, making up as much as a fifth of the industry in the U.S. There are hundreds of thousands of openings in the trucking and warehousing industry, where roughly one in five workers are foreign-born. The food service and healthcare industries, which both depend heavily on immigrant workers, have more than a million open jobs. Some industries may be feeling this shortage even more acutely. “Not just on themselves, and not just on the industries that they are going to work on, but on the whole economy.” “That has a real impact,” Robbins said in an interview. And he argues that slowdown in immigration may be contributing to supply chain problems and inflation, as employers struggle to find enough workers. economy is missing more than 1 million immigrant workers who would otherwise be here - were it not for the pandemic, and steep cuts to legal immigration during the Trump administration. And the whole economy slows down,” said Jeremy Robbins, executive director of the American Immigration Council. “If you can’t get the key workers you need, the whole industry slows down. economy is missing more than 1 million immigrant workers because of the pandemic Fewer immigrants are coming to fill those jobs - particularly in some key industries that keep the economy moving. The pandemic gets most of the blame, but there's a related factor that gets less attention. are struggling to fill roughly 11 million open jobs.
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![punjabi restaurant punjabi restaurant](https://amritsruae.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/5-5.jpg)
It's one of a growing number of roadside restaurants around the country that cater primarily to truckers with roots in the northwest Indian state of Punjab.Įmployers in the U.S. “So it came to my mind, why not open an Indian restaurant?”Ī few years ago, Nayyar closed the Subway franchise that used to occupy this truck stop near Harrisburg and Hershey, and opened My Taste Of India. “Every American food is available on every exit,” Nayyar told NPR in an interview. The cashier's stand is fashioned from the front panel of a real Tata truck - the best-selling brand in India. From the moment you walk through the door of Jagdeep Nayyar’s restaurant near I-81 in Central Pennsylvania, it’s clear who his customers are.