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American here: I've only heard "desi" used as a self-descriptor by South Asian people, usually Indian (but I think Pakistani sometimes as well?). It doesn't carry a negative connotation here that I know of, though I might have missed one that does exist.

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As an Indian-American, I've heard variations of this to describe first-gen American born Indians in a negative fashion. Sometimes, the shorthand "ABCD" is used (meaning American Born Confused Desi) to insult American Indians. This is principally used by Indians who either live in India or emigrated to the US and encounter American Indians.

(As an aside, it's rather difficult to accurately describe my ethno-national status given the regular confusion with people of the First Nations...)

There's no need to worry about confusion, Indian-American always means ancestry or origin in India. Native American is the usual term in the US for the indigenous, although many of them call themselves Indians and prefer it, a generation ago it was American Indian, but it's never been the other way around, hyphen or otherwise.

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