Transfer my contacts from iPhone

Yes they can in several ways. I guess the first thing to ask is how you put them in there. Manually each one, or did you import from something like google?

Using icloud, or even google, will keep them all constantly updated on both devices no matter where you edit or touch them. Including icloud.com or google.

Do you have icloud running on your phone?

I am sure there are other ways also, but icould is apples way of doing it, and google I am familar with also.

You can sync your iPhone to a supported contact program on your computer at home, and set up the ipad to use the same program to sync to.

Syncing contacts and calendars to iPod with iTunes for Windows Vista or Windows 7

Or you can use iCloud to sync your contacts on your devices:

iCloud: What is iCloud?

Contacts, Calendar, Mail: iCloud stores your calendars and contacts and automatically keeps them up to date across your devices. With iCloud, you can also get a me.com email account that pushes new messages to your devices. iCloud also stores and updates your bookmarks, reminders, and notes.

Or you can restore the iPad from a backup of your iPhone. Contact info is part of the backup.

iTunes: About iOS backups

If you enable iCloud contact sync on your iPhone with the same iCloud account you use on your iPad, this will transfer sync all of your contacts.

You can try exporting the set of contacts from your iPad to your computer via this instead:

http://gg.gg/gxdo

You can then use the same to import your iPad contacts from your computer to your iPhone.

You can also try transferring the 20 contacts from your iPad over to your iPhone by sending them to your email and then recuperating them on your iPhone. There should be an app in the AppStore for that.