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Total population | |
c. 632,169 (2019) [1] | |
Regions with significant populations | |
Languages | |
Religion | |
Majority Roman Catholic | |
Related ethnic groups | |
Lithuanian Americans refer to American citizens and residents of Lithuanian descent or were born in Lithuania. [2]
New Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has the largest percentage of Lithuanian Americans (20.8%) in its population in the United States. Chicago has historically had the largest number of Lithuanian Americans and the largest Lithuanian diaspora in the world. [3] [4] Lithuanian Americans form by far the largest group within the Lithuanian diaspora.
It is believed that Lithuanian emigration to the United States began in the 17th century [5] when Alexander Curtius [6] arrived in New Amsterdam (present day New York City) in 1659 and became the first Latin School teacher-administrator; he was also a physician. [7]
After the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, most of Lithuania was incorporated into the Russian Empire. The beginnings of industrialization and commercial agriculture based on Stolypin's reforms, as well as the abolition of serfdom in 1861, freed the peasants and turned them into migrant-laborers. The pressures of industrialization, Lithuanian press ban, general discontent, suppression of religious freedom and poverty drove numerous Lithuanians, especially after the famine in 1867–1868, to emigrate from the Russian Empire to the United States continuing until the outbreak of the First World War. The emigration continued despite the Tsarist attempts to control the border and prevent such a drastic loss of population. Since Lithuania as a country did not exist at the time, the people who arrived to the U.S. were recorded as either Polish, German or Russian; moreover, due to the language ban in Lithuania and prevalence of Polish language at that time, their Lithuanian names were not transcribed in the same way as they would be today. [8] As a result, information about Lithuanian immigration before 1899 is not available because incoming Lithuanians were not originally registered as Lithuanians. [9] Only after 1918, when Lithuania established its independence, the immigrants to the U.S. started being recorded as Lithuanians. This first wave of Lithuanian immigrants to the United States ceased when the U.S. Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act in 1921, followed by the Immigration Act of 1924. The Immigration Act of 1924 was aimed at restricting the Eastern Europeans and Southern Europeans who had begun to enter the country in large numbers beginning in the 1890s.
A second wave of Lithuanians emigrated to the United States as a result of the events surrounding World War II – the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940 and the Nazi occupation that followed in 1941. After the war's end and the subsequent reoccupation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union, these Displaced Persons were allowed to immigrate from DP camps in Germany to the United States and to apply for American citizenship thanks to a special act of Congress which bypassed the quota system that was still in place until 1967. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 ultimately led to the immigration of approximately 36,000 Lithuanians. Before that, the nationality quota was only 384 Lithuanians per year. [9] [10]
Lithuanian Americans today were still a relatively small ethnic group in 1990, since there were 842,209 Lithuanian Americans according to the U.S. Census; of these, 30,344 were foreign-born and 811,865 were born in the United States. This number was up from the 1980 figure of 742,776. The five states with the largest populations of Lithuanian Americans in both 1980 and 1990 (in descending order) were Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, and California. [9]
Immigration of Lithuanians into the U.S. resumed after Lithuania regained its independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1990. This wave of immigration has tapered off recently with tougher U.S. immigration requirements and the entry of Lithuania into the EU have made countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom a more accessible option for potential Lithuanian emigrants.
Lithuanian Days in Pennsylvania is the longest-running ethnic festival in the United States. [11]
Chicago has the largest Lithuanian community in the United States and with approximately 100,000 self-identified ethnic Lithuanians has the largest population of Lithuanians of any municipality outside Lithuania itself. [13] The old "Lithuanian Downtown" in Bridgeport was once the center of Lithuanian political activity for the whole United States. Another large Lithuanian community [14] can be found in the Coal Region of northeastern Pennsylvania, particularly in Schuylkill County where the small borough of New Philadelphia has the largest per capita percentage of Lithuanian Americans (20.8%) in the United States. There is also a large community of Lithuanian descent in the coal mining regions of Western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia Panhandle and Northeastern Ohio tri-state area. Grand County, Colorado's Lithuanian-American community has the unusual distinction in that it is the only sizable immigrant population in an otherwise fairly homogeneous population in a rural, mountainous community. There is also a small but vibrant Lithuanian community in Presque Isle, Maine. Many Lithuanian refugees settled in Southern California after World War II; they constitute a community in Los Angeles. [15] The majority of the Lithuanian community resides around the St. Casimir Lithuanian church in Los Feliz, in so-called "Little Lithuania. [16]
The states with the largest Lithuanian-American populations are: [17]
Lithuanian-born population in the U.S. since 1920: [18] [19]
Year | Number |
---|---|
1920 | 135,068 |
1930 | 193,606 |
1960 | 121,475 |
1970 | 76,001 |
1980 | 48,194 |
1990 | 29,745 |
2000 | 28,490 |
2010 | 33,888 |
2011 | ![]() |
2012 | ![]() |
2013 | ![]() |
2014 | ![]() |
2015 | ![]() |
2016 | ![]() |
The Immigration Act of 1924, or Johnson–Reed Act, including the Asian Exclusion Act and National Origins Act, was a United States federal law that prevented immigration from Asia and set quotas on the number of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. It also authorized the creation of the country's first formal border control service, the U.S. Border Patrol, and established a "consular control system" that allowed entry only to those who first obtained a visa from a U.S. consulate abroad.
British Americans usually refers to Americans whose ancestral origin originates wholly or partly in the United Kingdom. It is primarily a demographic or historical research category for people who have at least partial descent from peoples of Great Britain and the modern United Kingdom, i.e. English, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Scotch-Irish, Orcadian, Manx, Cornish Americans and those from the Channel Islands and Gibraltar.
The demographics of Chicago show that it is a very large, and ethnically and culturally diverse metropolis. It is the third largest city and metropolitan area in the United States by population. Chicago was home to over 2.7 million people in 2020, accounting for over 25% of the population in the Chicago metropolitan area, home to approximately 9.6 million.
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Russian Americans are Americans of full or partial Russian ancestry. The term can apply to recent Russian immigrants to the United States, as well as to those who settled in the 19th-century Russian possessions in northwestern America. Russian Americans comprise the largest Eastern European and East Slavic population in the US, the second-largest Slavic population generally, the nineteenth-largest ancestry group overall, and the eleventh-largest from Europe.
Pacific Islander Americans are Americans who are of Pacific Islander ancestry. For its purposes, the United States census also counts Aboriginal Australians as part of this group.
Ukrainian Americans are Americans who are of Ukrainian ancestry. According to U.S. census estimates, in 2021 there were 1,017,586 Americans of Ukrainian descent representing 0.3% of the American population. The Ukrainian population of the United States is thus the second largest outside the former Eastern Bloc; only Canada has a larger Ukrainian community under this definition. According to the 2000 U.S. census, the metropolitan areas with the largest numbers of Ukrainian Americans are: New York City with 160,000; Philadelphia with 60,000; Chicago with 46,000; Detroit with 45,000; Los Angeles with 36,000; Cleveland with 26,000; Sacramento with 20,000; and Indianapolis with 19,000. In 2018, the number of Ukrainian Americans surpassed 1 million.
Sicilian Americans are Italian Americans who are fully or partially of Sicilian descent, whose ancestors were Sicilians who emigrated to United States during the Italian diaspora, or Sicilian-born people in U.S. They are a large ethnic group in the United States.
Lebanese Americans are Americans of Lebanese descent. This includes both those who are native to the United States of America, as well as immigrants from Lebanon.
Belarusian Americans, also known as White Russian Americans and White Ruthenian Americans, are Americans who are of total or partial Belarusian ancestry.
Ethiopian Americans are Americans of Ethiopian descent, as well as individuals of American and Ethiopian ancestry. The largest Ethiopian American community is in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, with some estimates claiming a population of over 200,000 in the area; other large Ethiopian communities are found in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Las Vegas, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, Denver, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Columbus, and South Dakota.
Kurds in the United States refers to people born in or residing in the United States of Kurdish origin or those considered to be ethnic Kurds.
The history of immigration to the United States details the movement of people to the United States from the colonial era to the present day. Throughout U.S. history, the country experienced successive waves of immigration, particularly from Europe and later on from Asia and Latin America. Colonial-era immigrants often repaid the cost of transoceanic transportation by becoming indentured servants in which the new employer paid the ship's captain. In the late 19th century, immigration from China and Japan was restricted. In the 1920s, restrictive immigration quotas were imposed but political refugees had special status. Numerical restrictions ended in 1965. In recent years, the largest numbers of immigrants to the United States have come from Asia and Central America.
Ghanaian Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Ghanaian ancestry or Ghanaian immigrants who became naturalized citizen of the United States.
The Albanian diaspora are the ethnic Albanians and their descendants living outside of Albania, Kosovo, southeastern Montenegro, western North Macedonia, southeastern Serbia, northwestern Greece and Southern Italy.
The Belarusian diaspora refers to emigrants from the territory of Belarus as well as to their descendants.
Lithuanian Canadians are Canadians who are of full or partial Lithuanian descent. Over two-thirds of Lithuanian Canadians reside in Toronto, with other much smaller populations scattered around most of the Canadian provinces and territories.
The history of Poles in the United States dates to the American Colonial era. Poles have lived in present-day United States territories for over 400 years—since 1608. There are 10 million Americans of Polish descent in the U.S. today. Polish Americans have always been the largest group of Slavic origin in the United States.
Central Asians in the United States are Americans with ancestry from Central Asia. They include Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tajik, Turkmen, and Uzbek individuals. People of Afghan, Baloch, and Uyghur descent are also sometimes classified as Central Asians. The United States census does not mention Central Asians under any category.
Kažkada didžiausią lietuvių bendruomenę sutelkęs miestas už Lietuvos ribų – Čikaga – jau kelis dešimtmečius išgyvena pokyčius – bendruomenė labiau išsisklaidžiusi, o senuosius lietuvių gyvenamus rajonus primena tik istoriniai tampantys paminklai.
Įvairiais skaičiavimais, Čikagoje ir aplink gali būti iki 100 tūkst. lietuvių ar lietuvių kilmės amerikiečių.