Portuguese Americans' Acculturation
PORTUGUESE AMERICANS’ ACCULTURATION, SOCIOECONOMIC INTEGRATION, AND AMALGAMATION How far have they advanced? Dulce Maria Scott Introduction Utilizing data from Censuses 1980, 1990, and 2000, the 2005 and 2006 American Community Surveys, and the 2006 Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, this paper analyzes the acculturation, socioeconomic integration, and amalgamation trends of Portuguese immigrants and their descendents in the United States. In order to draw more informed conclusions about the Portuguese experience along these three dimensions of assimilation, I compare it to those of other immigrant groups in the United States, including the Irish, the Italian, the Greek, and the Brazilians. I selected these groups based on the time when they first began to arrive in the Uni- ted States — the Irish first, followed by the Italians, the Portuguese and the Greeks, and later the Brazilians. The United States gained its independence in 1776, but it was not until the 1820s that immigration from Europe began to occur in large numbers. Until about the middle of the 19th century, immigrants originated primarily in Germany and Ireland. In the second half of the 19th century the source of immigration changed from northern Europe to Southern and Eastern Europe. The largest immigrant group arriving at this time was from Italy.This pattern of immigration from Europe continued until the 1920s, when immigration restrictions were put in place with the National Origins Act. Under this law, immigration to the United States was gre- atly reduced until the Immigration Act of 1965, which opened immigration to all countries in the world and established a system of preferences based on family reu- nification and the labor needs of the United States, among other factors.
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