Post-WWII European immigrants to the US

[King of Kensington]

Posting here since I've compiled all this data.

Obviously they had a bigger demographic impact in Canada and Australia, as the 1924 immigration restrictions that remained at least partly in place until 1965 reduced numbers that would have otherwise come.  Still, a fair number came.  The 1960s and 1970s also saw immigration from southern Europe and the USSR.

In 1980, the European-born population is split between remaining older immigrants from the early 20th century wave and post-war immigrants.  You can also the Greeks, Portuguese and Yugoslavs are more "recent."

Total immigrants, 1980 census

Germany  849,384
Italy  831,922
UK  669,149
Poland  418,128
USSR  406,022
Greece  210,998
Portugal  209,968
Yugoslavia  152,967

Post-1950 immigrants, 1980 census

Germany  540,688
Italy  399,121
UK  398,363
Poland  183,928
Portugal  181,879
USSR   171,083
Greece  160,958
Yugoslavia  113,542

[King of Kensington]

New York State

Italy  148,664
Germany  59,689
USSR  52,104
UK  46,866
Greece  44,797
Poland  42,665
Ireland  26,637
Yugoslavia  25,050

California

UK  92,059
Germany  80,029
USSR  29,810
Italy  27,024
Portugal  23,317
Netherlands  21,637

New Jersey

Italy  51,470
Germany  29,336
Portugal  26,531
Poland  21,743
UK  20,824

Illinois

Poland  41,409
Germany  33,416
Italy  28,772
Greece  20,808
Yugoslavia  19,135

Massachusetts

Portugal  65,410
Italy  26,612

[King of Kensington]

New York Area

Italy  170,110
Germany  60,254
USSR  55,854
Poland  53,228
Greece  51,025
UK  48,505
Portugal  37,260
Ireland  29,553
Yugoslavia  28,929
Hungary  20,998
Spain  17,135
Romania  14,729
France  14,593
Czechoslovakia  12,131

Chicago Area

Poland  41,687
Germany  29,245
Italy  27,919
Yugoslavia  21,791
Greece  21,431
USSR  12,436
UK  11,875

Los Angeles Area

UK  42,182
Germany  30,851
USSR  19,307
Italy  11,335

Boston Area

Italy  22,143
Portugal  17,416
UK  10,813
Greece  10,722

San Francisco Area

UK  14,561
Germany  14,140

Philadelphia Area

Italy  16,659
Germany  13,673
UK  10,050

Detroit Area

Italy  10,958
Germany  10,944
UK  9,849

[H. Ross Peron]

As the California numbers show, a fair number of Dutch immigrants came to Southern California, some of whom came not directly from Europe but rather were Dutch colonists in Indonesia who left after independence. Many of the latter had some Indonesian ancestry and cultural influences. Quite a few of them became dairy farmers around Los Angeles, especially in cities such as Artesia and Bellflower. Their legacy remains fairly strong today as evidenced by the many Reformed churches in Greater Los Angeles. I remember one retired middle school science teacher who occasionally was a substitute when I was in middle school was a Dutch immigrant born in Amsterdam in 1945.

[King of Kensington]

Yup, California received most of the postwar Dutch immigrants to the US, not the Midwest.

[King of Kensington]

This Italian American academic from California suggests that post-war immigration reinvigorated Italian culture in the New York area:

What struck me is the way a small town, like, say, Nutley, New Jersey, seems to have become (or always was?) a kind of Little Italy all its own. That when Italian Americans did their part in the great white flight to the suburbs in the decades following the Second World War, those in the New York area appeared to have taken a good part of the commerce and culture of their urban neighborhoods with them. (I realize I’m making some broad generalizations here.)
 
This phenomenon did not happen in California, even though the state had a number of Italian American urban neighborhoods that disappeared or drastically changed when Italian Americans moved out of the cities. Why does Italian American identity remain intact more recognizably in Eastern suburbs?
 
There are two straightforward answers: demographics and geography. California’s 1.5 million Italian Americans just don’t compare to the nearly 4.5 million in New York and New Jersey. Plus, New York’s relative nearness to Italy arguably allows for commerce and culture to move back and forth more easily.
 
However, there’s a more interesting possibility, one that requires much more careful study than is called for in a simple blog post: that is, the role of the (often-overlooked) second major wave of Italian immigration to the U.S. after the Second World War. Sure, California received its share of post-WW II immigrants (and they’re still coming today—Silicon Valley is full of Italians with H1-B visas), but not to the same degree as on the East Coast. Further—and yes, I’m being a little coy here—but I’ll take a wild guess that the influx of new immigrants in the post-war decades reinvigorated Italian American communities in greater New York in multiple ways: from customs around food, to the use of Italian and dialects, to all sorts of vernacular displays of culture.

http://bloggers.iitaly.org/bloggers/1761/californian-goes-east


 

[Хahar 🤔]

As the California numbers show, a fair number of Dutch immigrants came to Southern California, some of whom came not directly from Europe but rather were Dutch colonists in Indonesia who left after independence. Many of the latter had some Indonesian ancestry and cultural influences. Quite a few of them became dairy farmers around Los Angeles, especially in cities such as Artesia and Bellflower. Their legacy remains fairly strong today as evidenced by the many Reformed churches in Greater Los Angeles. I remember one retired middle school science teacher who occasionally was a substitute when I was in middle school was a Dutch immigrant born in Amsterdam in 1945.

Almost certainly the most famous postwar Dutch immigrant to Southern California was Bert Blyleven of Garden Grove. His former teammate Jim Kaat (with whom I would always confuse him as a child) was from Zeeland, Michigan: the Dutch community we normally think of when we think of Dutch-Americans.

This Italian American academic from California suggests that post-war immigration reinvigorated Italian culture in the New York area:

What struck me is the way a small town, like, say, Nutley, New Jersey, seems to have become (or always was?) a kind of Little Italy all its own. That when Italian Americans did their part in the great white flight to the suburbs in the decades following the Second World War, those in the New York area appeared to have taken a good part of the commerce and culture of their urban neighborhoods with them. (I realize I’m making some broad generalizations here.)
 
This phenomenon did not happen in California, even though the state had a number of Italian American urban neighborhoods that disappeared or drastically changed when Italian Americans moved out of the cities. Why does Italian American identity remain intact more recognizably in Eastern suburbs?
 
There are two straightforward answers: demographics and geography. California’s 1.5 million Italian Americans just don’t compare to the nearly 4.5 million in New York and New Jersey. Plus, New York’s relative nearness to Italy arguably allows for commerce and culture to move back and forth more easily.
 
However, there’s a more interesting possibility, one that requires much more careful study than is called for in a simple blog post: that is, the role of the (often-overlooked) second major wave of Italian immigration to the U.S. after the Second World War. Sure, California received its share of post-WW II immigrants (and they’re still coming today—Silicon Valley is full of Italians with H1-B visas), but not to the same degree as on the East Coast. Further—and yes, I’m being a little coy here—but I’ll take a wild guess that the influx of new immigrants in the post-war decades reinvigorated Italian American communities in greater New York in multiple ways: from customs around food, to the use of Italian and dialects, to all sorts of vernacular displays of culture.

http://bloggers.iitaly.org/bloggers/1761/californian-goes-east

This is a very interesting point! Reading about the history of the Santa Clara Valley, one is constantly struck by how many of the names a century ago were Italian. Sam Liccardo, the mayor of San Jose, comes from an old San Jose family. The Martinelli cider company of Watsonville is of nineteenth-century Californian provenance. Probably the most quintessentially San Francisco dish is cioppino, the nationality of whose inventors is obvious. As one might guess, my readiest source of demographic impressions is the names of baseball players, and in the early twentieth century San Francisco and environs produced plenty of great Italian ballplayers: the DiMaggio brothers, Ernie Lombardi, Tony Lazzeri, Frankie Crosetti, Dolph Camilli just off the top of my head. I have in the past wondered why Italians in the Bay Area assimilated in a way that Italians in the east did not, and postwar emigration is as strong a hypothesis as any.

[King of Kensington]

Post-1950 Italian immigrants, 1980 census

New York  170,110
Chicago  28,682
Boston  22,143
Philadelphia  16,659
Los Angeles  11,553
Detroit  10,958
Pittsburgh  6,569
Cleveland  6,509
San Francisco  6,205
Rochester  5,645
Hartford  5,437

Note that doesn't include those who came between 1946 and 1950.  Italians with US citizenship based on earlier immigration (a large number returned home, after all) may have moved to the US in good numbers and would not have been included since they don't count as "foreign-born." But these figures give the basic picture.

You can still find areas with good sized Italian immigrant populations in the New York area, though this is almost certainly an aged group that has been in the US for decades.  

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn  3,376  3.4%
Dyker Heights, Brooklyn  1,286  3.7%
Howard Beach, Queens  1,121  4.3%
Middle Village, Queens  1,320  4.1%
Whitestone, Queens  1,763  4.4%
Rossville, Staten Island  615  5.7%

Franklin Square NY  1,218  3.9%
Glen Cove NY  747  2.7%
Eastchester NY  559  2.8%
Harrison NY 904  3.2%
Totowa NJ  492  4.5%

I think Bensonhurst/Dyker Heights had something like 100,000 Italian Americans in 1980 and was the largest postwar concentration, today it's about a fifth of that number.  It's older Italian speakers that disproportionately remain behind.

Interestingly, Philadelphia might be the most visibly Italian American big city after NYC, but it received fewer post-war immigrants than Chicago, perhaps because Chicago was more of a "global city." I can't find any concentrations of Italian immigrants in and around Philly, but found a few around Chicago.  

Norridge IL  769  5.1%
Elmwood Park IL  538  2.2%

Norridge has become less Italian and more Polish, and may be the most "European" place in the US, with around 30% European-born.

[King of Kensington]

There were some post-war Dutch immigration to West Michigan as well:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twwv7dEVxBQ