This article is about Italians and their descendants in America. For the 1974 Martin Scorsese documentary film, see Italianamerican.
This article may be too long to read and navigate comfortably. When this tag was added, its readable prose size was 21,400 words. Consider splitting content into sub-articles, condensing it, or adding subheadings. Please discuss this issue on the article's talk page.(January 2024)
Italian Americans (Italian: italoamericani) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. According to the Italian American Studies Association, the current population is about 18 million, an increase from 16 million in 2010, corresponding to about 5.4% of the total population of the United States. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwesternmetropolitan areas, with significant communities also residing in many other major U.S. metropolitan areas.[10]
Between 1820 and 2004, approximately 5.5 million Italians migrated to the United States during the Italian diaspora, in several distinct waves, with the greatest number arriving in the 20th century from Southern Italy. Initially, many Italians (usually single men), so-called "birds of passage", sent remittance back to their families in Italy and, eventually, returned to Italy.
Immigration began to increase during the 1880s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than had in the five previous decades combined.[11][12] Continuing from 1880 to 1914, the greatest surge of immigration brought more than 4 million Italians to the United States.[11][12] The largest number of this wave came from Southern Italy, which at that time was largely agricultural and where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign rule and heavy tax burdens.[13][14] This period of large-scale immigration ended abruptly with the onset of World War I in 1914 and, except for one year (1922), never fully resumed.[clarification needed] Thousands of Italians immigrated despite new quota-based immigration restrictions through the Immigration Act of 1924.[15] Italian-Americans had a significant influence on American society and culture, making contributions to visual arts, literature, cuisine, politics, sports and music.[16]