Immigration to Brazil

Immigration to Brazil is the movement to Brazil of foreign peoples to reside permanently. It should not be confused with the forcible bringing of people from Africa as slaves. Latin Europe accounted for four-fifths of the arrivals (1.8 million Portuguese, 1.5 million Italians, and 700,000 Spaniards). This engendered a strikingly multicultural society. Yet over a few generations, Brazil absorbed these new populations in a manner that resembles the experience of the rest of the New World.^[1]

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Throughout its history, Brazil has always been a recipient of settlers, but this began to gain importance in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century when the country received massive immigration from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, which left lasting marks on demography, culture, language and the economy of Brazil.

In general, it is considered that people who entered Brazil up to 1822, the year of independence, were wholly colonizers. Since then, some of those who entered the independent nation were immigrants, mainly Portuguese, Italians and Spaniards, but also Germans, Japanese, Poles, Lebanese, Syrians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Jews, Russians and many others.^[2][3]

Before 1871, the number of immigrants rarely exceeded two or three thousand people a year. Immigration increased pressure from the first end of the international slave trade to Brazil, after the expansion of the economy, especially in the period of large coffee plantations in the state of São Paulo.

Immigration has been a very important demographic factor in the composition, structure and history of human population in Brazil, with all its attending factors and consequences in culture, economy, education, racial issues. Brazil has received one of the largest numbers of immigrants in the Western Hemisphere, along with the United States, Argentina and Canada.^[4]

Counting from 1872 (year of the first census) by the year 2000, Brazil received about 6 million immigrants.