Italian Americans

Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, with significant communities also residing in many other major US metropolitan areas.

Between 1820 and 2004 approximately 5.5 million Italians migrated from Italy to the United States, in several distinct waves, with the greatest number arriving in the 20th century from Southern Italy. Initially, many Italian immigrants (usually single men), so-called “birds of passage”, sent remittance back to their families in Italy and, eventually, returned to Italy; however, many other immigrants eventually stayed in the United States, creating the large Italian-American communities that exist today.

In 1870, prior to the large wave of Italian immigrants to the United States, there were fewer than 25,000 Italian immigrants in America, many of them Northern Italian refugees from the wars that accompanied the Risorgimento—the struggle for Italian reunification and independence from foreign rule which ended in 1870.

Immigration began to increase during the 1870s, when more than twice as many Italians immigrated than during the five previous decades combined. The 1870s were followed by the greatest surge of immigration, which occurred between 1880 and 1914 and brought more than 4 million Italians to the United States, the largest number coming from the Southern Italian regions of Abruzzo, Molise, Campania, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily, which were still mainly rural and agricultural and where much of the populace had been impoverished by centuries of foreign rule and the heavy tax burdens levied after unification of Italy in 1861.Mangione, Jerre and Ben Morreale, ''La Storia: Five Centuries of the Italian American Experience'', Harper Perennial, 1992 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, though many Italians managed to immigrate despite new quota-based immigration restrictions. Italian immigration was limited by several laws Congress passed in the 1920s, such as the Immigration Act of 1924, which was specifically intended to reduce immigration from Italy and other Southern European countries, as well as immigration from Eastern European countries, by restricting annual immigration per country to a number proportionate to each nationality's existing share of the U.S. population in 1920, as determined by the National Origins Formula (which calculated Italy to be the fifth-largest national origin of the U.S., to be allotted 3.87% of annual quota immigrant spots).

Following Italian unification, the Kingdom of Italy initially encouraged emigration to relieve economic pressures in Southern Italy. After the American Civil War, which resulted in over a half million killed or wounded, immigrant workers were recruited from Italy and elsewhere to fill the labor shortage caused by the war. In the United States, most Italians began their new lives as manual laborers in eastern cities, mining camps and farms. Italians settled mainly in the Northeastern US and other industrial cities in the Midwest where working-class jobs were available. The descendants of the Italian immigrants steadily rose from a lower economic class in the first and second generation to a level comparable to the national average by 1970. The Italian community has often been characterized by strong ties to family, the Catholic Church, fraternal organizations, and political parties.Vecoli (1978)

History

Age of Discovery and early settlement

Italian navigators and explorers played a key role in the exploration and settlement of the Americas by Europeans. Genoese explorer Christopher Columbus ( it, Cristoforo Colombo ) completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean for the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, opening the way for the widespread European exploration and colonization of the Americas. Another Italian, John Cabot ( it, Giovanni Caboto ), together with his son Sebastian, explored the eastern seaboard of North America for Henry VII in the early 16th century. In 1524 the Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano was the first European to map the Atlantic coast of today's United States, and to enter New York Bay.

A number of Italian navigators and explorers in the employ of Spain and France were involved in exploring and mapping their territories, and in establishing settlements; but this did not lead to the permanent presence of Italians in America. In 1539 Marco da Nizza explored the territory that later became the states of Arizona and New Mexico.

The first Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding to the current U.S.A. was Pietro Cesare Alberti, a Venetian seaman who, in 1635, settled in what would eventually become New York City.

A small wave of Protestants, known as Waldensians, who were of French and northern Italian heritage (specifically Piedmontese), occurred during the 17th century. The first Waldensians began arriving around 1640, with the majority coming between 1654 and 1663. They spread out across what was then called New Netherland, and what would become New York, New Jersey and the Lower Delaware River regions. The total American Waldensian population that immigrated to New Netherland is currently unknown; however, a 1671 Dutch record indicates that, in 1656 alone, the Duchy of Savoy near Turin, Italy, had exiled 300 Waldensians due to their Protestant faith.

Henri de Tonti (Enrico de Tonti), together with the French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, explored the Great Lakes region. De Tonti founded the first European settlement in Illinois in 1679, and in Arkansas in 1683. With LaSalle, he co-founded New Orleans