Belarusian Americans () are Americans whose ancestors where born in the territory of
Belarus.
The total estimate of Belarusian immigrants to the USA is between 650,000 and 750,000 (this estimate includes only actual immigrants, and not people of Belarusian descent born in the
United States). A precise number of Belarusian Americans is difficult to determine, since historically, census and immigration statistics did not recognize Belarusians as a separate category. Many of them were recorded as
Russian or
Polish, depending on the region of Belarus in which they were born.
The largest concentrations of Belarusian Americans are in the
metropolitan New York area,
New Jersey (especially
Highland Park and
South River),
Cleveland (and its suburbs),
Chicago (recent immigrants concentrated around
Wheeling),
Los Angeles, and
Detroit.
There were several waves of influx of Belarusians into the USA, one before the
Russian Revolution, then in 1919-1939 from
West Belarus, then in late 1940s - early 1950s (after the Second World War), and after the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s.
One major group of Belarusian immigrants to the U.S. are Belarusian
Jews who migrated starting in the mid-19th century, facing discrimination in the
Russian Empire of which Belarus was part of at the time.
According to the Census Bureau report in 2000 in the USA lived 38,505 people who were born in Belarus. From them - 1,363...
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