Oldal 87 [87]
HUNGARIAN-ÁMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
After the treaty of Trianon, many “sojourner” types of immigrants who had
been planning to return to their homeland, had to change their plans as they
did not want to return to the successor countries”.
The next large wave of Hungarians (26,000 people)?”°, the DP’s (Displaced
Persons), who came to the USA after World War II were also propelled by
political reasons. The third wave of immigration (35,705 people)” came in
1956 and 1957 during and after the Revolution of 1956.
Although the political orientation of these later waves of Hungarian
immigration varied, they all left Hungary for political reasons, and had no
intention of returning soon when they left.
The end of the 1950s put an end to the mass immigration waves of Hungarians
into the USA. More than 50% of the foreign-born American-Hungarians came
to the USA before 1965", The 19805, however, saw a rise in the number of
Hungarian immigrants: 175,000 came in the 1980s”.
In the second half of the 1990s, a considerable rise in the number of
Hungarian immigrants can be detected. In the period of 1995 and 2000, 11,900
Hungarians immigrated to the USA as compared to 7,442 between 1990 and
1994°", These immigrants came to the USA mostly for economic reasons”.
As for the present situation, according to the US Census Bureau Data, in
2000, 1,398,724 people professed to be of Hungarian-American ancestry.
904,662 of them claimed to be of first Hungarian ancestry, while 494,062 of
second ancestry. That makes Hungarian-Americans the 21“ largest ancestry
group in the USA, the third largest ethnic population of eastern European
origin after people of Polish and Russian descent”"*.
HUNGARIAN-AMERICAN IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES:
STRUCTURAL POSITION WITHIN THE LARGER SOCIO-HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Hungarian-American immigrant communities are socially and economically
quite heterogeneous; however, examining them from a historical perspective,
depending on the time of their immigration, they can be classified into
distinctively separable groups. Depending on the date of immigration, and
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Puskäs, Ties that Bind, Ties that Divide, 197-198; Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 267
Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 139
Papp, Hungarian Americans and Their Communities of Cleveland, 142
Attila Z. Papp, (ed.), Beszédből világ. Elemzések, adatok amerikai magyarokról, Magyar Kül¬
ügyi Intézet, Budapest, 2008, 376
Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 268
214 Papp, Beszédből világ, 376
215 Papp, Beszédből világ, 453
Fenyvesi, Hungarian in the USA, 269
210
21
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216