Portuguese immigrants
Portuguese immigrants have played a significant role in shaping various regions of the United States, particularly in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, California, and Hawaii. Many of these immigrants originated from Portugal's Azores and Madeira islands, with some more recent arrivals coming directly from the European mainland. Historically, the early Portuguese settlers, known for their seafaring culture, were involved in whaling and fishing before moving into manufacturing and agriculture. Small Portuguese communities began forming in the mid-17th century, with notable contributions to the economy and culture over the centuries.
The influx of Portuguese immigrants surged in the 19th century, particularly during the whaling boom and California's gold rush. By the early 20th century, the Portuguese population in the U.S. was substantial, though often underreported due to misidentification as Spanish by immigration officials. Post-World War II, immigration quotas allowed a significant number of Portuguese to enter the country, fleeing economic hardship and political oppression in their homeland. By 1980, over a million Americans identified as having Portuguese ancestry, with California, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island being key states of residence.
While the 21st century has seen a decline in new immigration from Portugal, Portuguese Americans continue to thrive, demonstrating increasing educational attainment and establishing communities in new areas. As Portugal faces demographic challenges, the historical context of Portuguese migration highlights a complex narrative of adaptation and integration in American society.
Subject Terms
Portuguese immigrants
SIGNIFICANCE: Portuguese immigrants to the United States tended to cluster in the New England and mid-Atlantic states, upper California, and Hawaii. Most came from Portugal’s Azores and Madeira island provinces in the Atlantic Ocean; only the most recent waves have come directly from the European mainland. A seafaring people, the earliest Portuguese in the United States engaged in the whaling and fishing industries, from which they progressively moved into manufacturing and agricultural work.
The Portuguese were among the earliest European explorers and settlers of the New World. A Portuguese expedition along the Atlantic coast of North America identified and named the island of Labrador in 1498. Two years later, Portuguese navigators explored the eastern coast of South America, where they settled in Brazil and sent to it by far the largest numbers of Portuguese people in the Western Hemisphere. Portuguese immigrants to the United States originated not only from the Portuguese island provinces of the Azores and Madeira but also from continental Portugal itself. Portugal’s seafaring traditions prompted the Portuguese to navigate throughout the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
Early Portuguese in North America
Two small Portuguese communities appeared in the mid-seventeenth century British North American colonies—in New York and Rhode Island. Portuguese immigrants to the latter colony were mostly Sephardic Jews. The earliest known documented reference to an immigrant of Portuguese descent was recorded in Maryland in 1634. An eighteenth-century descendant of a Portuguese immigrant was a founder of the New York Stock Exchange. During the early nineteenth century, the growing importance of whale oil as a fuel brought seamen from the Azores and Madeirasettling in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The abundance of cod fish in the North Atlantic also attracted them.
Portuguese seamen sailing the Pacific during the nineteenth century established small settlements in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. The gold rush in the latter state prompted a ten-fold increase in the Portuguese population of the state’s northern region between 1850 and 1860. California’s development of a fish-canning industry attracted more Portuguese. During the nineteenth century, the number of immigrants from Portugal and its islands became sufficient to establish several Portuguese mutual-benefit societies in various cities. In 1877, the first Portuguese newspaper, the Jornal de NotíciasNews Journalappeared in the United States, prompting the appearance of several other such publications in the next decade.
Fluctuating Immigration Rates
By the turn of the twentieth century, Portuguese immigrants arrived in the United States by the tens of thousandsexpanding the clusters already established in New England, the mid-Atlantic states, and California. Their numbers, however, have been underestimated because immigrants from the Azores and Madeira were not always counted as Portuguese by U.S. immigration officialsPortuguese immigrants were often identified as Spanish. Moreover, many immigrants arrived clandestinely, declaring no nationality.
On the eve of World War I (1914–18), New England had a population of Portuguese descent numbering approximately 150,000. Working mainly in textile mills, they formed the second-largest Portuguese population in the Americas after Brazil. The Portuguese population in California expanded from the San Francisco Bay area into the San Joaquin Valleyaiding in the development of its agricultural abundance. Some Portuguese in Hawaii moved to California, although the number on the islands remained considerable and influential.
Postwar immigration restrictions reduced the number of Portuguese who could enter the country to only a few hundred per year. However, those who did succeed in immigrating now originated principally from mainland Portugal. During the decades after World War II, Portuguese immigration quotas were raised100,000 immigrants entered the United States between 1950 and 1970. They left a country that had become one of the poorest in Europe, burdened with a fascist regime that had been in power for a half-century and mired in warfare to suppress the independence movements of its African colonies. By 1980, the U.S. Census registered more than one million Americans of Portuguese descent. Several American universities created Portuguese studies centersincluding Brown University, the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Columbia University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey 1-Year Estimates, the estimated population of Americans of Portuguese descent was 1,373,147 people. Six years later in the 2021 American Community Survey, the Census Bureau indicated this number had dropped to 1,306,039California, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island remained the states with the largest populations of people of Portuguese descent.
Descendents of Portuguese immigrants tended to fare well in America. As a community they registered increasing levels of education. As many second-generation Americans lost their ancestral language, the number of those who spoke Portuguese instead increased. Portuguese Americans ventured beyond traditional locales in the United States and established themselves in new areas such as Florida, Texas, and Georgia.
In the 2020s, new immigration from Portugal to the United States fell to negligible levels. Less than 10,000 Portuguese citizens departed the country in 2023with most remaining on the European continent. Many of the historical pressures that induced people to leave their native lands no longer existed in Portugalover-population, poverty, lack of economic opportunity, religious and political oppression. Instead, Portugal, as with many advanced, global countries, faced the challenge of insufficient re-population leading to an increasingly aged society. Portugal turned to immigration for labor and population replenishment. The country then faced a backlash from native-born segments about perceived threats to historical and cultural norms.
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