African immigration to the United States
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| African : 3,183,104 (Subsaharan African: 2,847,199 + North African: 335.895) (2010 US Census) | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
| Washington, D.C., New York, Maryland, Minneapolis, California, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Houston | |
| Languages | |
| English (African English, American English), Arabic, Igbo, Yoruba, Akan, Lingala, French, Wolof, Swahili, Amharic, Somali, Tigrinya, Berber, Afrikaans, Hausa, Portuguese, Cape Verdean Crioulo, Spanish, others | |
| Religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| other African people |
African immigration to the United States refers to immigrants to the United States who are or were nationals of African countries. The term African in the scope of this article refers to geographical or national origins rather than racial affiliation. From the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 to 2007, an estimated total of 0.8 to 0.9 million Africans immigrated to the United States, accounting for roughly 3.3% of total immigration to the United States during this period.
African immigrants in the United States come from almost all regions in Africa and do not constitute a homogeneous group. They include peoples from different national, linguistic, ethnic, racial, cultural and social backgrounds. As such, African immigrants are distinct from African Americans, whose ancestors were involuntarily brought from West Africa to the United States by means of the historic Atlantic slave trade.
In the 1870s the Naturalization Act was extended to allow "aliens, being free white persons and to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent" to acquire citizenship. Hence immigration from Africa was theoretically permitted while non-white immigration from Asia was not.
Several laws enforcing national origins quotas on American immigration were enacted between 1921 and 1924 and were in effect until they were repealed in 1965. While these laws were aimed at restricting the immigration of Jews and Catholics from central and eastern Europe and immigration from Asia, they also impacted African immigrants. This legislation effectively excluded Africans from entering the country.
The Emergency Quota Act of 1921 restricted immigration from a given country to 3% of the number of people from that country living in the US according to the census of 1910. The Immigration Act of 1924 (also known as the Johnson-Reed Act) reduced that to 2% of the number of people from that country who were already living in the US in 1890. Under this system, the quota for immigrants from Africa (excluding Egypt) totaled 1,100. (This number was increased to 1,400 under the Immigration act of 1952 or the McCarran-Walter Act.) This is in contrast to a country like Germany whose limit was 51,227.
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