SOUTH AMERICANS IN THE
UNITED STATES
South Americans immigrated to the
United States in great numbers in the last
25 years of the 20th century. In the 1980s
alone, 462,000 South Americans were
legally admitted to the United States, and
an unknown number came illegally. The
most came from Colombia. According to
the U.S. Census Bureau, 286,000
Colombian-born people lived in the
United States in 1990, nearly double the
144,000 counted in 1980. Many immi-
grants also came from Ecuador. According
to INS annual reports, 101,452 Ecuador-
ans immigrated in the period 1966–1987,
compared with 187,560 Colombians.
Substantially fewer immigrants came from
other South American Hispanic coun-
tries, though in total they contributed to
the growing South American presence:
from 1966 to 1987, Argentina was the
source of about 57,000 immigrants, Peru
38,000, and Chile 37,000.
By the end of the 20th century, the
South American population in the United
States probably comprised close to 1 mil-
lion people but it was not a unified com-
munity. South America includes nine
Hispanic nations—Argentina, Bolivia,
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela—along
with three non-Hispanic nations
(Guyana, Suriname, and Brazil) and
French Guiana, an overseas department
of France. Though sharing a common
language, South America’s Hispanic
nations are fiercely independent and have
a long history of fighting and competing
with one another as well as, sometimes,
cooperating. Hence, South American
immigants tend to identify themselves
by their individual nationalities, not as
South Americans.
Still, some general trends on their
home continent during this period -
affected many of the nations from which
Hispanic South Americans migrated, and
some general points can be made about
their reasons for immigrating to the
United States and about the communities
they established.A Wave of Liberalization
As in previous years, the quest for eco-
nomic opportunity rather than fear of
political persecution was the most impor-
tant factor driving South Americans to
immigrate to the United States in the
late 20th century. Like Central America,
South America had its share of military
regimes, revolutions, persistent guerrilla
wars, and right-wing death squads in the
1970s and 1980s, but by the end of the
1980s a liberalizing spirit was in evidence.
In the face of mounting foreign debt,A CHANGING COMMUNITY 213South American Population Distribution, 1999