Armenian American

Armenian American

Armenian Americans (Armenian: Ամերիկահայերa) are citizens of the United States of Armenian origin. The 2010 American Community Survey one-year estimates indicated there were 474,559 Americans with full or partial Armenian ancestry. Estimated numbers of Armenian Americans range up to 1,500,000.b

The first major wave of Armenian immigration to North America took place in the late 19th and early 20th century. Most came from the Ottoman Empire, escaping persecution in their homeland. About 50,000 Armenians entered the US in 1899-1917 as a result of the Hamidian massacres of 1894-1896. Later, the number greatly increased as a result of instability in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria, where hundreds of thousands of Armenian Genocide survivors had settled earlier.

Beginning the late 1980s, many immigrants from Soviet Armenia arrived in the US. After proclaiming its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Armenia became embroiled in military conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan over the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh enclave; as the crisis escalated, many Armenians sought new homes in the United States.

The highest concentration of Americans of Armenian descent is in the Greater Los Angeles area, where, according to the US 2000 Census, 166,498 people identified themselves as Armenian, which was about 43% of the total number (385,488) of people of Armenian origin in the US at that time. Glendale, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, is widely known as the center of Armenian American life. About 40% (27.4% according to 2000 census) of the city's population of 200,000 is of Armenian origin.