Areas of Immigration
Unlike many other immigrants to the Americas during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Germans from Russia wanted to continue farming and settled in agricultural areas rather than industrial cities. Primary areas were the plains states of Illinois, Nebraska, Kansas, North and South Dakota, with some movement to specific areas of Washington and California (Fresno and Lodi for instance) in the United States; Saskatchewan and Manitoba of Canada; and Brazil and Argentina. These areas tended to resemble the flat plains of the Russian steppes. In addition, the upper Great Plains still had arable land available for free settlement under the Homestead Act. In the 2000 Census, North Dakota reported 43.9% of the population identified as having German ancestry. In 1910, 5% of the population of North Dakota had been born in Russia; it is likely most were ethnic Germans.
Around 1905/1906 several ethnically German families from a small town along the Volga settled in Windsor, Colorado. It is unclear if the uprising of 1905 in Russia was an impetus to this immigration. These families worked on sugar beet farms in the area, before migrating to other areas of the United States and Canada.
Since the reunification of Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall and declining conditions in Russia, many ethnic Germans still living in the lands of the former Soviet Union sought German repatriation.
Read more about this topic: Germans From Russia
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