Romanian American Community

Romanians began to come to America at the end of the 19 th century, mainly from Transylvania , Bucovina , and Banat – regions under Austro-Hungarian rule at that time. By 1913, 120,000 Romanians had migrated to the US . In 1920, their number reached 168,000, the main reason of the emigration being the poor economic conditions in Romania after the World War I.

According to the American standards, the Romanian American community represents now a medium-size ethnic group. At the US Census in 2000, 367,000 Americans declared their Romanian origin ( state distribution ). However, their number is much higher (most likely around 1 million), taking into account that the ethnic origin is not a compulsory question in the Census, the immigration flows continue and many of the Romanian Americans do not have yet American citizenship.

New York , California and Midwest are the most Romanian-populated areas in the US , with peaks in. New York , Los Angeles , Chicago and Detroit . The largest Romanian American communities, each amounting tens of thousands of members, live in New York , New Jersey , Ohio , Michigan , Illinois – final destinations for the first waves of Romanian immigrants. More recently, Romanians, coming from Romania or from within US, have headed to California and Florida . Lately, Romanian communities have developed and strengthened in the states of Washington , Georgia , Texas , and Arizona .