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"THE FIRST BOSNIANS IN AMERICA
The first Serb immigrants came in the first half of the nineteenth century and helped settle the American West. Many were young men from the Dalmatian coast, where they had worked as sailors or fishermen. Once in the United States, many of them worked in fishing or shipping in cities such as San Francisco, New Orleans, and Galveston, Texas, where they worked in the fishing and shipping industries. Most of them married outside of their ethnic group.
Accurate immigration figures for Bosnians are impossible to obtain. Until 1918 the U.S. Immigration Service counted Croatians from Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina separately from other Croatians, who were classified as Slovenians. After 1918 Croatians were listed as Yugoslavs. Prior to 1993, data for immigration from Bosnia-Herzegovina was not available separately from Yugoslavia.
SIGNIFICANT IMMIGRATION WAVES
There were six waves of Serbian/Croatian immigration. The earliest occurred from 1820 to 1880. The largest wave of Yugoslav immigrants took place from 1880 to 1914, when approximately 100,000 Serbs arrived in the United States. Most were unskilled laborers who fled the Austro-Hungarian policies of forced assimilation. Croatian and Serbian immigrants were largely young, impoverished peasant men. In the United States they settled in the major industrial cities of the East and Midwest, working long hours at low-paying jobs.
The third wave happened between World War I and World War II. From 1921 to 1930, 49,064 immigrants arrived. These interwar years were times of Serbian nationalist fervor. The Yugoslav regime became increasingly dictatorial, ruling provinces through military governors. Immigrants sought freedom from ethnic oppression by coming to the United States. The number of immigrants dropped to 5,835 in the decade from 1931 to 1941, and then decreased to 1,576 during World War II when Germany controlled Yugoslavia. Immigration was further reduced during the postwar years when the Communist Party under Tito took over the country. The fourth wave was made up of displaced persons and war refugees from 1945 until 1965.
The fifth major surge began in the sixties, when 20,381 Yugoslavians immigrated, a surge that continued into the next decade with 30,540 more immigrants. During the years of Tito's rule, Yugoslavia received economic and diplomatic support from the United States. In the 1970s, the U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, went as far as to say that the United States would risk nuclear war on Yugoslavia's behalf. From 1981 to 1990, 19,200 Yugoslavians immigrated to the United States. These Croatian and Serbian immigrants were intellectuals, artists and professionals who adapted easily to life in the United States.
The sixth wave came as a response to disintegrating political stability after Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1992. These immigrants have primarily been Muslim, pushed out by Serbs fighting to create a Serb-only region. From 1991 to 1994, 11,500 immigrated. The number fell to 8,300 in 1995, then rose to 11,900 in 1996. In 1994, with the U.S. Census records listing Bosnians as a separate category, 337 refugees were granted permanent residence. There were an additional 3,818 refugees in 1995 and 6,246 in 1996. In 1996, 19,242 Bosnians filed for refugee status. Of these, 14,654 were eventually approved, and 1,939 were denied. Bosnian refugees settled into communities all over the United States. Most received help from charitable organizations, as well as aid from the immigrants who preceded them. In 1998, 88 Bosnians and Herzegovinans were winners of the DV-99 diversity lottery. The diversity lottery is conducted under the terms of Section 203(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and makes available 50,000 permanent resident visas annually to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the United States...
...SETTLEMENT PATTERNS
Serbs and Croats have left their mark on many parts of the United States. Early Croatian immigrants prospered as merchants and fruit growers in California's Pajaro Valley. Croatians were among the first settlers of Reno, Nevada. New Orleans became a center of Croatian immigration in the early nineteenth century.
The first Slavic ethnic society in the South was established in 1874 by a group of Croatians and Serbs."
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