Canadian Americans

Canada borders only water and the United States and is the Western Hemisphere's largest country. The border with the United States is, at more than 5,000 miles long, the world's lengthiest undefended border. Internal tensions between French- and English-speaking Canadians in particular have fueled immigration to the United States over a number of years, and especially in the 20th century.

Although there has always been a flow of people between Canada and the United States, reliable data have only been kept since the 1910 census of the United States and the 1911 census [Page 433]of Canada. Migration is also somewhat seasonal: the Canadian American population swells in the winter months. States such as Florida and Arizona have strong seasonal populations of Canadians, which affects items such as media for Canadians in the United States. By 1990, almost 30 percent of Canadians in the United States were 65 and older, which lowers the average income level for the group.

Since the 1850s the number of Canadians emigrating to the United States has grown at a steady rate. The number of Canadians entering the United States was throughout the early and mid-20th century around four times that of U.S. citizens emigrating to Canada. Immigration levels peaked in the 1920s and dropped sharply after 1930, when the economic woes of the Great Depression meant less opportunity for immigrants. The numbers picked up again in the 1950s and 1960s, however, and the immigration stream flowed unstemmed until the United States modified its immigration laws in 1965. Canada followed suit in 1976. Numbers of immigrants from Canada to the United States dropped by 60 percent after these legal changes. Even so, there were in excess of 3.5 million Canadian immigrants (net) into the United States in the 20th century alone.

Once the immigration laws changed, so did the face of immigration in the United States as a whole. In the early 1960s nearly 12 percent of all immigrants to the United States originated from Canada; within the next two decades that percentage dropped to 2 percent. By the time the 1980 U.S. census was taken, nearly 65 percent of all immigrants who listed their country of origin as Canada had been in America more than 20 years. By the time of the 1990 census only 0.2 percent of Americans reported Canadian ancestry. (It is worth noting that the U.S. census does not include immigrants from Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, or Acadiens and French Canadians in the “Canadian” category. These groups each have their own category.)

Regionally speaking, the highest numbers of Canadian Americans are in the northeastern United States, with more than 110,000 residing in Massachusetts and New York alone. California presents a notable exception to this trend as it is actually home to the largest number of Canadian Americans: more than 86,000.