Polish American
Wikipedia page about Polish-American
Polish-Americans are Americans who are of total or partial Polish descent. There are an estimated 10 million Polish Americans, representing about 3.2% of the U.S. population. Polish Americans are the largest European ethnic group of Slavic origin in the United States, second largest Central and Eastern European group and the eighth largest immigrant group overall.
Polish immigration began in 1608, when the first Polish settlers arrived at the Virginia Colony as skilled craftsmen. Since the beginning of the Polish immigration to the United States, until the mid-20th cenuty, Poles were victims of anti-Polish racism among the American society, partially based on ethnic prejudice against Poles, and partially caused by their non-Protestant, Roman Catholic religion. At the time ethnic Poles in America were viewed as a non-white racial group. A similar attitude was present also towards Italian Americans, Irish Americans, and Jewish Americans. Two early immigrants, Kazimierz Pułaski and Tadeusz Kościuszko, led armies in the Revolutionary War and are remembered as national heroes. Overall, more than one million Poles have immigrated to the United States, primarily during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Exact immigration numbers are unknown. Many immigrants were classified as "Russian", "German", and "Austrian" by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service because the Polish state did not exist from 1795 to 1918, and its borders had been dismantled through World War I and World War II. Complicating the U.S. Census figures further are the high proportion of Polish Americans who marry outside their ethnicity; in 1940, about 50 percent married other American ethnics, and a study in 1988 found that 54 percent of Polish Americans three generations or higher had been of mixed ancestry. The Polish American Cultural Center places a figure of Americans who have some Polish ancestry at 19-20 million.
In 2000, 667,414 Americans over 5 years old reported Polish as the language spoken at home, which is about 1.4% of the census groups who speak a language other than English or 0.25% of the U.S. population.
