Costa Rican Americans

Costa Rican Americans
Regions with significant populations
	New York Metro Area, Greater Los Angeles, South Florida
Languages
	American English, Spanish
Religion
	Predominantly Roman Catholic, minority Protestant

Costa Rican Americans (Template:Lang-es or [estadounidenses de origen costarricense] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)) are Americans of Costa Rican descent.

The Costa Rican population at the 2010 Census was 126,418. Costa Ricans are the fourth smallest Hispanic group in the United States and the smallest Central American population.

Costa Rican populations are prominent in the New York Metropolitan Area, especially in North Central New Jersey (Essex County, New Jersey, Passaic County, New Jersey, Somerset County, New Jersey, and Union County, New Jersey). Additional areas with significant Costa Rican residents include New York City, Suffolk County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. There are also sizable groups of Costa Ricans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, South Florida metropolitan area, and Lincoln County, North Carolina.

History

There have never been waves of migration from Costa Rica to the United States. The Immigration and Naturalization Service records indicate that very few Costa Ricans have actually tried to enter the country illegally. This is because, unlike other Hispanic groups, they have not been forced to emigrate to the U.S. for political oppression or extreme economic circumstances.

Most Costa Ricans living in the United States have settled in the U.S. for any of the following reasons: they have married American citizens and decided to move to the U.S.; they were raised by their families in the United States; they have been hired to work in the United States after completing a degree from an American university; they have found research opportunities that may not be as readily available in their country, or they have come to various jobs and trades in the United States.

Since 1931 only 57,661 Costa Ricans have immigrated to the United States. Hence, the number of Costa Rican emigrants has been increasing very slowly. This is a very different from the pattern of emigration from most other Central American countries. The other two countries in this region that have a continuously slow rate of emigration are Belize and Panama.^[2]

Culture

Costa Ricans tend to either blend in the English-speaking population or form working and friendly relationships with other Hispanics, celebrating with them when the occasion arises. Most of Costa Rican Americans maintain their heritage, but they also tend to integrate and adjust to their environment quickly, especially if they want to join a church or if they have children in the public school system. If both parents speak Spanish, chances are that the children will be raised bilingually.^[2]

However, if only one parent speaks Spanish, the children usually grow up speaking only English. Since Costa Ricans did not suffer ethnic persecution during the colonial period, nor did they have a violent war of independence, they are not as self-conscious about their ethnicity as other Hispanic groups. Therefore, they usually acculturate and assimilate rapidly.^[2]

Demographics

Most of Costa Ricans who live in the US live in California, Florida, Texas, and the New York City / New Jersey area. The areas with the largest Costa Rican populations, in according to latter reports, are Los Angeles and its surrounding areas (23,625); New York City area (including parts of Connecticut, New Jersey, and Long Island (12,985)); Miami and surrounding areas (Hialeah and Fort Lauderdale) (9,987); and in the Houston and Galveston area of Texas (2,534).

There is a significant Costa Rican American population in the Chicago, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana, areas (1,845).

The geographical preferences of Costa Ricans become evident in the statistics from the Immigration and Naturalization Service, as consistent with the findings of the 1990 census.