Northern Mariana Islands Emigration and Immigration

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Northern Mariana Islands Emigration and Immigration

"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country.
Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.

Immigration into Northern Mariana Islands

  • Spain the islands part of the Spanish East Indies in 1565.
  • Guam operated as an important stopover between the Philippines and Mexico for Manila galleon carrying trading between Spanish colonies.
  • Most of the islands' native population (90–95%) died from European diseases carried by the Spaniards.
  • New settlers, primarily from the Philippines and the Caroline Islands, were brought to repopulate the islands. The Chamorro population gradually recovered.
  • During the 17th century, Spanish colonists forcibly moved the Chamorros to Guam, to encourage assimilation and conversion to Roman Catholicism. By the time they were allowed to return to the Northern Marianas, many Carolinians from present-day eastern Yap State and western Chuuk State had settled in the Marianas.
  • The Northern Marianas experienced an influx of immigration from the Carolines during the 19th century.
  • Following its loss during the Spanish–American War of 1898, Spain ceded Guam to the United States and sold the remainder of the Marianas (i.e., the Northern Marianas), along with the Caroline Islands, to Germany. Germany administered the islands as part of its colony of German New Guinea.
  • Early in World War I, Japan declared war on Germany and invaded the Northern Marianas. In 1919, the League of Nations awarded all of Germany's islands in the Pacific Ocean located north of the Equator, including the Northern Marianas, under mandate to Japan. Under this arrangement, the Japanese thus administered the Northern Marianas as part of the South Seas Mandate. During the Japanese period, sugar cane became the main industry of the islands. Garapan on Saipan was developed as a regional capital, and numerous Japanese (including ethnic Koreans, Okinawan, and Taiwanese) migrated to the islands.
  • In the December 1939 census, the total population of the South Seas Mandate was 129,104, of whom 77,257 were Japanese (including ethnic Taiwanese and Koreans). On Saipan the pre-war population comprised 29,348 Japanese settlers and 3,926 Chamorro and Caroline Islanders; Tinian had 15,700 Japanese settlers (including 2,700 ethnic Koreans) and 22 ethnic Chamorro).
  • On June 15, 1944, the United States military invaded the Mariana Islands.
  • After Japan's defeat in World War II, the Northern Marianas were administered by the United States as part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which assigned responsibility for defense and foreign affairs to the United States as trustee.
  • The people of the Northern Mariana Islands decided in the 1970s not to seek independence, but instead to forge closer links with the United States [1]

Emigration From Northern Mariana Islands

KNOMAD Statistics: Emigrants: 10,000. Top destination countries: the United States, Guam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, the Russian Federation, Greece, South Africa, Chile, Türkiye, Australia [2]

Records of Northern Mariana Islands Emigrants in Their Destination Nations

Dark thin font green pin Version 4.png One option is to look for records about the ancestor in the country of destination, the country they immigrated into. See links to Wiki articles about immigration records for major destination countries below. Additional Wiki articles for other destinations can be found at Category:Emigration and Immigration Records.

References

  1. "Northern Mariana Islands", in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern Mariana Islands, accessed August 2021.
  2. "Northern Mariana Islands", at KNOMAD, the Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development, https://www.knomad.org/data/migration/emigration?page=17, accessed August 2021