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Guatemala Emigration and Immigration


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Online Sources

  • 1946-1971 Free Access: Africa, Asia and Europe, Passenger Lists of Displaced Persons, 1946-1971 Ancestry, free. Index and images. Passenger lists of immigrants leaving Germany and other European ports and airports between 1946-1971. The majority of the immigrants listed in this collection are displaced persons - Holocaust survivors, former concentration camp inmates and Nazi forced laborers, as well as refugees from Central and Eastern European countries and some non-European countries.
  • Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Guatemala under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".

Passports

Finding the Town of Origin in Guatemala

If you are using emigration/immigration records to find the name of your ancestors' town in Guatemala, see Guatemala Finding Town of Origin for additional research strategies.

Guatemala 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.

Emigration from Guatemala

A significant number of Guatemalans live outside of their country. The majority of the Guatemalan diaspora is located in the United States of America, with estimates ranging from 480,665 to 1,489,426. Emigration to the United States of America has led to the growth of Guatemalan communities in California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Rhode Island and elsewhere since the 1970s. Below are estimates of the number of Guatemalans living abroad for certain countries:

Country 2019
United States 1,070,743
Mexico 44,178
Belize 25,086
Canada 18,398
El Salvador 9,005
Spain 7,678
Honduras 4,681
France 3,296
Chile 2,699
Italy 2,299
Total 1,205,644
Source:DatosMacro.[1]

Guatemalan Immigration to the United States

  • Up until the 1960s, Guatemalan migration to the US was negligible.
  • The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Immigration Statistics notes the first trickles of migration in the 1940s and 50s, but migration truly began to increase through the 1970s and 80s.
  • By the 1990s, more than 100,000 migrants were coming into the US by means of green cards each decade and then that number slightly dipped in the early 2000s.
  • More recent data is harder to gauge, as majority of Guatemalan migration is predicted to be unauthorized.
  • The US Census data in 2000 marked 372,487 Guatemalans in the US and by 2010, the number had reached over 1 million, showing a 183% increase in Guatemalans in the US over the decade. This shows that even though legal migration may have slowed, migration as a whole from the country is on the rise.
  • Guatemalans have primarily settled in California, Florida and Texas. As of 2015, 29% of Guatemalans in the US lived in California while 8% respectively lived in Florida and Texas.
  • Within California, Guatemalans are concentrated in Los Angeles (20%). Within these cities, ethnic enclaves and already-present communities help receive new migrants, connecting them with jobs and easing the transition, thus decreasing the linguistic and cultural costs of migration.[2]

Guatemalan Immigration to Mexico

  • There has been a Guatemalan presence in Mexico since at least 1895, when the National Census counted 14,004 individuals, however this dropped to 5,820 in 1900.
  • Due to the devastating Guatemalan Civil War (1960-1996), many Guatemalans were allowed into Mexico as refugees. Some stayed only temporarily, but others settled down in the country.
  • Recently, many Guatemalans have been immigrating to Mexico rather than the United States. Most settle around Guatemala-Mexico border states to keep in touch with family, but many move to Mexico City where a large community already exists, and some settle around Baja California and US-Mexico border states because of Guatemalan American communities existing in American border cities, some with relatives in the United States. [3]

Records of Guatemalan 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 immigration records for major destination countries below.

For Further Reading

There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog:

  • {{FHL|404401|subject_id|disp=Guatemala - Emigration and immigration

References

  1. ↑ [1] Guatemala-Emigration 2019. Datosmacro
  2. ↑ "Guatemalan Immigration to the United States", in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_immigration_to_the_United_States, accessed 6 June 2021.
  3. ↑ "Guatemalan Mexicans", in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_Mexicans, accessed 6 June 2021.
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