Armenia Emigration and Immigration

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Armenia

Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

• 1921-1937 Immigration to and internal migration within Armenia, 1921-1937 at FamilySearch Catalog; images only
• hayrenadardz.org (Museum of repatriation [to Soviet Armenia]), name search must be done in Armenian.
• Armenian Immigration Project. Database of indexed US records for Armenians (passenger lists, naturalization records, military draft cards, vital records, etc.).
• List of Armenian refugees living at Camp Oddo, Marseille, 1922
• Passport Nansen: List of Transit of Nansen Passport Holders in Marseilles (1926-1946)

Armenian Diaspora

• Armenians living in their ancient homeland, which had been controlled by the Ottoman Empire for centuries, fled persecution, massacres and genocide during several periods of forced emigration, from the 1880s to the 1920s. Many Armenians settled in the United States, a majority of whom live in the state of California, France, Canada, Greece, Cyprus, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, Syria, and a small orphan population in the former Ethiopian Empire.
• The Armenian diaspora is divided into two communities – those from Ottoman Armenia (or Western Armenia) and those who are from the former Soviet Union, the independent Armenia and Iran (or Eastern Armenia).
• Armenians of the modern Republic of Turkey do not consider themselves as part of the Armenian Diaspora, since they believe that they continue residing in their historical homeland.
• The Armenian diaspora grew considerably during and after the First World War due to the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Although many Armenians perished during the Armenian genocide, some of the Armenians who managed to escape, established themselves in various parts of the world. By 1966, around 40 years after the start of the Armenian genocide, 2 million Armenians still lived in Armenia, while 330,000 lived in Russia, and 450,000 lived in the United States and Canada.
• Their pre-World War I population area was six times larger than that of present-day Armenia, including the eastern regions of Turkey, northern part of Iran, and the southern part of Georgia.
• By the year 2000, there were 7,580,000 Armenians living abroad in total.
• Today, the Armenian diaspora refers to communities of Armenians living outside of Armenia. The total Armenian population living worldwide is estimated to be 11,000,000. Of those, approximately 3 million currently live in Armenia, 130,000 in the de facto independent Republic of Artsakh and 120,000 in the region of Javakheti in neighboring Georgia. This leaves approximately 7,000,000 throughout the diaspora (with the largest populations in Russia, the United States, France, Argentina, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Canada, Ukraine, Greece, Cyprus, and Australia).

Armenians in the United States

• The first major wave of Armenian immigration to the United States took place in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thousands of Armenians settled in the United States following the Hamidian massacres of the mid-1890s, the Adana Massacre of 1909, and the Armenian genocide of 1915-1918 in the Ottoman Empire.