Are there any available statistics on immigrants to the U.S. who went back to their home countries?

Question

In my own family history, there were people who immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1900's and then went back to Europe a few years later. I was wondering if this happened frequently.
Are there records anywhere on the people who left, for example on ship passenger lists?

Answer 1

Hard to find a single sorce for you but will lead you to a book on their very topic. First though, yes many people came to America, made a good wage and returned to their native country - - - a rough guess would be ten to twenty three percent depending upon the group. This statistic becomes skewered because of a pequiliar glitch in Mathmatics. Example, originally less than a thousand Chinese came to work on the railroad and of that number about three hundred made their wage and went back to China and lived good lives, prosperous and full of tales to tell. But the next group numbered five thousand and even if a thousand of them returned, well you do the math. The same thing happened with the Irish, at first a few came to America with the expressed intention of 'coming home,' but as larger groups flooded into America they said, what the heck why not stay?

http://www.buy.com/prod/round-trip-to-america-the-immigrants-return-to-europe-1880-1930/q/loc/106/30152151.html
"""""""""Wyman has written a fine book about 4,000.000 or so European immigrants to the United States who arrived in this country between 1880 and 1930 and who chose to return to their native lands."""

http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/historyonline/us29.cfm
"""""""Family Characteristics of Major Immigrant Groups, 1909-1914
Group Percentage Returning to Europe
Czechs 5 %
English 6 %
Finish 7 %
Germans 7 %
Greeks 16 %
Hebrews 2 %
Hungarians 22 %
Italians 17%
Poles 13%
Slovaks 19 % ""


Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930. by Mark Wyman
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-0507(199409)54%3A3%3C720%3ARTATIR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W
"""Round-Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930. by Mark Wyman
Author(s) of Review: Joseph P. Ferrie
The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Sep., 1994), pp. 720-722""

http://ethnicity.lib.mtu.edu/groups_Poles_print.html

wish there was more out there but there doesn't appear to be much interest in the subject //


Peace.....