- published: 18 May 2015
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The Estonian Americans (Estonian: Ameerika eestlased) are citizens or residents of the United States who are of Estonian ancestry, mainly descendants of people who left Estonia before and especially during World War II. According to the 2000 US census, there were over 25,000 Americans of full or partial Estonian descent, down from 26,762 in 1990.
Estonians first started coming to the United States in the late 19th century, and continued until the mid-20th century. The beginnings of industrialization and commercial agriculture in the Russian Empire transformed Estonian farmers into migrants. The pressures of industrialization drove numerous Estonian peasants to emigrate to the United States continuing until the outbreak of World War I. In 1944, in the face of the country being re-occupied by the Red Army, 80,000 people fled from Estonia by sea to Germany and Sweden, becoming war refugees and later, expatriates. Some thousand of them moved on from there and settled in the United States. After the war's end, these displaced persons were allowed to immigrate to the United States and to apply for American citizenship. Some of these refugees and their descendants started returning to Estonia at the end of the 1980s.