Salvadoran Americans are citizens or residents of the United States of Salvadoran descent. As of 2010 there are 1.6 million Salvadoran Americans in the United States, the fourth-largest Hispanic community by nation of ancestry.

One of the largest populations of Salvadoran Americans resides in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Orange County, California, the Inland Empire, as well as in San Diego. Other metropolitan areas with a major Salvadoran American presence include other California regions outside of Los Angeles such as the San Francisco Bay Area; the Washington Metropolitan Area, with most concentrated in the suburbs in Northern Virginia and Maryland; Central Florida and South Florida; Texas, especially in Houston, Austin, Dallas and Fort Worth; the New York City area such as Northern New Jersey, Flushing, Queens and Long Island; Atlanta; northern Georgia; New Orleans; and the Chicago metro area.

Salvadoran immigration to the United States is a fairly recent phenomenon historically, with the movement small in comparison to some of the great immigration waves of the past, but it has had a profound significance for both El Salvador and the United States.

Isiah "Ike" Leggett (born July 25, 1944) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Maryland and a member of the Democratic Party. Born in Deweyville, Texas, Leggett attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and, after serving in the Vietnam War with the U.S. Army, earned a law degree from Howard University in Washington, D.C.. In 1986, he became the first African-American elected to the county council in Montgomery County, Maryland and served on the council through 2002. He remains the only African-American ever elected to that body at-large. For two years, Leggett served as the chairman of the Maryland Democratic Party before leaving that position to run for office once again. Leggett was elected County Executive of Montgomery County in 2006, the first African-American to hold that office. Since taking office, Leggett has worked to put the County’s fiscal house in order while strengthening critical County services in education and public safety, and helping the most vulnerable. In the four years before Leggett took office, County spending grew by over 40 percent. In his first five years in office, County spending was held to zero percent. Responding to the worldwide recession that hit in 2008, Leggett closed budget gaps of over $2.6 billion, eliminating 10 percent of County government positions, while imposing furloughs (including himself), wage freezes, and changes in retirement and health benefits to save the County money. At the same time, Leggett put tens of millions of dollars into building and preserving thousands of units of affordable housing in the County, establishing a CountyStat office to ensure “real time” performance of County services, and set up a multi-agency Positive Youth Development Initiative to ensure positive programs for at-risk youth. He worked to strengthen the County’s biotechnology and life sciences sectors and also established the “311” Customer Service as a single point of entry for residents seeking County services. During Leggett’s first five years, serious crime went down in the County by 24 percent and Fire & Rescue response times to County fires improved dramatically.

Steve Purdy (born February 5, 1985 in Bakersfield, California) is an American-born Salvadoran footballer currently playing for Portland Timbers in Major League Soccer.

Steven Purdy was born in Bakersfield, California to an American father and Salvadoran mother. Purdy attended Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, California, played college soccer for the University of California, Berkeley, and with the San Francisco Seals in the USL Premier Development League.

He signed his first professional contract with German side 1860 Munich in 2007, and spent two years as a member of the team's reserve squad, but never played a competitive first team game.

He was signed by FC Dallas on January 14, 2009 Purdy made his MLS career debut and first start in FC Dallas' season opener on March 21, 2009 against the Chicago Fire in a 3-1 home loss. Purdy was waived by Dallas on September 11, 2009 in a move that freed up the cap space for them to sign Heath Pearce. Dallas re-signed Purdy a few days later.

On April 2, 2010, the Portland Timbers announced the signing of Purdy for the 2010 season. Purdy was a key player for Portland in his first year at the club. He appeared in 24 league matches and was a key figure in helping the club concede the second fewest goals in the league. On January 26, 2011 Purdy was signed by Portland Timbers to compete in the clubs first season in Major League Soccer.

Allan Nairn (born 1956) is an award-winning American investigative journalist who became well known when he was imprisoned by Indonesian military forces under United States-backed strongman Suharto while reporting in East Timor. His writings have focused on U.S. foreign policy in such countries as Haiti, Guatemala, Indonesia, and East Timor.

In "A Witness to U.S.-Supported Horror," The Washington Post noted:

"As a reporter he has gathered facts in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and other countries where amoral regimes have murdered and suppressed their own people and been rewarded by weapons or the succor of economic aid from Washington. Nairn specializes in human rights stories. As valuable as the annual reports of such organizations as Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International may be, they remain abstract compilations of horrors, not muddy-boot accounts from Third World villages and streets where people chance their lives to practice the simplest of freedoms. Nairn goes further: exposing links between local violence - clubbing Timorese students, death squads in El Salvador, disappearances in Guatemala - to the sanctioning of that violence by successive arms-supplying U.S. administrations."