Italian American
As Italian-Americans living people of Italian descent are referred to in the U.S..
Most Italian immigrants came from the southern regions of the country, such as Apulia, Calabria, Campania and Sicily in particular, a large space for which today the term Mezzogiorno is. About a quarter of the emigrants returned after a certain time to Italy.
The first major group of Italian immigrants (150 Italian Protestants ) had already in 1657 in New Amsterdam (now New York City ) down.
The late 19th and early 20th century, then came the majority of Italian immigrants in the United States. Between 1820 and 1978 a total of 5.3 million Italians immigrated. Their descendants are today with 17.8498 million approximately 6.0% of the U.S. population, but only 789 800 Italian Americans speak Italian as their mother tongue ( 0.3 % of the total population). Of these native speakers may be compatible with only 28.2% English. Italian Americans thus form behind the Germans and the Irish, the third largest European immigration group in the United States. The majority of Italians settled in the big cities of New England, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, and California down.
Al Capone coined a negative Italian-American stereotype. A survey from the 1980s but showed that 56% of Americans believed that Italian immigrants have made a positive contribution, 10 % a negative ( for comparison German immigrants 57 % vs. 11%).
Famous Americans of Italian descent, for example, Lady Gaga, Madonna, Fiorello LaGuardia, Robert De Niro, Francis Ford Coppola, Nicolas Cage, Ray Romano, Nancy Pelosi, Frank Sinatra, Sylvester Stallone, Joe DiMaggio, Samuel Alito, Jay Leno, Nicola Sacco, Joe Pesci, Jake LaMotta, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Pietro di Donato, Jon Bon Jovi, Rudy Giuliani, Kelly Ripa, Martin Scorsese, Enrico Fermi, Lucky Luciano, Chris Botti, John Travolta, Corbin Bleu, Mark Calcavecchia, Hulk Hogan, Anjelica Huston Franziska Xaviera Cabrini, Anne Bancroft, Mario Lanza, Geraldine Ferraro, Mike Eruzione, Mike Modano, Vince Lombardi, Alyssa Milano, Antonin Scalia. Al Pacino Also, John Frusciante and Leonardo DiCaprio have Italian ancestors.