Ethiopian Americans

Ethiopian Americans are Americans of Ethiopian descent, as well as individuals of American and Ethiopian ancestry. The largest Ethiopian American community is in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, with some estimates claiming a population of over 200,000 in the area; other large Ethiopian communities are found in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, Las Vegas, Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue, Denver, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Columbus, and South Dakota.

In 1919, an official Ethiopian goodwill mission was sent to the United States to congratulate the Allied powers on their victory during the First World War. The four-person delegation included Dejazmach Nadew, the nephew of Empress Zawditu and Commander of the Imperial Army, along with Blattengeta Heruy Welde Sellase, Mayor of Addis Ababa, Kentiba Gebru, Mayor of Gondar, and Ato Sinkas, Dejazmach Nadew's secretary.

After his official coronation, Emperor Haile Selassie sent forth the first wave of Ethiopian students to continue their education abroad. Almost a dozen Ethiopian students likewise went to the United States. They included Makonnen Desta, who studied anthropology at Harvard, and later became an interim Ethiopian Minister of Education; Makonnen Haile, who studied finance at Cornell; and Ingida Yohannes, veterinary medicine at New York University. Three other students – Melaku Beyen, Besha Worrid Hapte Wold, and Worku Gobena – went to Muskingum, a missionary college in Ohio, two of them later transferring to the Ohio State University. Melaku Beyan, who was one of the two who attended Ohio State, later received his medical degree at Howard Medical School in Washington, D.C.

Overall, approximately 20,000 Ethiopians moved to the West to achieve higher education and conduct diplomatic missions from 1941 to 1974 under the Selassie's rule. However, the net movement of permanent immigrants remained low during this period as most temporary immigrants ultimately returned to Ethiopia with a Western education to near assured political success, while the relative stability of the country determined that few Ethiopians would be granted asylum in the United States.

The passing of the 1965 Immigration Act, the Refugee Act of 1980, as well as the Diversity Visa Program of the Immigration Act of 1990, contributed to an increased emigration from Ethiopia to the United States, prompted by political unrest during the Ethiopian Civil War. The majority of Ethiopian immigrants arrived later in the 1990s, following the Eritrean–Ethiopian War. Immigration to the U.S. from Ethiopia during this 1992–2002 period averaged around 5,000 individuals per year.

Ethiopian Americans have since established ethnic enclaves in various places around the country, particularly in the Washington D.C., and Minneapolis–Saint Paul areas. Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, California, has also come to be known as Little Ethiopia, owing to its many Ethiopian businesses and restaurants, as well as a significant concentration of residents of Ethiopian and Eritrean ancestry. In the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, Ethiopians have settled in places

Since the 1990s, around 1,000 Hebrew-speaking, Ethiopian Jews that had settled in Israel as Ethiopian Jews in Israel re-settled in the United States as Ethiopian Americans, with around half of the Ethiopian Jewish Israeli-American community living in New York.

The article, "Transcultural Mental Health Care Issues of Ethiopian Immigration to Israel.", states, "The reasoning behind higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization from Ethiopian Immigrants is due to sociocultural differences between immigrants and the host society and the lack of awareness of these differences by mental health professionals."