Costa Rican Americans

Costa Rican Americans
Total population
	154,784; 0.05% of the U.S. population (2018)
Regions with significant populations
	New York Metro Area, Greater Los Angeles, South Florida, Texas
Languages
	American English, Spanish
Religion
	Predominantly Roman Catholic, minority Protestant
Related ethnic groups
	Latino Americans, Spanish Americans

Costa Rican Americans (estadounidenses de origen costarricense) are Americans of at least partial Costa Rican descent.

The Costa Rican population in 2018 was 154,784. Costa Ricans are the fourth smallest Latino group in the United States and the smallest Central American population.

Costa Rican populations are prominent in the New York Metropolitan Area, especially in North Central New Jersey (Essex County, New Jersey, Passaic County, New Jersey, Somerset County, New Jersey, and Union County, New Jersey). Additional areas with significant Costa Rican residents include New York City, Suffolk County, New York, and Fairfield County, Connecticut. There are also sizable groups of Costa Ricans in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, South Florida metropolitan area, and Lincoln County, North Carolina.

History

Madeleine Stowe actress at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival

Costa Rican immigration to the United States, as a percentage of total immigration from Central America, has been declining since 1960. In the period from 1960 to 2009, total immigration from Costa Rica to the United States represented only 3 percent of total immigration from Central America over the same period.^[2] Lower prices and higher wages in the United States serve as strong motivators for Costa Ricans to emigrate.^[3] As with many other groups of immigrants, Costa Ricans send roughly $650 million in remittances every year to support their families in Costa Rica.^[3]

The largest communities of Costa Ricans in the United States are in California, Texas, Florida, and the New York metropolitan area, including parts of New Jersey, the state with the highest percentage of individuals identifying as Costa Rican. The town of Bound Brook, New Jersey has the highest percentage of Costa Ricans at 11.82 percent. Reasons for the phenomenon of Costa Rican immigration to New Jersey specifically are unclear, but some, including Costa Rican consulate-general Ana Villalobos and Costa Rican ambassador to the United States Roman Macaya, have posted that this immigration occurs along existing familial ties beginning with the first Costa Rican immigrants to the United States.^[3] Former President of Costa Rica Luis Guillermo Solis recognized the special case of Costa Ricans in Bound Brook when he visited the town in 2014 to celebrate Costa Rica's independence while in the United States for a United Nations conference.^[4]

Naturalization rates among Costa Ricans have remained fairly steady since 2000. In 2000, 1,895 individuals who identified their country of origin as Costa Rica became naturalized citizens of the United States. In 2017, there were 1,720 individuals of the same category who became naturalized.^[5]^[6] In the period from 2000 to 2009, 45.7 percent of all Costa Rican immigrants to the United States became naturalized citizens, close to the average for most immigrant groups.^[2] In 2000, 1,324 Costa Ricans were admitted to the United States as lawful permanent residents. In 2017, 2,184 individuals of the same category were admitted.^[5]^[7]

According to reporting from the Washington Post, illegal immigrants do travel along connections set up by businesses looking to take advantage of cheap undocumented labor. For example, The Trump Organization funneled illegal Costa Rican immigrants to Bedminster, New Jersey, where they worked on the company's golf courses in various capacities along with illegal immigrants from other Latin American countries.^[8]

In part to low numbers of Costa Rican immigrants in the United States, so the formation of communities in the U.S. that are uniquely Costa Rican in character is uncommon; most Costa Rican immigrants tend to assimilate.^[9]
" Historically Costa Rica has been an exception to the trend toward military regimes, violent changes of power and local wars in Third World countries"^[10]

Culture

Costa Rican Americans frequently participate in cultural traditions practiced by other Latin Americans, such as Cinco de Mayo and Mexico's independence, September 15, in addition to their own celebrations. As Costa Rican Americans assimilate into United States society, they leave behind some of their more traditional customs and adopt the practices of American holidays and special events, like the Fourth of July. As a result, second- and third-generation Americans of Costa Rican descent are generally not familiar with traditional aspects of Costa Rican culture as it is practiced in the country itself. However, in areas where there is a high concentration of Costa Rican immigrants like New Jersey, Costa Ricans will gather and engage in social activities, e.g. at Costa Rican institutions like the Restaurante Puerto Viejo.^[3]^[11] "The Caribbean coastal regions are low-lying and heavily forested, while a chain of mountains parallels the Pacific coast."

Language

A feature common to spoken Spanish in Costa Rica and other regions of Latin America is the voseo or ustedeo basic difference in Costa Rican Spanish. Younger generations of Costa Rican Americans are no longer using it as frequently in their spoken Spanish, likely due to intermingling with other Spanish-speaking immigrants from regions where the utilization of the voseo does not occur.^[11]^[12]