Sri Lankan-Americans (Sinhala: Sri Lankika Amerikanu);(Tamil: Ilangkaī Amerikan) are Americans of full or partial Sri Lankan ancestry. Sri Lankan Americans are persons of Sri Lankan origin from various Sri Lankan ethnic backgrounds. The people are classified as South Asian in origin.
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History
Sri Lankans started arriving in the U.S. around the mid 1950s in larger numbers, but there is evidence from U.S. census records of Sri Lankans having arrived in earlier years from Ceylon.
In 1975, Sri Lankan immigrants were classified for the first time as belonging to a category separate from "other Asian". In that year, 432 Sri Lankans entered the United States.
According to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service records, in 1996, 1,277 Sri Lankans were naturalized. This included 615 who had arrived in 1995 and 254 who had arrived in 1994, compared with only 68 arrivals in 1993 and 17 before 1985.
The number increased to 14,448 in the 1990s in conjunction with the Sri Lankan Civil War. Sri Lankan Americans settled largely in cities.
Demographics
The New York City Metropolitan Area, including New York City, Long Island, and Central New Jersey, contains the largest Sri Lankan community in the United States, receiving the highest legal permanent resident Sri Lankan immigrant population, followed by the Los Angeles metropolitan area.
Little Sri Lanka, in the Tompkinsville neighborhood of the borough of Staten Island in New York City, is one of the largest Sri Lankan communities outside of the country of Sri Lanka itself. Staten Island alone has been estimated as home to more than 5,000 Sri Lankan Americans.