page_title: Immigration to Brazil
section_title: Consequences
hierarchical_section_title: Immigration to Brazil / Consequences
caption_attribution_description: Historical map of German colonies at South Brazil (1905)
context_page_description: Immigration to Brazil is the movement to Brazil of foreign peoples to reside permanently. It should not be confused with the colonisation of the country by the Portuguese, or with the forcible bringing of people from Africa as slaves.
  Throughout its history, Brazil has always been a recipient of immigrants, but this began to gain importance in the late 19th century and throughout the 20th century when the country received massive immigration from Europe, the Middle East, and Japan, which left lasting marks on demography, culture, language and the economy of Brazil.
  In general, it is considered that people who entered Brazil up to 1822, the year of independence, were colonizers. Since then, those who entered the independent nation were immigrants.
  Before 1871, the number of immigrants rarely exceeded two or three thousand people a year. Immigration increased pressure from the first end of the international slave trade to Brazil, after the expansion of the economy, especially in the period of large coffee plantations in the state of São Paulo.
context_section_description: Brazilian demographers have long discussed the demographical impact of the wave of emigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. According to Judicael Clevelário, most studies about the impact of immigration have followed Giorgio Mortara's conclusions in the 1940s and 1950s. Mortara concluded that only about 15% of the demographic growth of Brazil, from 1840 and 1940 was due to immigration, and that the population of immigrant origin was of 16% of the total population of Brazil.
  However, according to Clevelário, Mortara failed to properly take into account the full endogenous growth of the population of immigrant origin, due to the predominantly rural settlement of the immigrants (rural regions tend to have higher natal rates than cities). Clevelário, then, besides extending the calculations up to 1980, remade them, reaching somewhat different conclusions.
  One of the problems of calculating the impact of immigration in Brazilian demography is that the return rates of immigrants are unknown. Clevelário, thence, supposed four different hypothesis concerning the return rates. The first, that he deems unrealistic high, is that 50% of the immigrants to Brazil returned to their countries of origin. The second is based on the work of Arthur Neiva, who supposes the return rate for Brazil was higher than that of the United States (30%) but lower than that of Argentina (47%). The third hypothesis is taken from Mortara, who postulates a rate of 20% for the 19th century, 35% for the first two decades of the 20th century, and 25% for 1920 on. Although Mortara himself considered this hypothesis underestimated, Clevelário thinks it is closest to reality. The last hypothesis, also admittedly unrealistic is that of a 0% rate of return, which is known to be false.
  Clevelário's conclusions are as following: considering hypothesis 1 (unrealistically low), the Population of Immigrant Origin in 1980 would be of 14,730,710 people, or 12.38% of the total population. Considering hypothesis 2 (based on Neiva), it would be of 17,609,052 people, or 14.60% of the total population. Considering hypothesis 3 (based on Mortara, and considered most realistic), it would be of 22,088,829 people, or 18.56% of the total population. Considering hypothesis 4 (no return at all), the Population of Immigrant origin would be of 29,348,423 people, or 24.66% of the total population. Clevelário believes the most probable number to be close to 18%, higher than Mortara's previous estimate of 1947.
  According to the Census of 1872, there were 9,930,478 people in Brazil, of which 3,787,289 (38.14%) Whites, 3,380,172 (34.04%) Pardos, 1.954.452 (19.68%) Blacks, and 386,955 (3.90%) Caboclos. The White population grew faster than the non-White population due to the subsidized immigration of Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1890, the non-White population was reduced to 47% and the Amerindian to 9%. During this period, most immigrants came from Italy (58.49%) followed by Portugal with 20%.
  The disproportionally fast growth of the White population, due to mass immigration, lasted up to 1940, when its proportion in the Brazilian population peaked at 63.5%. During the 1900–1940 period, Italian immigration was greatly reduced, due to the Prinetti decree, forbidding subsidized emigration to Brazil in 1902, then to the Italian war effort of 1915–1918. Thence, for the period of 1904–1940, Portuguese immigration became the main drive of immigration to Brazil, with 36.52% of the arrivals, compared to 14.99% of Italians.
  The Brazilian Censuses do not ask questions about "ethnic origin", so there are no systematically comparable data about the impact of immigration. Varied entities, mainly embassies of foreign countries in Brazil and commercial associations that promote bilateral commerce between Brazil and other countries, make claims about the figures of "descendants of immigrants" in Brazil, but none links to any actual survey. Also, if they are extrapolations of actual data on the number of immigrants, the calculations are not explained anywhere.
  On the 
caption: German colonies in Southern Brazil.
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