The largest populations of Panamanians in the United States reside in Brooklyn and South Florida.
Cities home to Navy and Air Force bases also lay claim to a concentration of Panamanians.
The number of Panamanians who emigrated to the U.S. prior to 1960 is unknown, as the Census Bureau counted them in the category of "others".
By the beginning of the 20th century, the number of immigrants entering the U.S. from Panama was approximately 1,000 per year.
This law favored a remarkable migration from Panama, which made it one of the main migratory flows from Central America to the United States in the 1970s.