Panama Emigration and Immigration

Online Records

 * 1905-1937 at FamilySearch, index and images. Name, nationality, race, age, birthdate, employment date. 'How to Use This Collection
 * 1884-1937 U.S., Panama Canal Zone, Employment Records and Sailing lists, 1884-1937 at Ancestry ($), index and images. Name, nationality, race, age, birthdate, employment date.
 * Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild Choose a volume and then choose Panama under "Listed by Port of Departure" or "Listed by Port of Arrival".
 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Births and Baptisms, Panama, index and images, ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Banns and Marriages, Panama, index and images, ($)


 * British Armed Forces and Overseas Deaths and Burials, index and images, ($)

Panama Emigration and Immigration
"Emigration" means moving out of a country. "Immigration" means moving into a country. Emigration and immigration sources list the names of people leaving (emigrating) or arriving (immigrating) in the country. These sources may be passenger lists, permissions to emigrate, or records of passports issued. The information in these records may include the emigrants’ names, ages, occupations, destinations, and places of origin or birthplaces. Sometimes they also show family groups.


 * The overwhelming majority of Panamanians are the product of varying degrees of admixture between European ethnic groups (predominantly Spaniards) with native Amerindians who are indigenous to Panama's modern territory.
 * Afro-Panamanians played a significant role in the creation of the republic. The descendants of the Africans who arrived during the colonial era are intermixed in the general population or live in small Afro-Panamanian communities along the Atlantic Coast and in villages within the Darién jungle.
 * Other Afro-Panamanians descend from later migrants from the Caribbean who came to work on railroad-construction projects, commercial agricultural enterprises, and (especially) the canal. Important Afro-Caribbean community areas include towns and cities such as Colón, Cristobal and Balboa, in the former Canal Zone, as well as the Río Abajo area of Panama City. Another region with a large Afro-Caribbean population is the province of Bocas del Toro on the Caribbean coast just south of Costa Rica.[12]
 * Most of the Panamanian population of West Indian descent owe their presence in the country to the monumental efforts to build the Panama Canal in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Three-quarters of the 50,000 workers who built the canal were Afro Caribbean migrants from the British West Indies. Thousands of Afro-Caribbean workers were recruited from Jamaica, Barbados and Trinidad.
 * White Panamanians form 6.7%, with the majority being of Spanish descent. Other ancestries includes Dutch, English, French, German, Swiss, Danish, Irish, Greek, Italian, Lebanese, Portuguese, Polish, Russian and Ukrainian. There is also a sizable and very influential Jewish community.
 * The first Chinese immigrated to Panama from southern China to help build the Panama Railroad in the 19th century. There followed several waves of immigrants whose descendants number around 50,000. Starting in the 1970s, a further 80,000 have immigrated from other parts of China as well.

For Further Reading
There are additional sources listed in the FamilySearch Catalog:
 * Looking for an Ancestor in the Panama Canal Zone, 1904-1914
 * The Silver Men: West Indian Labourers at the Panama Canal