disappeared after World War II. In total, 81,729 Armenians entered the US from 1899 to 1931 according to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Second wave of immigration A new wave of Armenian immigrants moved in the late 1940s, including Soviet Armenian prisoners of war who were able to make their way westward after being freed from Nazi camps. The Displaced Persons Act of 1948 allowed people displaced during the World War II to immigrate to the US. From 1944 to 1952, 4,739 Armenians migrated to the US, many with the help of George Mardikian's American National Committee to Aid Homeless Armenians (ANCHA). However, the true second wave of immigration did not begin until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 abolished national origins quotas. After the passage of that act, Armenians from the Soviet Union, Turkey, Lebanon, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries began migrating in large numbers, many fleeing political instability in their host countries. In the 1950s, most Armenian immigrants in the US were from Soviet Armenia and Turkey. The Istanbul pogrom in 1955 frightened the local Turkish Armenian population, which looked to the West for a safe and more prosperous life. Soviet Armenians, on the other hand, were mostly genocide survivors who never fully integrated into Soviet life after their repatriation in the 1940s. The large-scale emigration of Soviet Armenians, mainly to Western countries, began in 1956. About 30,000 Soviet Armenians entered the country from 1960 to 1984, and another 60,000 moved throughout the late 1980s, during the Perestroika era. The total number of Soviet Armenian emigrants from 1956 to 1989, over 80% of them to the US, is estimated at 77,000. The 15-year-long Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and the Iranian revolution of 1979 greatly contributed to the influx of Middle Eastern Armenians to the US. The Armenian communities in these Middle Eastern countries were well established and integrated, but not assimilated, into local populations. Armenians in Lebanon and Iran are even represented in the parliaments as ethnic minorities. Many lived in luxury in their former countries, and more easily handled multilingualism, while retaining aspects of traditional Armenian culture. This wave of newcomers revitalized the Armenian American community, especially in the Los Angeles area, where most second-wave Armenian immigrants settled. In 1970 about 65,000 Armenians resided in Southern California, and two decades later, in 1989, the number of Armenian Americans was estimated at 200,000.