Irish and German Ancestry

The first census to include the "nationalities" of Americans was that of 1820. According to that census there were 9,638,000 Americans, 20% of whom were Negroes and the rest mainly persons of Anglo-Saxon stock.

Between 1820 and 1980 over 50 million immigrants came to the United States, the majority from Europe and Canada.

By the beginning of the Civil War 3 million European immigrants arrived in America. Many were from England, many from Scandinavia, but the two largest groups came from Ireland and Germany.

The Irish suffered severe discrimination in the new land and most often found employment only in the lowest-paying and most physically demanding jobs. In the course of time the Irish were to dominate the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in America.

Many Germans became homesteaders in the Middle West and others settled in such cities as Baltimore, Buffalo, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and, especially, Milwaukee. In these cities German-Americans began various businesses.

During World War I many Germans suffered from discrimination by fellow Americans. A similar attitude did not emerge during World War II.

Eastern and Central European Ancestry

After World War I about 7 million eastern and central Europeans – Hungarians, Bohemians, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles, and Russians (almost one half of whom were Jewish) – immigrated to the United States.

Here they established or joined specific ethnic communities and helped to create and maintain what some saw as spiritual and cultural homes away from home.

During this same period 4 million Italians, mainly from the south and from the Sicily, came to this country.

The Italians, like many of those from eastern Europe, came from farming areas, but well over 90% settled in cities, usually in urban neighborhoods called "Little Italies".

From 1892 to 1954 Ellis Island in New York City's harbor became the largest gateway to immigrants in the United States. It opened in 1892.

The new arrivals to Ellis Island, the portal of entry, were not the adventurers, explorers, traders, or conquerors of an earlier era. Yet they were also pioneers.

The first immigrant processed at Ellis Island on January 2, 1892, is a 15-year-old Irish girl accompanied by her two brothers.

When it closed in 1954, more than 12 million immigrants had come through the Ellis Island "doorway."

As a museum, Ellis Island attracts almost 2 million visitors each year in the 21st century.

As the historian Max Lerner put it, "the experience of the immigrants recapitulated the early American pioneer hardships, in many ways on harder terms, since the difficulties they encountered were those of a jungle society rather than a jungle wilderness".

Another historian, Oscar Handlin called the immigrants "the uprooted".

The generation of acculturation

1880 to 1930: During this peak period of immigration, interrupted only by World War I, more than 27 million immigrants, many from southern and eastern Europe, come to the United States.

More than 4 million come from Italy, and 9 percent of the total population of Norway emigrates to the United States. Massive migration of eastern European (especially Russian) Jews occurs in the early 1880s, due to anti-Jewish persecution and massacres.

The children of European immigrants found themselves torn between the customs of their parents and the world into which they sought admission. For many the past was to be forgotten, the future lay ahead.

Theirs was the generation of acculturation, and they were often caught between two conflicting value systems. As they learned the norms of American life and tried to adhere to them, they frequently evoked the antagonism, even the wrath, of those who had already "arrived".

Restrictive practices became commonplace, and increasing numbers of jobs, schools, fraternities, restaurants, and clubs became forbidden territory. The signposts were clear: "Americans Only," "Irish Need Not Apply," "No Jews Allowed".

Following World War I anti-foreign feelings reached their peak. In 1921 and again in 1924 further restrictive legislation was passed, sharply curtailing the immigration of "undesirable" groups.

In 1921 the Immigration Quota Act, signed by President Harding, provided that the annual number of aliens permitted to enter the United States from any nation was not to exceed 3% of the total number of foreign-born members of that particular nationality residing in the country in 1910. The Johnson Act of 1924 (sometimes known as the National Origins Act) limited immigration even more severely. The formula provided for the admission of 150,000 persons each year.

During his brief period in office John F. Kennedy initiated new legislation. In 1965 the government said it would not accept up to 170,000 people from Europe and an equal number from Asia up to a maximum 20,000 individuals from any single country, without any national limitation. Preferences were to be given to relatives of citizens, resident aliens, and those with special skills and talents, and refugees.