American Immigration In The 1800s And 1900's

In the 1800's and 1900's there was a major immigration era for America. Between 1880 and 1920 America was becoming more industrial and urban, and because of this more than 20 million immigrants came to America. Between 1815-1865 most immigrants came from Northern and Western Europe. A great deal of immigrants came from Ireland because of the Irish Potato Famine. This stopped the potato crops because of a disease causing the leaves, and edible roots of the potato to die. Because Ireland was poor a lot of people had diseases and they were living in poverty, so they came to America for a better economy and health. Ireland had a major population when they came to America. Basically half of the newcomers from around the world were from Ireland. Between 1820 and 1930 about 4.5 million Irish came to the U.S.. When they came most of them settled along the east coast of America because Ireland is east of America, so it wouldn't really

The Union Pacific was built mostly by Irish laborers. When they were working on the railroad they were paid very little even though that had to a lot of laborious work. It was also very dangerous because of the Native Americans. Some of the Irish were killed by the Native American war parties. This happened because not just to the Irish but anyone on their land. they felt like not only America but these newcomers were taking their land and changing their way of life.

Around the 1850's a huge number of Asians came to America. Chinese laborers came over because so they could work on the Central pacific railroad. By 1868, over 12,000 Chinese immigrants were employed, they made up about 80% of the laborers. Another reason for coming to the U.S. for them, was because of the California gold rush. Leading to about 25,000 Chinese immigrants in America in the 1850's. And eventually because of how many Chinese there were they made some acts that stopped them from coming