1.Immigration to the USA between 1880-1914:

a) A brief reminder of immigratin wave 1820-1860s
More than 75 percent of all the people in history who have ever left their homelands to live in another country have moved to the United States. Since the founding of Jamestown in 1607 more than 50 million people from other lands have made new homes there. Before 1840 and 1860 more immigrants than ever before arrived => because of poor crops, hunger and political unrest.
Primarily Irish and British immigrated to America during time period between 1820-1860.
-The Irish immigrated to America for several reasons, one of which was the potato famine that killed over a million. Along with this, they resented the British rule of their country, and the British landlords. This included the British Protestantism and British taxes.The Irish depended for food upon their crops of potatoes. For five years after 1845 these became diseased and rotted in the fields => great starvation. In 1847 alone more than 118 000 of them immigrated there. By 1860 one in every 4 of the people living in the city of New York had been born in Ireland. British: The reasons the British came to America are not nearly as detailed as the reasons for the Irish coming here. The British came to simply look for better opportunities of work. In general this immigrant wave brought people from Northern and Western Europe. German: During the Civil War in 1860s the federal government encouraged more emigration from Europe. It did this by offering land to immigrants who would serve as soldiers in the Union armies. Many had come from Germany. Today about 1 in 3 of all Americans have German ancestors. b) immigration in 1880-1914
Until about 1880 most immigrants to the US came from Northern and Western region of Europe. Then a big change took place. More immigrants from lands in the south and east of Europe began to arrive - Italians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, Hungarians, Czechs. By 1896 more than half of the immigrations entering US were from eastern or southern Europe. Northern and western Europeans continued to arrive, but the new wave brought more people from eastern and southern Europe, plus smaller contingents from Canada, Mexico and Japan. -Two-thirds of the newcomers who arrived in the 1880s were from Germany, England,
Ireland and Scandinavia;
-Between 1900 and 1909, two-thirds were from Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia.