What were the four major groups of immigrants?

Question

I know that there were the Jewish people, the irish catholics, the chinese, but who else was major. Also, why was that group
hate d, why did they come to America, and why did Jeewish people come to America

Answer 1

Germans/Scandinavians- they came for economic opportunity that they didn't have a home. Many came from Germany after the eventual failure of the 1848 revolutions.

Slavs- came for jobs.

Industrial companies and railroads sent people to Central and Eastern European countries to sell the joys of living in the US. Late diplomat George F. Kennan's father did this sort of thing in Germany. They went to recruit workers for factories and settlers for frontier towns.

Jewish people came to America because of the relative level of religious tolerance compared to Europe. In America, they didn't have a large number of people blaming them for every problem in the world and wanting to kill them just because of who they were.

The first answer mentions Hispanics, but they were not a major immigrant group until the second half of the 20th century.

Answer 2

I would say Jewish, Irish, Italian and Chinese. The first major wave of Jewish immigration began in the early 1900's. They came from Russia and Europe because of religious and racial intolerance. The second wave of Jewish immigration began during Hitler's reign over Europe and continued for years after. The Irish came during and after the potato famine 1849-1850's. Chinese came in the mid 1800's and ended up being enslaved and building the intercontinental railroad. Don't know as much about the Italians, but I should. I know they tried to enter the country illegally because that is where the term w.o.p. comes from, which stands for with out passport. I know there was a major wave of Italian immigration, but I don't know why.

Answer 3

There were a lot of major groups of immigrants, but the ones you're looking for are the Irish, the Chinese, the Italians, and the Jews.

The Irish came first of these groups. America had existed as predominantly English and German peoples before the 1830s. The English and the Germans were protestants and had similar customs. The Irish were hated because they were different. They were Catholics. They drank too much. They fought too much. They were loud. Their traditions were different. It sounds racist, and it is, but it was the view of the Americans at the time. Many places put up signs that said NINA or No Irish Need Apply. The Irish largely came to escape poverty and famine in the 1840s when the major crop feeding the poor, powerless Catholic majority became blighted. The Americans also got part of their prejudice from a native Irishman, Matthew Lyons, who came to the US as an indentured servant at age 14, had to leave Connecticut due to legal troubles, fought with the Green Mountain boys durring the American Revolution, became a Vermont senator, and had a very bad temper. He occasionally showed up drunk to Congress, and he hocked a loogie into another senator's eye. The senator was offended, and started a fight. Lyons beat him with fireplace tongs on the floor of Congress, served time in a prison with no heat and almost no food in Vermont in the fall and winter and got re-elected while in prison. This epitomised the fear of the Irish in the eyes of early Americans.

The next group to come would be the Chinese. The Chinese came around the same time poor families, mostly German, Scandinavian, and Irish were moving west in covered wagons. The Chinese landed in California mostly, so they didn't affect most of the "civilized" United States. The citizens feared the Chinese because the Chinese brought Opium, which, although it existed already in the US and Europe as a pain killer, it became much more of a social drug with the Chinese immigrants. The west was mostly single men, felons, Civil War vetrans, and women of little repute in the areas where there were Chinese, so the racism against them at the time wasn't as bad. The other thing the Americans didn't like about the Chinese is that they are largely a Bhuddist population. The men wore their hair long. The old men often had beards. Most Chinese immigrants, at least at first, were single men. America feared half-white half-Chinese children and the corruption of its pure, white, native daughters at the hands of Chinese men who smoked opium.

The Italians came in the 1880s and 1890s. The Americans feared because, like the Irish before them, they were Catholics. They also had the mafia. European cities had a lot of problems with gangs and organized crime already, in fact, most European cities even today have huge problems with small gangs of petty thiefs aged five to eleven, but the Italians were big time organized crime. The "olive oil" business involved importing drugs from Turkey and selling them to blacks, who had since been liberated, and many of whom fled from rural poverty to urban poverty where there were at least jobs, to sell. America hated Italians as much as it hated blacks and Irish still. For some time, the Italians weren't considered white.

The Jewish had been trickling into the United States in small numbers under other nationalities for years. In the New Testament of both Catholic and Protestant versions of the Bible it says that intrest is never to be charged on a loan. Because the New Testament is not in the Torah, Jews could charge interest, and, therefore, make a profit of moneylending, which they had done in Europe for years, hence the stereotype. Many Jewish people came to America to escape prejudice in either Russia or Germany. Those who could get out between the two world wars did. Because they were non-Protestants, non-Christians even, but they "dared" to call themselves white, the Americans didn't like it.

All of these groups were hated because they were largely poor. The poor usually have a lot of children, who, in turn, largely remain poor and have a lot of children. Poverty often translates to crime within a population. These groups were all non-Protestant. One was non-white. Two were non-Christian. Two were Catholic. This was seen as a perversion of American morals.

Answer 4

Germans, Irish, Jewish, English

Answer 5

I don't know about where you live, but where I live, hispanics are the major immigrants