When did major waves of immigration to the United States occur?
The first wave of immigration (moving from one country to permanently settle in another) to the territory that is now the United States took place in the seventeenth century, during settlement of the American colonies. Most of the immigrants came from England, but other European countries were represented as well, including France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Wales. By 1700 roughly 250,000 people lived in the American colonies. By the beginning of the American Revolution (1775–83; the war in which the American colonies gained independence from Great Britain), the number had climbed to 700,000. A second wave of immigration began in 1820. During the next fifty years, nearly 7,500,000 newcomers arrived in the United States. About a third were Irish who settled the cities along the eastern U.S. seaboard. An…
