New Immigration

In the early 20th century, the term “new immigration” was coined to distinguish immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, who started arriving in growing numbers in the 1870s, from those of northwestern Europe, like the Irish and Germans, who had been coming to the United States in significant numbers since the early 19th century. As noted already in a footnote to the Old Immigration (Part II,) critics, such as Roger Daniels, have suggested that this “old” versus “new” distinction should be abandoned, both because it oversimplifies the complex history of immigration, and because it tends to leave us pondering what we should “call the millions of immigrants who have come in since World War II.”^[1] While agreeing with Daniels, we nevertheless continue to use the older nomenclature simply as a convenience for organizing the content of this book, with Part II focusing on groups from northwestern Europe and from China, and Part III on groups from southern and eastern Europe.

Accordingly, in Part III, we consider several prominent groups representative of the so-called “new immigration.” In Chapter 8, we profile two groups of immigrants traditionally designated as representing southern Europe—the Italians and the Greeks. In Chapter 9, we move on to Eastern Europe and consider the addition to the American tapestry of eastern European (mostly Russian) Jews and Poles.