Eastern European Immigration to the United States and the Role of the Immigration and Refugee Services of America and the Immigrants’ Protective League in the Twentieth Century

Migrating from Eastern Europe

In the century from 1846 to 1940, approximately 55 million European migrants arrived in the countries of North and South America, including the United States. Increasingly, the United States was the host country of choice for those on the move. From the 1880s through the 1920s, the United States received 23.5 million newcomers. Of these, approximately 25% were Eastern Europeans. The Second World War and the subsequent Cold War between the Soviet Union and the western democracies curbed the migration, except for displaced persons seeking new homes after the war and refugees following revolts such as the Hungarian uprising of 1956. However, with the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, a new and robust migration from Eastern Europe resumed. 

Eastern European migration was especially heavy in the first decade of the twentieth century. Millions departed Eastern Europe for Argentina, Brazil, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, but the United States was a favorite destination. In 1907, a peak year for migration to the United States, more than 300,000 individuals arrived from Austria-Hungary, the largest number from one country in a single year. That number, however, balloons if Eastern European migration is defined as the movement of peoples from the area north of Greece and East of Germany. That category includes Albanians, Byelorussians, Bosnian Muslims, Bulgarians, Carpatho-rusyns, Cossacks, Croats, Czechs, Estonians, Finns, Georgians, Gypsies, Hungarians, Jews, Latvians, Lithuanians, Macedonians, North Caucasians, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Serbs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Wends, and Ukrainians.

Each group’s migration experience was unique, including post-arrival residence, work experience, socioeconomic mobility, nativist resistance, and assistance in promoting integration with the native-born over several generations after arrival. However, some aspects of the migration experience were common to all newcomers.