ABSTRACT
Immigrants came for a multitude of reasons, both to avail themselves of the opportunities available in the Americas and to escape adverse circumstances in the lands they departed from. Europe experienced rapid demographic growth in the nineteenth century, doubling its population, and the New World helped absorb some of the extra people. Immigration to the United States and Canada continued at high rates through the beginning of the twentieth century, bringing more Europeans to the Americas. Irish immigration greatly increased during the years of the Potato Famine and afterward, with 1 million leaving Ireland during the famine and another 3 million leaving in the half century afterwards. The majority of immigrants were peasants, expelled from their traditional societies as landlords consolidated land and as agriculture became more efficient, requiring fewer people. While immigration boosted the populations of emerging regions in the Americas, it also helped absorb the excess population growth of nineteenth-century Europe.
