ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the various groups who came to the English colonies, the reasons why they came, and what happened after they arrived. Immigrants are not a matter where they come from and where they are going, are influenced by what are called push and pull factors. Push factors are those reasons why people wish to leave their homeland; war, depression, overpopulation and religious persecution. Pull factors, the reasons why settlers want to come to a certain country, are, in a sense, the converse of push factors. They include the possibility of making a good living, of enjoying religious and political freedom and of obtaining free, or at least cheap, land. The immigrants to the English colonies were influenced by a wide variety of push and pull factors. Irish Catholics came to America only in small numbers during the colonial period. This hesitancy was because of the religious and political disabilities they faced in virtually all the colonies.
