groundwork for contemporary ethnic distributions. This ethnic variety also led to historic patterns of economic inequality.

While the immigrants from England and Scotland were mainly Protestants, later waves of Irish, Italian, and Polish immigrants were Roman Catholics. Many Jewish people fleeing the Nazis settled in the United States. Asian immigrants arrived on the West Coast in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These immigrants created increasing religious diversity.

The religious and ethnic diversity of the United States has contributed to its growth as a multicultural liberal democracy, despite periods of anti-immigrant prejudice and nationalistic and racist backlash.

Immigration has affected the population and the politics of the United States in many ways. Here are three.

First, immigration has made the population and the politics of the US more diverse. In the first century of European settlement of the Eastern seaboard of North America, the population was made up almost exclusively of Northwest Europeans and of slaves of African descent. Since then, immigrants from all over the world have settled in the US. They and their descendants have multiplied the diversity of our population, and they have introduced many new points of view into our politics. The increase in the Latino population, and the increase in the popularity of socialism after the mid-nineteenth century examples of this.

Second, immigration has made the population and the politics of the US more conservative. You might think the opposite, that the greater diversity discussed above would encourage a more liberal population and polity. While it's true that it's easier to find a greater diversity of liberal points of view which arrived in the US with immigrants, each with many millions of adherents, the trend of US politics compared to other countries is to become more conservative. An example of this is the much greater respect given to individual rights and liberty versus collective rights in our public policy.

Third, immigration has made the population and the politics of the US more contentious. This isn't a recent phenomenon, but one of society's ability to cope with difference. Beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when advances in steamship technology made ocean crossings safer and more affordable, each successive wave of immigration has met with greater hostility from American society than the one that preceded it. One reason for this is that people generally like to protect what they have, such as jobs, property, or a way of life. Some people feel threatened by the arrival of immigrants, because they think they might lose what they've got. Another reason for this might be that people just don't like immigrants because they have different skin color, speak a different language, or practice a different religion. Whatever the cause, fear of immigrants usually makes people angry, and this anger is often expressed in public protest or in laws designed to make life difficult for immigrants. Since not everyone in America takes this point of view, debates can, and have, become a lot more acrimonious where issues touching on immigration are involved.

The impact of immigration on American politics was clear when the Roosevelt coalition, which motivated immigrants to support the Democratic Party, was created in 1928. From that time, the immigrant vote was valued during subsequent US elections.

Moreover, in the 1960s, 20% of voters in the US were second-generation immigrants. The immigrants, many of whom were Catholic and Jewish, believed in the ideals of the Democratic Party and therefore contributed to the election of President John F. Kennedy.

In addition, immigrants have significantly influenced population growth in the US. The total number of immigrants in the US in 1965 was approximately 9.6 million. It is estimated that a total 72 million foreign-born people traveled to and settled in the US between 1965 and 2015.

Immigration significantly changed the population and politics of the United States. Many of the immigrants who came to the United States were young people seeking to leave their home countries in order to look for a better life abroad. It was not uncommon for a young man to leave their families behind in the old country, work for a few years, and then send for the family to join him in America. As a result, of this newer, younger population, many cities developed ethnic districts. Until WWI, many of these immigrants maintained their native language as well, and it was not uncommon to find newspapers written in German and Italian. These immigrants also tended to settle inside of cities as this is where the factory jobs were located. Immigration from Europe fueled the growth of cities so much that by 1920 more Americans would live in cities than agricultural areas.  

Immigration changed politics as well. Urban bosses were able to cash in on desperate immigrants by offering them protection and jobs in return for votes. These same city bosses looked the other way on tenement safety regulations in return for kickbacks. Many immigrants also voted as blocs in order to get their candidates elected. Some famous urban politicians such as Fiorello Laguardia from New York were descended from immigrants. Immigrants in cities would eventually use their voting power in order to get reforms in cities.  

There have been multiple waves of immigration to the United States. Historically, the American continent was the last to be inhabited by humans. During the Wisconsin glaciation, ca. 50,000 to 11,000 years ago, a land bridge enabled the first immigrants, who are now called Native Americans, to move across a land bridge from Siberia to Alaska. Thus one can say that the entire population of the American continent is the result of immigration rather than evolution.

Although there may have been some Norse exploration and settlement of North America in the tenth and eleventh centuries, no durable colonies were founded and its effect would have been minimal.

Another major wave of immigration was that of the Athabascan peoples who became the Apache and Navajo from Alaska and Canada into the United States in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Although the Navajos borrowed a more settled culture from the Pueblo dwellers already inhabiting much of the southwest, the Apaches remained nomadic and had a strong role in opposing Spanish colonization. The Navajo culture brought a deep spiritual connection to the land which continues to inspire much of southwestern environmentalism.

Early Spanish conquests gave rise to substantial Hispanic population in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and much of the southwest. Early conflicts between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking European immigrants have shaped many of the present attitudes towards immigration and conflicts between Anglo and Hispanic political groups. Another major issue is that early Spanish settlers were Roman Catholic while many of the English settlers in New England were Protestant, setting the stage for Protestant–Catholic conflicts in much of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially over immigration.

Successive waves of immigration, including forced importation of African American slaves, and voluntary immigration of Asian, European, and South American people have dramatically increased the racial and cultural diversity of the United States and contributed to its economic growth. Despite occasional anti-immigrant backlash periods in which earlier immigrant groups fight to keep out more recent immigrants, in general the United States can take pride in its ethnic diversity created by successive waves of immigration.

During the 1800s, immigration mainly stemmed from Germany and Ireland, particularly after Europe struggled through a series of political and economic shocks and Ireland faced a potato famine in the 1840s. Nineteenth-century immigrants were largely Catholic, and they settled at first in cities. The Irish mainly settled in Northeastern cities, such as Boston and New York, while Germans also settled in these cities and in Midwestern cities such as Milwaukee and St. Louis.

Immigrant groups tended to vote for Democrats because the Democratic Party was the party of the working person, and immigrants tended to work either building railroads, laboring in factories, or building canals, among other jobs. The Republican Party, on the other hand, became the party of the elite and was associated with Protestants, while Catholics (and later, Jews) often voted for Democrats. Some Republicans were nativists—that is, they favored anti-immigration policies—while Democratic political machines such as Tammany Hall in New York courted immigrant votes and often won their votes by doling out favors. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, immigrants arrived in the United States from eastern and southern Europe. These people included Italians, Jews, Greeks, Poles, and others. These groups also often tended to favor urban areas and to vote Democratic.