USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Unlike earlier immigrants, who mainly came from northern and western Europe, the “new immigrants” came largely from southern and eastern Europe. Largely Catholic and Jewish in religion, the new immigrants came from the Balkans, Italy, Poland, and Russia.

Detailed explanation-2: -In the 1880s and early 1890s, as Irish and German immigration began to slow, Italians, Poles, Slovaks and other immigrants from southern and eastern European countries began to arrive in the United States in greater numbers.

Detailed explanation-3: -Most Southern European immigrants were motivated by economic opportunity in the United States, while Eastern Europeans (primarily Jews) fled religious persecution.

Detailed explanation-4: -Beginning in the 1880s, the arrival of immigrants from mostly southern and eastern European countries rapidly increased while the flow from northern and western Europe remained relatively constant.

Detailed explanation-5: -Immigrants from Poland (which at that time was divided among three larger empires, Russia, Prussia/Germany, and Austria) and from other Eastern European territories were most often landless peasants, displaced by land redistribution efforts employed after the abolition of serfdom.