<P> Surveys in the 1990s show that of Americans who identify themselves as "Irish", 51% said they were Protestant and 36% identified as Catholic . In the South, Protestants account for 73% of those claiming Irish origins, while Catholics account for 19% . It is common for Protestant Scotch - Irish Americans to call themselves "Irish", in particular because most immigration to colonial America was of Protestant settlers, so there was no need to distinguish themselves from Irish Catholics . In the North, 45% of those claiming Irish origin are Catholic, while 39% are Protestant . Many African Americans and Native Americans claim Irish Protestant or Scots - Irish ancestry . </P> <P> Between 1607 and 1820, the majority of emigrants from Ireland to America were Protestants who were described simply as "Irish". The religious distinction became important after 1820, when large numbers of Irish Catholics began to emigrate to the United States . Some of the descendants of the colonial Irish Protestant settlers from Ulster began thereafter to redefine themselves as "Scotch Irish", to stress their historic origins, and distanced themselves from Irish Catholics; others continued to call themselves Irish, especially in areas of the South which saw little Irish Catholic immigration . By 1830, Irish diaspora demographics had changed rapidly, with over 60% of all Irish settlers in the US being Catholics from rural areas of Ireland . </P> <P> Some Protestant Irish immigrants became active in explicitly anti-Catholic organizations such as the Orange Institution and the American Protective Association . However, participation in the Orange Institution was never as large in the United States as it was in Canada . In the early nineteenth century, the post-Revolutionary republican spirit of the new United States attracted exiled United Irishmen such as Theobald Wolf Tone and others, with the presidency of Andrew Jackson exemplifying this attitude . Most Protestant Irish immigrants in the first several decades of the nineteenth century were those who held to the republicanism of the 1790s, and who were unable to accept Orangeism . Loyalists and Orangemen made up a minority of Irish Protestant immigrants to the United States during this period . Most of the Irish loyalist emigration was bound for Upper Canada and the Canadian Maritime provinces, where Orange lodges were able to flourish under the British flag . </P> <P> By 1870, when there were about 930 Orange lodges in the Canadian province of Ontario, there were only 43 in the entire eastern United States . These few American lodges were founded by newly arriving Protestant Irish immigrants in coastal cities such as Philadelphia and New York . These ventures were short - lived and of limited political and social impact, although there were specific instances of violence involving Orangemen between Catholic and Protestant Irish immigrants, such as the Orange Riots in New York City in 1824, 1870 and 1871 . </P>

When did the irish first come to america