<P> After 1880 larger steam - powered oceangoing ships replaced sailing ships, which resulted in lower fares and greater immigrant mobility . Meanwhile, farming improvements in Southern Europe and the Russian Empire created surplus labor . Young people between the ages of 15 to 30 were predominant among newcomers . This wave of migration, constituting the third episode in the history of U.S. immigration, may be better referred to as a flood of immigrants, as nearly 25 million Europeans made the long trip . Italians, Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and others speaking Slavic languages made up the bulk of this migration. 2.5 to 4 million Jews were among them . </P> <P> Each group evinced a distinctive migration pattern in terms of the gender balance within the migratory pool, the permanence of their migration, their literacy rates, the balance between adults and children, and the like . But they shared one overarching characteristic: they flocked to urban destinations and made up the bulk of the U.S. industrial labor pool, making possible the emergence of such industries as steel, coal, automotive, textile, and garment production, enabling the United States to leap into the front ranks of the world's economic giants . </P> <P> Their urban destinations, numbers, and perhaps an antipathy towards foreigners, led to the emergence of a second wave of organized xenophobia . By the 1890s, many Americans, particularly from the ranks of the well - off, white, and native - born, considered immigration to pose a serious danger to the nation's health and security . In 1893 a group formed the Immigration Restriction League, and it, along with other similarly inclined organizations, began to press Congress for severe curtailment of foreign immigration . </P> <P> Irish and German Catholic immigration was opposed in the 1850s by the Nativist / Know Nothing movement, originating in New York in 1843 as the American Republican Party (not to be confused with the modern Republican Party). It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to American values and controlled by the Pope in Rome . Active mainly from 1854--56, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success . There were few prominent leaders, and the largely middle - class and Protestant membership fragmented over the issue of slavery, most often joining the Republican Party by the time of the 1860 presidential election . </P>

Their homeland was under u.s. colonial rule until 1946