On St. Patrick’s Day, a look at how the Irish came to America with other waves of immigrants through the decades

St. Patrick’s Day is when about 39 percent of Americans say they celebrate their Irish heritage. More than 4.5 million Irish immigrants arrived in the United States between 1820 and 1930. Here is a look at the many waves of immigrants coming to America over the decades.

Irish immigration in the 1800s

Coming to California

The Irish were by far the largest group of immigrants until the Chinese began to arrive around the time of the Gold Rush in California. The influx of Chinese immigrants helped build the railroads and create a source of cheap labor in California from 1850 to 1880.

By 1880 the Chinese were 10 percent of California’s population. In 1875, the federal government passed the Page Act, which was the first immigration law restricting the number of people coming from a region, in this case Asia. The intent of the law was to protect American workers from competition by slave-like workers forcibly brought from Asia. The Chinese Exclusion Act came in 1882, prohibiting Chinese naturalization and setting up deportation procedures for illegal Chinese. The Chinese Exclusion Act remained a law until it was repealed in 1943.

In 1924, the first permanent immigration quota law established a quota of 150,000 immigrants. It also established the Border Patrol. The Border Patrol was mainly stationed along the Canadian border to police against illegal alcohol entering the U.S. during Prohibition.

The Federation for Immigrant Reform has a good timeline of immigration laws.