Settlement patterns

DEFINITION: Changing geographical distribution of immigrants in the United States

SIGNIFICANCE:Immigrants to the United States from all regions of the world have generally tended to settle among communities that already have people from their own homelands, making the United States a land of enclaves, neighborhoods, and districts with combined American and international flavors. Although such communities may slow immigrant assimilation into traditional American culture, they also help newcomers make easier transitions to American life and even become places in which other people can learn about immigrant cultures.

Because all the people who have come to the shores of the modern-day United States were immigrants, every place they settled was originally an immigrant settlement. The British North American colonies that would become the first thirteen American states were settled almost exclusively by European immigrants, along with substantial numbers of enslaved Africans. After independence, with the states established, American settlements began expanding west beyond the Mississippi River. By this time, the total population of American-born residents was about four million, including enslaved Africans.

European Immigrant Patterns

The vast majority of the Irish, Italian, and British immigrants who came during the early to mid-nineteenth century settled in cities. Most of them came from rural communities, but when they arrived in the United States, few of them had the necessary funds to buy farmland. In any case, some had been so badly treated by their landlords in their home countries that they wanted nothing more to do with farming. Moreover, unfamiliarity with American farming practices put them at a disadvantage. At the same time, wage-paying jobs were usually more plentiful in the cities than in the countryside. In urban centers, immigrants met fellow countrymen who had immigrated before them and established lives and communities in cities, to which the newcomers naturally gravitated.

During the 1860s, two new developments enhanced the attractions of farming for immigrants. In 1862, the US Congress passed the Homestead Act, which made plots of land of up to 160 acres available to Americans and immigrants in return for residing on and developing the land. The same decade saw the construction of the first transcontinental railroad line, completed in 1869. Additional transcontinental lines soon followed. To help the railroad companies finance construction and to spur settlement and development of the relatively empty expanses through which many of the railroad lines passed, the federal government gave the companies vast tracts of land surrounding the tracks. The railroads in turn sold much of the land to settlers—some of whom helped to build the railroad lines—and actively encouraged European immigrants to come to the United States. The availability of free and cheap land was a powerful lure to many immigrants.

German immigrants who preferred urban life established large communities in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Chicago, and Milwaukee. Those who wanted to farm went on westward to the Old Northwest Territory or the Great Lakes region, which remained largely unsettled at the time.

Italian immigrants initially settled mostly along the East Coast, but they soon fanned out to the Midwest and eventually to the West Coast. In many large cities, they established enclaves known as Little Italies. These were close-knit neighborhoods in which familiar foods and customs prevailed. By the twentieth century, however, as Italians became more Americanized, they tended to disperse, often leaving only their restaurants as reminders of the Italian neighborhoods.

Scandinavian immigrants tended to go to unsettled rural areas in the upper Midwest, rather than cities, where the climate and terrain were similar to their homelands. Swedes and Danes spread out over especially vast regions. Finnish immigrants tended to settle mostly in Michigan and Minnesota. Danes had little hesitation about intermarrying with non-Danes and consequently nearly disappeared as a recognizable ethnic group. In contrast, Finns were more clannish and remained relatively homogeneous. Norwegians and Swedes tended to maintain their distinctively rural character longer than the other Scandinavian immigrant groups, but even they were becoming primarily urban dwellers by the twentieth century. Meanwhile, Scandinavian settlements continued to attract new immigrants from their home countries.

Asian Immigrant Settlements

The first significant numbers of Asians to immigrate to the United States were Chinese immigrants. They came to California to work in the gold mines opening during the 1850s, and ventured to Hawaii to work on sugar cane plantations. Shunned and ill-treated by non-Asians in these areas, the Chinese soon established strong communities within Northern California and Hawaii. As they spread out across the United States, they established Chinatowns in virtually every city in which they settled in significant numbers. These enclaves featured distinctively Chinese architecture and Chinese shops and restaurants that served the communities’ own residents and attracted tourists.

The Japanese immigrants, who came later, followed a similar pattern as the Chinese immigrants. “Little Tokyos” and “Japantowns” began appearing in cities in Hawaii and California during the 1870s. As these communities grew in size, they added ethnic shops, restaurants, theaters, hotels, Japanese baths, and sushi bars.

Late Twentieth to Twenty-first Century Patterns

After the great waves of immigration from Europe crested during the first decades of the twentieth century, new immigration slowed considerably for many decades. In some years during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the United States actually experienced net negative immigration, with more immigrants leaving the country than entering it. During the 1940s, as the US government began relaxing restrictions on immigration, the rates of immigration began climbing again. Passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 was a turning point in US immigration history. That law removed restrictions on nationalities that had been effectively blocked from entering the United States since the 1920s and triggered a huge surge in total immigration. Since the 1960s, immigrants from all over the world have settled in every American state, but seven states have received disproportionate shares of new immigration: California, New York, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Illinois.

Thanks to the 1965 immigration law’s removal of national origins quotas, Asians began entering the country in unprecedented numbers, especially Chinese, Filipinos, Koreans, and Asian Indians. After the Vietnam War (1955-75) ended in 1975, Vietnamese and other Southeast Asian peoples began immigrating to the US in large numbers. Many of these new Asian immigrants expanded existing enclaves of earlier immigrants or established new ones. Consequently, in addition to existing Chinatowns and Little Tokyos, most large American cities soon had districts known as Koreatowns, Little Manilas, Little Saigons, and Little Indias. By the mid-1980s, the well-known Chinatown in New York’s Manhattan grew so large that it no longer had room to expand, and new Chinatowns began arising in other parts of New York City, including the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.

Filipinos, most of whom first came to the western United States and Hawaii during the early twentieth century to do agricultural work, also established enclaves in many American cities. However, their largest concentrations have been in Southern California’s Los Angeles and Orange counties. By the early twenty-first century, the city of Los Angeles was home to the largest concentration of Filipinos outside the Philippine Islands. In contrast to the early Filipino immigrants, who were mostly farmworkers, a large proportion of the Filipinos who began immigrating to the United States during the late twentieth century have been professionals, especially in the medical professions. In fact, so many Filipinos with medical training have settled in Illinois that they have established a small Filipino enclave in north Chicago.

Another previously underrepresented part of the world from which immigrants have come since the 1960s is the predominantly Muslim Middle East, including North Africa, a large region that encompasses Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, among other countries. Immigrants from that part of the world have tended to settle in major American cities, such as New York, Boston, Miami, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. Many Middle Eastern immigrants have come seeking educational opportunities. Consequently, they have established communities in many cities known for their institutions of higher learning. African immigrants also tended to be concentrated in cities with colleges and universities.

One of the largest categories of twenty-first century immigrants have been Hispanic peoples from Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Many of these immigrants, especially from Mexico and Central America, have engaged in migrant agricultural work, often relocating to areas where seasonal farm employment is available. Those who came with the intention of settling permanently in the United States tended to go to regions close to where they enter the country. For example, Mexicans and Central Americans have tended to settle in Mexico-US border states, and Cubans tended to settle in South Florida. However, there has also been a growing trend in the twenty-first century for Hispanic immigrants to disperse throughout the United States in unprecedented numbers. By the early twenty-first century, sizable Mexican communities were present in the western and southwestern border states, across the Southeast and Midwest, and in eastern and northern metropolitan areas such as New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

In the first decades of the twenty-first century, the demographics of immigrants in the United States changed once again. Those seeking entry were no longer predominantly from Mexico. Migrants from Central America—such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala—formed larger percentages than before. Venezuela's economic collapse and natural disasters in Puerto Rico also contributed to a more diverse group of Hispanic immigrants. These communities were no longer confined to specific areas in the United States but began to form communities in non-traditional locales such as Idaho, Kentucky, and North Carolina. 

In the early to mid-2020s, Chinese nationals increasingly sought to reach the United States via irregular migration routes, including journeys through Latin America and the Darién Gap. Between 2023 and 2024, tens of thousands of Chinese migrants were encountered at the US southern border, marking a sharp increase compared with previous years. These migrants often traveled by air to countries like Ecuador or Mexico and then moved overland northward through Central America before attempting to enter the United States, frequently to seek asylum. Ecuador’s mid-2024 policy change requiring visas for Chinese visitors reflected efforts to stem this flow. After arrival, many Chinese migrants gravitated toward established Chinese immigrant communities in major metropolitan areas, particularly in New York City and California, where linguistic networks, employment opportunities, and legal support services were already present. These settlement patterns largely mirrored those of earlier waves of Chinese immigration to the United States. Despite heightened attention and political debates surrounding this trend, Chinese migrants remained a relatively small share of total migrants encountered at the US border in the twenty-first century compared with other nationalities.

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