What are the most important characteristics of the four waves of American immigration? Wave one is founders and colonial immigration (1492-1776);...

During the first wave of immigration, which covers the colonial period, about 400,000 English people came to the United States. Many of the English immigrants, such as the Puritans, were seeking religious freedom, while others were seeking economic opportunities. In addition, starting in 1619 (the year of the first recorded arrival of a slave ship to colonial Virginia), slaves from Africa were brought to colonial America against their will. About half of the European immigrants who came to the U.S. during this time were indentured servants, meaning that they had to work for about 4-7 years to pay off the cost of their passage to the New World before they were free to pursue other opportunities. In the 17th and 18th centuries, about one million people came to the U.S.

Immigration increased in the 19th century, starting around 1820. During this time, about 30 million Europeans came to the U.S., including many Irish and German people seeking economic opportunities. In the 1840s, Irish people, facing a famine at home, composed about one half of all American immigrants. They faced a great deal of anti-Catholic sentiment in the U.S. by nativist groups that formed political parties such as the Know-Nothings. The importation of slaves into the U.S. was outlawed in 1808, but some slaves were still brought to the country. During the mid-1800s, many Chinese people immigrated to California, drawn by the gold rush. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned all Asian immigration until its repeal in 1943. The Civil War in 1861-65 caused a slow down in immigration. 

During the third wave of immigration, starting in the 1890s, about 20 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. (from 1890-1920). The vast majority of these immigrants were from central, eastern, and southern Europe. From the 1890s to the 1920s, 4 million Italians and 2 million Jews entered the U.S. Other immigrants came from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and other parts of eastern Europe, drawn by the promise of jobs created by the Industrial Revolution. Many immigrants lived in large cities such as New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Boston, and other cities and worked in factories and lived in cramped living quarters that were the focus of reform efforts by Progressives. Immigration reached a peak in 1907 and slowed during World War I (1914-1918), and then the Immigration Act of 1924 imposed quotas that slowed immigration from eastern, southern, and central Europe. This act outlawed immigration from Asia.

Immigration slowed during the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, known also as the Hart-Cellar Act, which did away with quotas. While in 1970, about 60% of immigrants were from Europe, this statistic declined to 15% by 2000. Immigration became largely non-European in origin. Today, the greatest number of immigrants come from Mexico, China, and India. Today's immigrants tend to be younger than the general population and tend to settle in areas with other people from their countries, continuing the American tradition of growth through immigration.