Overall, I found this chapter very interesting. I'm not sure about other people, but when I think about immigration during the times of Colonial America, I mainly think about those that immigrated from Europe. That may sound a bit arrogant, but it's the truth. There were two sentence that, I guess you can say, strike me the most, within the first page of the reading. One of them was, ".., just over three-fifths of the white population was calculated to have been of English stock, and more than two-fifths of the rest came from the British Isles." The second one was, "one white in fourteen could not be assigned an ethnicity by the scholars who produced the table below more than half a century ago." The first sentence goes to show that a lot of what makes up our population not only come from Europe, but from the British Isles as well (Of course, this does not include Native Americans and those that immigrated from Africa). The second sentence goes to show that the notion of assimilation took place during the colonial times. Immigration to colonial America was a big thing, whether the reason be push or pull. Those who immigrated are also those of different ethnic backgrounds. Chapter three talks about groups such as: Germans, Scotch Irish, Scots, Irish, Welsh, French, Spanish, Swedes, and Jews.
When I think about the immigration and and all the different groups that immigrated, I think about the history of Hawaii. One of the great reasons why people immigrated to Hawaii was to work in the plantation fields. In fact, my grandparents were one of the many that did just that. Labor force was imported from countries such as, but not limiting to, Korea, China, Japan and the Philippines. Majority of those that immigrated found this as an opportunity for a better life, much like those that immigrated to Colonial America. Also, just like Colonial America times, these ethnic groups either assimilated or acculturated.
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