For most people who know anything about the history of immigration to the United States, Irish immigration is almost always associated with the great Potato Famine of the 1840s.
That was when Ireland's major cash crop, the potato, failed, which spurred mass emmigration on the part of the Irish that would leave the current population of Ireland less than half of what it was nearly 170 years ago.
The interesting thing about Irish immigration, however, is that it never actually stopped. Such communities as Woodlawn in the The Bronx, New York, have a sizable Irish immigrant population to this very day.
I am an American of Irish lineage, and my family arrived in the United States in 1904 as a result of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. A friend of my family, who was a very little girl when she emigrated here not too long after my family did, told me horror stories about clashes between the Irish Republican Army and the British police atrocities that, three generations removed, I could not even begin to fathom.
It is always interesting to me to read about the various waves of immigration to the United States in history texts and the time periods with which they are associated, because our family was one of thousands that made the move from Ireland at that time.
On the other end of the time spectrum, there is my friend, Matt, who emigrated from Ireland to the U.S. in 1991. He is hardly indicative of Irish immigration to America in general, because he came to Texas instead of the Northeast, which is where most Irish immigrants go, and he actually moved to the United States because he met and fell in love with his American wife while she was on vacation in Dublin.
He is, however, another exception to the widely-held belief that Irish immigration was chiefly a 19th century phenomenon.
Another misconception that many people hold about Irish immigration is that they think most Irish moved to the United States. The reality is that the Irish have emmigrated to countries throughout the world to Canada, to Australia, and to the U.K., and to Mexico and Central America and South America.
While there are less than seven million people living in Ireland, there are more than 70 million people of Irish ancestry in the world.
I think this just goes to show what a huge impact that Irish immigration has made on so many nations throughout the world, including the United States. John Hancock, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, was of Irish heritage.
With such a large number of descendants throughout the world compared to such a small native population, one has to wonder if Irish immigration has been more prolific than immigration from any other country.