1. Immigration The Irish Experience
The Irish Experience

2. Where is Ireland?
Maps courtesy of used with permission

3. This is Ireland
Maps courtesy of used with permission

4. Images of Ireland

5. Why did People Decide to Leave Ireland? Push Factors
The Irish Potato Famine 1840’s
The Great Hunger
Poverty
British Oppression

6. Why did People Decide to Leave Ireland?

7. Why Choose America? Promise of Freedom (religious and political)
Hope for a new life
Jobs
Land
“Streets paved with gold”

8. What Irish Immigrants Anticipated.

9. Getting to America

10. What America Was Really Like When You Arrived
Considered by other immigrants to be angry, greedy and illiterate
Distrusted for being Catholic
Lived in tenements
Some became farmers
Difficult work, such as coalmining and building railroads and canals