Historically the region’s largest ethnic group, the Irish have been coming to Boston since the early 19th century. They have arguably transformed and left their mark on the city like no other.
With its proximity to both Quebec and the Maritime provinces, Massachusetts attracted more Canadian immigrants than any other state, with many coming to the Boston area.
One of Boston’s oldest immigrant groups, Germans were a relatively small community compared to the region’s Irish and Canadians. But their impact was greater than their numbers would suggest.
Jews from central and eastern Europe and Russia have come to Boston in multiple waves since the 1840s. Religion has helped shape both their economic and cultural life in the region.
Since the 1880s, Italians have been flocking to Boston, settling in both the city and surrounding communities. They were one of the largest ethnic groups of the second wave migration.
Dating back to the 1870s, Boston’s Chinatown was one of the largest in the country. Despite later exclusion, immigration rebounded after World War II, making the Chinese the largest foreign-born group in the region.
Coming mainly from the Azores, Portuguese immigrants have been settling in Massachusetts since the mid-19th century. They now constitute some of the largest Portuguese communities in the United States.
Fleeing ethnic and religious persecution in Ottoman Turkey, Armenians have been coming to greater Boston in large numbers since the 1890s. Watertown, especially, has become a center of Armenian-American life and heritage.
Since the 1880s, Boston has been a popular destination for Christians from Syria and Lebanon. More recently, Arab newcomers have been predominantly Muslim and come from countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
One of the oldest “new” immigrant groups, Haitians have been coming to Boston since the 1950s. Since then, the metro region has become one of the top three sites of Haitian settlement in the US.
Vietnamese refugees and immigrants have been coming to Boston since the end of the Vietnam war in 1975. Centered in Fields Corner in Dorchester, they are now the second largest Asian ethnic group in the city.
Cape Verdeans have been coming to Massachusetts since the 1840s, but have only moved into the Boston area in large numbers since the 1970s. Today they are one of the city’s top ten immigrant groups and the largest hailing from Africa.
Fleeing civil wars, violence and repression, newcomers from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras began arriving in greater Boston in the early 1980s. Thirty years later, Central Americans make up a large portion of the region’s Latino population.
Attracted by higher education and professional opportunities, South Asians have been coming to Boston since the 1960s. Today, Indians are one of the largest foreign-born groups in the metro area.
Coming originally as agricultural workers in the 1950s and 1960s, Dominicans have become the region’s largest Latino immigrant group and have settled across the metro region.
Greater Boston has attracted more Brazilian immigrants than any major metropolitan area in the country, in part because of its historic Portuguese-speaking communities.
Immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean have been settling in Boston since the early twentieth century. Coming mainly from Jamaica and Barbadoes, they have built flourishing communities in Dorchester and Mattapan.
Starting with a trickle of textile workers in the 1970s, thousands of Colombians have settled in Massachusetts in recent decades. The largest number live in Boston, and especially in the neighborhood of East Boston.
Koreans have been coming to Boston as university students for more than a century. But today’s Korean American community in the Commonwealth has its origins in the 1950s. Allston-Brighton has become an important center of Korean life for both older settlers and newly arrived students.
Boston has been a magnet for refugees since its founding in the 1600s. But especially since World War II, hundreds of thousands of those fleeing violence and persecution have resettled in the region, laying the foundations for later immigrant communities.
