Immigration of Poles to the

 It is not easy to show the number of Polish immigrants in the 19th century. Poland, at that time, was not a free country and that is why Poles were counted as the citizens of Russia, Austria and Prussia. According to A. Brożek there were about two million Poles in the USA in the 19th century. It is believed
that immigration depended mainly on the policy of each of the three invaders. Under the Prussian rule the capitalist economic system appeared sooner
than in the rest of the country and peasants from that territory were the first to earn their living in America. But it was not a long time when villagers (higher classes from cities were much less interested in immigration) from the Russian and Austrian partitions noticed their great chance in the new country, which was already famous for the opportunities it gave.

The first ‘great’ wave of immigrants, arriving mainly from the late 1800s up to the First World War, were considered as ‘for bread’ immigrants. This group was much more numerous than the other groups which had arrived in the USA up to that time. Polish immigrants settled mainly in the northern states, along the Great Lakes. They came to America mainly for economical but also political and religious reasons. Many of them were illiterate and low skilled laborers. They came from very poor and overpopulated areas. Those immigrants took low-paying jobs and lived in crowded dwellings just to make
a meager living. They found employment in coal mines, in the steel industry, in slaughterhouses, in ports and shipyards and in municipal service establishments of some big cities. Women usually worked as maids and in textile industry.

The educated spheres of Polish society opposed immigration. They considered immigration a national danger because it weakened the resistance of the nation by reducing it numerically. They worried about Polish racial cohesion and finally about importing foreign values, which could influence
the purity of the national culture already  affected by strong Russification and Germanization of schools and other public institutions. However, since Polish colonies often lacked intellectual leadership and were endangered by being absorbed in their American environment the opposition to the immigration
of intellectuals began to weaken. And intellectuals were sometimes even encouraged to leave to help the immigrants preserve their nationality.

Choosing the ‘lesser evil’, the higher classes popularized temporary instead of permanent immigration. Almost everybody who decided to leave the country claimed that they were going to come back. From the standpoint of those people immigration to America was not so very different from going to
a Polish city to earn there some money. But in reality, temporary absences very often slowly changed into permanent absence by a gradual adaptation to the new environment. Only about 30 percent of immigrants returned to Poland.

With the outbreak of the First World War America started to change its policy towards immigration to their country. In 1924 they established a law to impose restrictions on the immigrants from Slav, Roman and East-Asian nations. Consequently, the number of Polish immigrants decreased radically.

The second great wave of immigration took place after the Second World War.  Poland was devastated economically; many towns and businesses were destroyed. What is more, Poland was liberated by Soviets and consequently turned into a communist country. This posed a danger for Poles who, for many reasons, were still abroad or were fighting along with Western allies during the war. Immigrants in this second wave were primarily former political prisoners, dissidents and intellectuals from refugee camps all over Europe. Many in this group, educated and committed to assimilating into America culture, separated from Polonia and joined other middle-class and professional groups in America.

The third great wave of immigration started in 1980. The first immigrants came after the imposition of martial law in December 1981. Some of them were very skilled professionals. Quite a numerous group of faculty in American universities consists of well educated Polish immigrants of the newest wave. Some, especially illegal immigrants are not still that well settled down in the society and they live in low-income housing, mainly in Polish quarters of Chicago, New York or Detroit.

 Such a great popularity of immigration as a way of improving life conditions was undoubtedly a result of the American myth. People strongly believed that leaving the country and going to the USA, was the only way to survive. Letters from immigrants seemed to confirm them in that conviction.