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people have been immigrating to the Americas for

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thousands of years let's take a second to zero in on the immigration that was [Clock ticking forward]

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happening before the Civil War why and because it's what directly set

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the stage for the Gilded Age is a solid before the Civil War some parts of the

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country had a growing need for cheap labor the South had its laves but the [Man thinking about cheap labor]

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North had eventually outlawed slavery so northern factory owners were on the hunt

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for people who could work for next to nothing [Women working in factory]

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well since slaves weren't an option northern factory owners found the next

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best thing immigrants see lots of global events [Globe burning]

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around the 1840s meant that people were hightailing it out of there awful home

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countries trying to find it a better life in America revolutions and other

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upheavals made lots of other plays with less than sweet places they would call

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home sweet home yeah all right well let's take the Chinese Empire for

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example European colonialism was doing a real number on it and causing it to

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collapse there are also a bunch of revolts going on over there all this [People in battle]

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hullabaloo sent tens of thousands of Chinese workers or future workers

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fleeing to the United States Germany Austria and the Russian Empire were also

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getting a heaping helping of revolts and oppression so plenty of political [Woman in hand cuffs]

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refugees were streaming over from those places to maybe most famously though the

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Irish started immigrating in droves this was partly because they weren't all

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that cool with British colonialism they figured maybe Americans would you know [Irish man and American man on a farm]

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get where they were coming from on that issue but the biggest thing that sent

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massive waves of Irish to America was the Irish potato famine the famine

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happened when a nasty disease made most of the potatoes in Ireland get sick [Disease sticks to potatoes]

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since there were no potato doctors this is a really big deal well really it was

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a big deal because it was a major crop and food source on which the Irish were

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completely dependent so tons of Irish decided that starving to death wasn't [Human bones in a ditch]

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for them and they flooded the northeastern United States along with

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other places in the world Irish workers became an incredibly important source of

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cheap labour they built canals railroads and telegraph lines you name it and the

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Irish had a hand in it but of course because they were poor and foreign and

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kind of funny they fake tons of blatant discrimination some must have felt that [Man discriminating irish man]

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everywhere they went their Irish luck was just running soon well some people

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at the time worried that the Irish would damage upright American culture with

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their wicked Irish waves and eventually overpower white society well over the [US flag burning and Irish flag replaces it]

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years the Irish population grew larger and wealthier and they were eventually

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considered part of the American mainstream culture right now the number

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of Irish Americans is around 35 million or 9 times the current population of

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Ireland Irish culture is celebrated in great churches hip-hop and a line of [People celebrating irish parade]

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t-shirts with which people pretend like they're Irish for a kiss oh yeah and

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there's Notre Dame too

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