Syrian Christians began to emigrate from the Muslim Ottoman Empire in large numbers after 1880. Of the 250,000 who left in the following quarter century, more than 60,000 settled in North America, many becoming peddlers, shopkeepers, or small businessowners in large urban areas.

The Swiss were among the earliest non-British or non- French European settlers in both the United States and Canada, with a substantial immigration during the 18th century.

Though Swedes settled in North America as early as 1638, the great period of Swedish migration was between 1870 and 1914.

The Statue of Liberty is the most visible symbol of the personal freedoms that attracted immigrants to American shores from the 17th century to the present day.

Most Sri Lankans in the United States and Canada are professionals or come from professional backgrounds and thus have done relatively well economically.

Sports have long been an arena for the display of national pride, particularly in association with the modern Olympics, held every four years since 1896.

Significant elements of Spanish culture represent one of the major strands of the American social fabric.

Emigration from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR; Soviet Union) was, for most of its history (1917–91), forbidden.

Most early studies of immigration to the United States and Canada treated all the peoples of South Asia as a single category, including immigrants from more than a dozen ethnic groups who inhabited British India prior to 1947.

A veteran of many European military campaigns, Captain John Smith is best known for his presidency of the governing council of Jamestown in Virginia colony.

Smith was the first U.S. politician to build a national reputation by appealing to ethnic groups and was the first Roman Catholic to run for president.

Throughout most of its history, Slovenia was governed by the Germanic Austrians or the Serb-dominated state of Yugoslavia. In 1991, Slovenia won its independence, making it one of the newest countries in the world.

Emerging from the nationalist democratic movements of the late 1980s and early 1990s, Slovakia is one of the newest countries in the world.

Slavery is the condition of a person being owned by someone else, forced to work, and without personal freedoms.

On April 4, 1985, in Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that oral hearings were required in every case determining refugee status, leading to a radical restructuring of the immigration process.

John Graves Simcoe was the first lieutenant governor of Upper Canada (1792–96) and was responsible for crafting a policy that encouraged extensive immigration into the newly formed province.

As minister of the interior and superintendent general of Indian affairs (1896–1905), Clifford Sifton planned and presided over the most successful public campaign to attract settlers in Canadian history.

The Seven Years’ War (1756–63) was the culmination of a century of European warfare that centered on the growing conflict between Prussia and Austria in Europe but also involved an escalating contest between Britain and France for imperial control beyond Europe.

Serbs represented the largest ethnic group within the former country of Yugoslavia, and as the dominant regional group, they were less likely to migrate than Croatians or Slovenes.

September 11, or 9/11, is used almost universally to identify collectively the 2001 terrorist attacks on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and the World Trade Center in New York City.

The large Scottish and Scots-Irish immigration of the 18th century helped define the cultural patterns of the United States and Canada.

In response to growing antagonism toward immigrants generally and Chinese immigrants specifically, Pennsylvania representative William Scott, a Democrat, introduced legislation to extend restrictions embodied in the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882).

The Schwenkfelders were a small, pietistic sect that emigrated from southern Germany and lower Silesia in the Austrian Empire beginning in 1731.

San Francisco was the first great immigrant city of the American West, receiving people from around the world during the California gold rush of 1848–49.

Salvadoran immigration to the United States is a new phenomenon, the product of a long civil war that decimated the country during the 1980s.