Immigration of the 1900s

Watt Munisotaram Mucalinda reflection pond, a gorgeous Watt built by Cambodian Buddhist immigrants. A Watt is a complex of spirituality and reflection based on learning and Buddhist principles.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Swedes, Norwegians, and Germans continued to make up about half of Minnesota’s new immigrants, but the industrializing Twin Cities, Duluth, and Iron Range boomtowns of Hibbing, Chisholm, Virginia, and Eveleth drew locally concentrated immigrant populations from Eastern Europe, bringing with them new traditions within Christianity. In 1900, fully half of the Iron Range population was foreign-born, from Finland and Sweden but also large numbers from Southern and Eastern Europe: Croatians, Slovenians, Serbs, and Italians.¹ With them, they brought new religio-cultural forms to the region’s Catholic parishes and even some new Eastern Orthodox traditions. Iron Range communities today remain proud of their ethnic identities, their foods, and their cultures.

Taking jobs in the flour milling district around St. Anthony Falls and settling in nearby Northeast Minneapolis or stockyards of South St. Paul were the state’s first significant Polish, Ukrainian, Serb, and Slovak communities, and for Lebanese and Greek and Russian immigrants that followed, churches sprang up to ground them. The streets of Northeast Minneapolis still host both the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox churches, an Eastern Rite Maronite church serving the Lebanese community; A Serbian Orthodox church is in South St. Paul and St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox church in South Minneapolis.

The Immigration Act of 1924 brought the expansive immigration of the nineteenth and early twentieth to a swift end, drawing the line for immigrant visas with quotas at two percent of the total number of people from each nationality based on the 1890 census. Congress also denied any quotas for Asian immigration, extending a policy articulated in the Chinese Exclusion Act. It would not be until the 1960s when Congress opened up immigration once again that Minnesota would become a place of rapid demographic and cultural change, but the state’s immigrant communities have retained pride in their ethnic heritage and helped create a welcoming state for new Minnesotans.