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Immigration to colonial America was based on an acute need for inexpensive labor. Proprietors seeking to develop large colonies and planters, such as those in Virginia tidewater seeking to grow crops for a world market, needed a constant stream of settlers and workers. Probably over one-half of all white laborers drawn to the colonies before 1776 were indentured servants or poor Englishmen who worked in the colonies for a fixed period of years to pay off their debts and gain their freedom. Indentured servants either died from poor living conditions or eventually completed their obligations and left their employers. Thus the need for labor was continuous. African labor was one solution that Virginia planters turned to in 1619. Although most African Americans were not legally slaves when they first arrived, a system of slavery was gradually imposed upon these involuntary immigrations by the 1660s. Impoverished Englishmen and African Americans were quickly joined by Scotch-Irish, Scots, and German settlers. As many as 250,000 Scotch-Irish immigrated to the American colonies before 1776. Although their decision to move was influenced by Protestant ministers in Ulster, they began leaving in 1717 primarily because of a dramatic increase in the rents they were charged as tenant farmers. They were joined by artisans and laborers from the Scottish Lowlands who faced economic hard times and moved to the tobacco colonies as indentured servants. Germans started to arrive in Philadelphia in 1683, attracted in part by William Penn's promises of religious toleration. By the 1760s over 60 percent of Pennsylvania was German. Immigrant streams to America often grew as extensions of European population movements. In the century after 1630, rural workers were always moving because of poverty and land shortages. Agents hired by land speculators and proprietors in the colonies could tap into these migratory streams and entice already mobile individuals to move across the ocean. This is essentially what happened between 1630 and 1642 when 21,000 immigrants moved out of the migratory patterns of East Anglia and sailed to Puritan New England (2).
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