Immigration and assimilation took on different tones in the West. The region tended to have more foreign-born than the East - per capita - simply because populations were smaller and younger. They also tended to have fewer women, and all of this affected the demography and the nature of assimilation.

Western centers of mining, for example, often had a large enough population of Irish immigrants that they did not have to play the role of 'despised newcomers' as they were in places like Boston and New York: one would not see 'No Irish need apply' signs in places like Butte, Montana or Virginia City, Nevada, for example. Sadly, one would find Irish anti-Chinese organization, there, so the pressures against specific immigrant groups were often similar, but expressed against different groups. (A letter found in Butte, written from an Irish immigrant to a cousin in Ireland, read, 'When you cross the Atlantic, don't stop in America. Come directly to Butte.')

As a result of all of this, the West tended to be less anti-Catholic Church. And it tended to afford women more rights than in the East - the right to divorce, to own property, and to vote, in each case earlier than one found in the East. This meant that stories of successful immigrant women are more common in the West.

All this meant that immigrant groups - and people in general - often felt a lot more free in the West; free from an oppressive established Protestant hierarchy, free from the pressure to assimilate, and free from at least some of the restrictions of a male-dominated society.