The population of Emigrant City has a varied history, and today's neighborhoods still reflect the ethnic makeup of the original inhabitants. During the 1800s, the city attracted about 20,000 new immigrants. It had two lines of sailing ships that regularly sailed to Liverpool, the center of emigration. Passengers would pay five to seven pounds for a steerage ticket, and in contrast, a good factory wage in Britain was one pound per week. However, the most important line was that of Thomas Cope. For the next four decades, his ships would carry thousands of new immigrants to Philadelphia.
The city has long been a cosmopolitan and multiethnic place. As far back as the seventeenth century, Germantown was settled by European immigrants, while Koreans began to arrive in the late 1980s. Since then, the city has played a crucial role in virtually every major migration of the twentieth century. But what has changed? Since then, it is still as diverse and multicultural as it was when it was first settled.
Philadelphia was an important port for immigrants in the eighteenth century. The Pennsylvania Provincial Assembly made ship captains submit passenger lists to local officials before sailing to Philadelphia. These waves of immigrants included Germans and Scotch-Irish. In 1717, for example, 22 ships with 7000 immigrants landed in Philadelphia. And in 1749, over a hundred thousand Scotch-Irish immigrants arrived in Philadelphia before the Revolution.