Immigrant influences in New England culture today

[All Along The Watchtower]

This is something that has intrigued me. New England was very heavily Protestant for a long time (apart from the French Canadians in the North, of course) and had a very high percentage of colonial English ancestry, but from the mid-19th century into the 20th century the culture was transformed by the millions of Irish Catholics who came over. Additional groups came over as well in the latter part of that period-Italians, Poles, people from all over Southern and Eastern Europe who were of Jewish, Catholic, or Orthodox faith backgrounds. In other words, New England became much more religiously and culturally/ethnically diverse.

Today, New England's demographics continue to shift, as an even broader array of immigrants from Latin America and parts of Asia and Africa are now represented in New England, and growing rapidly in numbers in many cases. My question is: Out of all these influences, which (if any) has more influence on the overall culture of New England than the others, and if so, why?

[H. Ross Peron]

I'd say about 40/40 for the Puritans and the Catholics (especially the Irish and Italians) with about 10 percent to the Jews and 10 percent to miscellaneous cultures.