They've followed a different strategy, and it seems to have worked for them. They had some advantages: the fact that they were one of the first large non-Protestant groups to come here, that they arrived in such large numbers, and that they could already speak English helped them to achieve real power in politics, the unions, the Catholic Church and other institutions. But they also made good use of their advantages to overcome their disadvantages.
One interesting theory I heard is that the old 19th century lower classes of the Five Points and other neighborhoods more or less died off or didn't reproduce, and those who did survive, reproduce, and prosper already showed virtues and determination that was greater than what the most troublesome of the immigrants lacked. It sounds like something that someone should look into.
Ah, the "natural selection" theory.
x, for what it's worth, I have somewhere in the files a Taft speech from approx. 1910/12 to an Irish audience in which he tells them that the Irish are the least troublesome of immigrants.
I suppose this comes of the labor agitation of the period, which was perceived to have been caused by eastern Europeans. Anarchists and socialists did not generally have Irish names. I don't think a national politician of the 1850s would have said any such thing.
The stereotypes were well set, however. See this from Taft's ADC's diary, about a banquet at the Waldorf for the Sixty-Ninth (Irish) Regiment: "...made up of Irish Catholics and a husky looking lot of paddies there were too. But I felt that they could fight when called upon. They had certainly been feasting well before we got there for it was difficult that the President could speak he was so often interrupted by hilarious but good natured yells from enthusiastic irishmen."
And this, from a banquet of the "Republican Hungarian Club," the ADC noted, "before sitting down I presented over four hundred of them. Imagine presenting four hundred Austro Hungarians by name! No wonder I slept until eleven the next day."
Chong, more apropos.