There were a number of waves of immigrants from different countries that came to work the mines of the U.P. area. A branch of my family wound up in that area, but not in the mines. While visiting the area about ten years ago I had a chance to visit the "Italian Hall" in Iron City, MI. I recall a display about the ethnicities of minors, and that the Italians stood out from the other groups in that 90+% of them returned to Italy. The Irish immigrants, by way of contrast, had only about 10% return to Ireland. Swedes, Poles and Germans were the other dominant groups as I recall, but I don't remember the "return rate' for any of those groups. It is a largely untold bit of history that only the locals seem to recall. I suspect that the same can be said about most communities around the globe.