if you were half as good at deduction as you are at fabrication & leaping to conclusion, you might actually post something useful... but instead we get more of your BS

By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Buffalo, and Baltimore.

Ellis Island is just part of the long history of immigrants arriving in NYC... a fact that you seem bound & determined to contest. In your view... they obviously landed in Quebec and then travelled on until they reached New York.

"Ah but somehow it is perfectly rational and reasonable in your view for you to cite two examples to argue that 75% of those who made the crossing died."

Well... since I DID NOT make that argument... those are your words, not mine... I only have to point out that the irrationality come from you.

I gave two links to a educational website that includes first hand reports and caveats when there is uncertainty about accuracy of a source. How you choose to contrue or miscontrue them is on you.

And after critizing my reference to Ellis Island, you then use the criteria from decades after the famine to justify why they couldn't have come thruough NY. The following is the Ellis Island Foundation   http://www.ellisisland.org/genealogy/ellis_island_history.asp

From the very beginning of the mass migration that spanned the years (roughly) 1880 to 1924, an increasingly vociferous group of politicians and nativists demanded increased restrictions on immigration. Laws and regulations such as the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law and the institution of a literacy test barely stemmed this flood tide of new immigrants. Actually, the death knell for Ellis Island, as a major entry point for new immigrants, began to toll in 1921.

This from Hostra.edu:
Most of the canal diggers were Irish immigrants. One reason that Canvass White recruited the Irish to work on the canal because he was impressed with Irish canal maintenance engineer named J.J. McShane. Many Irish immigrants who were living in cities in New York State found it difficult to get work because they were looked down upon by native-born Americans. What other reasons might Canvass White been glad to hire the Irish to build the canal?

And this from the National Park Service

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/ohioeriecanal/ethnicity.htm

The Irish wave of immigration to the Cuyahoga Valley was a result of canal construction. After the Napoleonic Wars peace settlements of 1815, Irish emigration intensified. Before the potato famine of 1846, more than a million Irish resettled in a foreign country. Many Irish immigrants who landed in New York City were recruited to work on New York State's Erie Canal, completed in 1825. Upon completion of the Erie Canal, many of these Irish workers came to northeast Ohio to work and made up the bulk of the labor force on the northern segment of the Ohio and Erie Canal. In fact, the 1850 State of Ohio Census lists 22.4% of the state's immigrants as coming from Ireland. The Irish Town Bend Archeological District in Cleveland's Flats District reflects the settlement era working class status of this ethnic group. Many of the early German settlers in the southern region of the Canalway were motivated by religion. In 1772 Moravian missionary David Zeisberger led a group of 28 Delaware Indians to the Tuscarawas River Valley to establish Schoenbrunn – the first settlement in the Northwest Territory. This mission settlement grew to include 60 dwellings and more than 300 inhabitants. Today it is a reconstructed village that is managed by the Ohio Historical Society.

America was settled by immigrants... and every local and regional historical society has records supporting the facts of who they were and just where they went... untouched by those who would deny those facts.