Reply To: Are there fewer Sephardi shuls on the East Coast?

Quite simply, American immigration policy prior to the 1970s assigned most of the quota to northern European countries…those likely to send white skinned emigrants.
The WASPs running the State Department were not interested in dark skinned, olive complected residents from the Med, North Africa or the Levant.
My maternal line had no problems getting visas to enter from Germany in 1868. My paternal line came in 1872 and 3 from what is now Belarus. They were forced to split the family as the quota for 1872 had filled and the mother and youngest two children followed using the 1873 quota.
The only Sephardim I know whose families came between 1880 and 1924 are Dutch. This is different from old time Spanish Portugese colonial family descendants