 Later, southern and eastern Europeans from Italy, Slovenia, Poland, and Czecho-Slovakia became the dominant group immigrating to the United States, and they tended to settle in the Twin Cities, Duluth, and the Iron Range.The Mesabi Range was especially popular among southeastern Europeans, particularly Slovenians and other Slavic immigrants living under the Austrian Empire, who found employment in the iron mines.With extraordinary encouragement from Walter Mondale, Hmong and Vietnamese immigrants started to come to Minnesota around the mid-1970s as the pro-American governments in their home countries collapsed.