Why is German the largest self-reported ancestry in the United States and not English if the US was a British colony?

Question

Why isn’t it English by far?

In: Other

Answer 1

There were some very large waves of German immigration into the American colonies while it was still a British colony. there were also massive waves of immigrants from various countries, particularly from the mid 1800’s through the middle of the 20th century. Those numbers dwarfed the relatively small population of the original British colonies. It’s also self-reporting so a lot of people whose ancestors were here before 1776 have lived in America for 250+ years and may not even know what their ancestry really is.