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How do networks influence the location and occupation decisions of immigrants? If so, is this influence long-lasting? This paper addresses these questions by analyzing immigrant flows to the United States between 1900 and 1930. We compare the distributions of immigrants both by intended and actual state of residence to counterfactual distributions constructed by allocating the national-level flows using network proxies. The distribution of immigrants by intended state of residence is most closely approximated by a distribution that allocates them where migrants of their own ethnicity, irrespective of their occupation, had settled. Meanwhile, the actual distribution of immigrants is better approximated by the location of previous immigrants of the same ethnicity and occupation, but only for the first 5 years of a migrant’s stay. These results are consistent with migrants using networks as a transitory mechanism while they learn about their new labor markets and not consistent with alternatives.