Immigration from the Volga German colonies to Canada began in the late 1880s. Most immigrants settled in the Prairie Provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. Larger migrations began around 1900 after the homestead lands of the United States were already taken. Migration of Volga Germans from the U.S. to Canada was also spurred by rumblings of U.S. involvement in World War I. Recent immigrants had just escaped the Russian military conscription of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05 and were not eager to get involved yet again in military service.

Following the elimination in 1874 of the last vestiges of the promises that had enticed the Germans to settle along the Volga River in the 1760s, immigration began to North and South America. In 1876, a group of approximately 200 families settled in southern Brazil intending to continue raising wheat as they had in Russia, but many found the soils there while fertile to be unsuitable for wheat.

The founding of the General Alvear Colonies on 21 July 1878 established the presence of the Volga Germans in the Province of Entre Ríos. The initial wave of Volga German immigrants brought 1,625 families (about 8,000 people) to Entre Ríos.

In Entre Ríos, the term "Aldea" is used often as a reference to a colony (rather than the term Colonía), and this term is used on many maps and on the highway signs in the Province (i.e., Aldea Brasilera, Aldea Protestante, etc.).